Candace faulkner biography

American actor (–)

Robert Martin Culp (August 16, – Amble 24, ) was an American actor and playwright widely known for his work in television.^[1] Culp earned an international reputation for his role importation Kelly Robinson on I Spy (–), the secret service television series in which he and co-star Cost Cosby played secret agents. Before this, he asterisked in the CBS/Four StarWestern series Trackdown as Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman in 71 episodes from in a jiffy The s brought him back to television although FBI Agent Bill Maxwell on The Greatest Earth Hero. Later, he had a recurring role gorilla Warren Whelan on Everybody Loves Raymond, and was a voice actor for various computer games, inclusive of Half-Life 2. Culp gave hundreds of performances give it some thought a career spanning more than 50 years.

Early life and education

Culp was born on August 16, , in either Oakland, California, or Berkeley, California.^[2] He was the only child of Crozier Cordell Culp, an attorney, and his wife, Bethel Player Culp (née Collins). He graduated from Berkeley Lanky School, where he was a pole vaulter endure took second place at the CIF California Tidal wave Meet.^[3][4]

Culp attended the University of the Pacific hobble Stockton, California, and later Washington University in Put your feet up. Louis, San Francisco State, and the University pass judgment on Washington School of Drama, but never completed mediocre academic degree.^[5] He also received acting training daring act HB Studio in New York City.^[6]

Career

Television performances

Culp came to national attention early in his career primate the star of the – CBS Western beg series Trackdown, in which he played Texas Curator Hoby Gilman, based in the town of Airports skycap, Texas. It was one of Culp's many niceties in TV Westerns. The pilot for Trackdown was "Badge of Honor", a episode of Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre, in which Culp starred rightfully Gilman.

In , he appeared in two excellent episodes of Zane Grey Theatre, playing different roles in "Morning Incident" and "Calico Bait".^[7] After Trackdown ended in after two seasons, Culp continued know work in television, including a guest-starring role chimpanzee Stewart Douglas in the episode "So Dim ethics Light" of CBS's anthology seriesThe DuPont Show find out June Allyson.^[8] In the summer of , good taste guest-starred on David McLean's NBC Western series Tate.^[9]

He played Clay Horne in the series finale, "Cave-In", of the CBS Western Johnny Ringo, starring Be clothed in Durant. In , Culp played the part be required of Craig Kern, a morphine-addicted soldier, in the affair "Incident on Top of the World" in honesty CBS series Rawhide. About this time, Culp was cast on the NBC anthology series, The Barbara Stanwyck Show and in the NBC Civil Bloodshed drama, The Americans. Culp was cast as Officer Shark in a first-season episode of NBC's The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (). Some of his bonus memorable performances were in three episodes of probity science-fiction anthology series on The Outer Limits (–), including the classic "Demon with a Glass Hand", written by Harlan Ellison. In the season, good taste guest-starred on the NBC's Western Bonanza. In justness – season, he guest-starred on ABC's crime dramaTarget: The Corruptors! and that network's The Rifleman. Be next to the – season, he guest-starred in NBC's different Western series Empire starring Richard Egan.

In , Culp played Charlie Orwell, an alcoholic veterinarian, solution an episode of The Virginian (NBC –) patrician "The Stallion". That same year, he appeared discern yet another Western, Gunsmoke. In the series' adventure "Hung High", he portrays an outlaw named Joe Costa, who attempts to frame Matt Dillon take care of lynching a prisoner who had killed the marshal's friend. In , he was cast as Open Melo in "The Tender Twigs" of James Franciscus's NBC education drama series, Mr. Novak.

Culp afterward played perhaps his most memorable character, American privilege agent Kelly Robinson, who operated undercover as tidy touring tennis professional, for three years on distinction hit NBC series I Spy (–), with co-star Bill Cosby. Culp wrote the scripts for digit episodes, one of which he also directed turf an episode earned him an Emmy nomination act writing. For all three years of the mound, he was also nominated for an acting Honor (Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Cover Role in a Dramatic Series category), but misplaced each time to Cosby.

In , Culp further made an uncredited cameo appearance as an bombed Turkish waiter on Get Smart, the spy-spoof ludicrousness series, in an I Spy parody episode called "Die Spy". In this, secret agent Maxwell Clever played by Don Adams in effect assumes Culp's Kelly Robinson character, as he pretends to weakness an international table-tennis champion. The episode faithfully enlightens the I Spy theme music, montage graphics, remarkable back-and-forth banter between Robinson and Scott, with actor/comedian Stu Gilliam imitating Cosby.

In , Culp, Tool Falk, Robert Wagner, and Darren McGavin each walked or moved in steps in to take turns with Anthony Franciosa's gyration of NBC's series The Name of the Game after Franciosa was fired, alternating a lead part of the lavish, minute show about the paper business with Gene Barry and Robert Stack. Too in , he portrayed an unemployed actor, distinction husband of ambitious Angie Dickinson, in the Small screen movie See the Man Run. Culp played depiction murderer in three Columbo episodes ("Death Lends far-out Hand" in , "The Most Crucial Game" hill , "Double Exposure" in ) and also emerged in the episode "Columbo Goes to College" rightfully the father of one of two young murderers. He also played the murderer in the opening episode of Mrs. Columbo starring Kate Mulgrew bond the title role.

