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Robert Culp, a dashing actor who earned his most enduring fame for his starring role opposite Bill Cosby in the hit 1960s espionage TV series "I Spy" and as part of the swinging quartet of suburban lovers in the 1969 film comedy "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice," died March 24 at a hospital in Los Angeles after a fall near his home. He was 79.
Television historian Robert Thompson said Mr. Culp's greatest legacy was his co-starring role in "I Spy," which Thompson called one the "hippest TV shows to have ever aired." The espionage adventure, which was on NBC from 1965 to 1968, was groundbreaking in casting the little-known nightclub comedian Cosbyhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...3/24/AR2010032403038.html?hpid=artslot&sub=AR. The series was one of the first to present a black male actor in a dramatic leading role.
One of the most popular and award-winning television series of the sixties, I Spy was the first weekly broadcast to star both a white and a black actor.
In 1964, though, producer Sheldon Leonard had, with heavy risk, financed the show himself, and his idea for a racially incorporated cast had earned his show the moniker “Sheldon’s Folley.” Pairing established white actor Robert Culp with Bill Cosby, a black comedian with barely an acting credit to his name, certainly turned some heads at NBC, and many wondered whether affiliates in the South would ever air the show. Only two years later, Cosby accepted the Emmy for leading actor—and I Spy cemented its role in history."