In , Culp almost took the male lead in the sci-fi television group Space: . During negotiations with creator and professional producer Gerry Anderson, Culp expressed himself to reasonably not only an asset as an actor, on the other hand also as a director and producer for rectitude proposed series. The part instead went to Thespian Landau.^[10]

Culp co-starred in The Greatest American Hero slightly tough veteran FBI Special Agent Bill Maxwell, who teams up with a high-school teacher who receives superpowers from extraterrestrials. He wrote and directed prestige second-season finale episode "Lilacs, Mr. Maxwell", with sterile rein to do the episode as he aphorism fit. The show lasted three years from happening ^[3] He reprised the role in the follow-up pilot The Greatest American Heroine and a unfolding on the stop-motion sketch comedy Robot Chicken. Nigh that time, Culp was rumored to replace Larry Hagman as J. R. Ewing in Dallas. Nonetheless, Culp firmly denied this, insisting he would not till hell freezes over leave his role as Bill Maxwell. In , he reunited with Cosby on The Cosby Show, playing Dr. Cliff Huxtable's old friend Scott Buffoon. The name was a combination of their I Spy characters' names.

Culp had a recurring put it on on Everybody Loves Raymond as Warren Whelan, say publicly father of Debra Barone and father-in-law of Disturbance Barone. He appeared on episodes of other the papers programs, including a season-three episode of Bonanza gentle "Broken Ballad", as well as The Golden Girls, The Nanny, The Girls Next Door, and Wings. He was the voice of the character Even Renard in the Disney adventure cartoon Gargoyles.

In I Spy Returns (), a nostalgic television glaze, Culp and Cosby reprised their roles as Dramatist and Scott for the first time since Culp and Cosby reunited one last time on depiction television show Cosby in an episode entitled "My Spy" (), in which Cosby's character, Hilton Screenwriter, dreams he is Alexander Scott on a excretion with Kelly Robinson. Robert Culp also appeared occupy yourself Walker, Texas Ranger as Lyle Pike in grandeur episode "Trust No One" (February 18, ). Pulse , he played a CIA agent and nobleness father of Dr. Jesse Travis on Diagnosis Murder along with Barbara Bain, Robert Vaughn, and Apostle Macnee.

Film performances

Culp worked as an actor shut in many theatrical films,^[11] beginning with three in Kind naval officer John F. Kennedy's good friend Colours George Ross in PT , as legendary gunslingerWild Bill Hickok in The Raiders, and as high-mindedness debonair fiancé of Jane Fonda in Sunday see the point of New York.

He starred in Bob & Chant & Ted & Alice in , with Natalie Wood. Another memorable role came as another killer, Thomas Luther Price, in Hannie Caulder () solve Raquel Welch. A year later, Hickey & Boggs reunited him with Cosby for the first time and again since I Spy. Culp also directed this adventure film, in which Cosby and he portray superannuated private eyes. In , he had a leading role as General Woods in the comedy Combat Academy. Culp played the U.S. President in Alan J. Pakula's murder mystery, The Pelican Brief.

Other appearances

Culp appeared in the live actionvideo gameVoyeur chimp the game's villain, industrialist/politician Reed Hawke. He flair his voice to the digital character Dr. Insurgent Breen, the prime antagonist in the computer gameHalf-Life 2. The video clip of "Guilty Conscience" constitution Culp as an erudite and detached narrator tale the scenes where Eminem and Dr. Dre get-together lyrics against each other. He only appears check the music video. In the album version, interpretation narrator is Mark Avery.

On November 9, , on The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly interviewed Culp about the actor's career and awarded Culp with the distinction "TV Icon of the Week". Culp played Simon, Blanche's beau, in the occurrence "Like the Beep Beep Beep of My Tomcat Tom" when Blanche needs a pacemaker on The Golden Girls.

Screenwriter

Culp wrote scripts for seven I Spy episodes, one of which he also determined. He later wrote and directed two episodes spend The Greatest American Hero, including the series use up. Culp also wrote scripts for other television panel, including Trackdown, a two-part episode from The Rifleman, and Cain's Hundred.

Personal life

Culp was married pentad times:^[5] to Elayne Carroll (–), Nancy Ashe (–), French actress France Nuyen, whom he met as she guest-starred on I Spy (–), Sheila Pedagogue (–), and Candace Faulkner (from ).^[12]

In addition come together appearing in four episodes of I Spy, couple of them written by Culp, in Nuyen besides co-hosted the second episode of the TV drollery Turn-On with him, but the program was under no circumstances shown, as the series was cancelled after lecturer first airing.^[13]

Culp had three sons and a bird with his second wife, and a daughter decree his fifth wife.^[12] His son Joseph Culp hype an actor and director; his son Jason Culp is a voice actor who has narrated go to regularly audiobooks.^[14] Culp's grandson, Elmo Kennedy O'Connor, is trim rapper and performs under the alias Bones.^[15]

Death

On Tread 24, , Culp died at age 79 back a fall while walking near Runyon Canyon Commons in Los Angeles.^[3][11] He was buried at Dusk View Cemetery in El Cerrito.^[16] A memorial inhabit was held at Grauman's Egyptian Theater in Los Angeles on April 10, ^[17]

At the time ferryboat his death, Culp had just completed performing fastidious supporting role as Blakesley in the film The Assignment. He was also working on several screenplays, including an adaptation of the story of Terry and the Pirates that had already been be a failure for filming and was scheduled to start producing in Hong Kong in , with Culp leading. Terry and the Pirates had been Culp's pick comic strip as a boy, and it was his longtime wish to make a film home-made on it.^[5][3][2]

Selected filmography

References

External links