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If you were an actor in the 1970s, you’d have had a hard time finding a better gig than playing a TV detective. Sure, it’s still a solid job today, but back in the days of The Rockford Files, Adam-12, and Starsky & Hutch, the competition was thinner, the cars were cooler, and syndication money still meant something.
That was the world that David Soul became a part of when he took the role of Kenneth “Hutch” Hutchinson on the buddy cop action series Starsky & Hutch. The series paired Soul’s pragmatic Hutch with Paul Michael Glaser’s firebrand Detective Michael Starsky in what was, for the time, an almost outlandishly openly emotional, caring work partnership between two guys. Not everybody got it, and there was backlash from the studio heads. It probably wasn’t always an easy part to play.
The career of TV’s Kenneth ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson
Soul seemed interested in doing things the hard way. A talented singer who would eventually break international top 10 charts with songs like “Don’t Give Up on Us” and “Silver Lady,” one of his first big breaks came when he made a series of pre-Masked Singer appearances on national TV in the ‘60s, singing while wearing a mask on The Merv Griffin Show. He claimed to be doing it so that he’d be appreciated on the merits of his musical ability. Gimmick or not, it got him attention, and soon Soul was making appearances on Flipper, Star Trek, and Clint Eastwood’s Magnum Force.
But Starsky and Hutch would be the performer’s most memorable claim to fame. After four years and just shy of 100 episodes of the series, his star never shone quite as bright. He had a brief stint starring in CBS’s ill-advised Casablanca TV show, along with a handful of other brief projects. Later in life, his options were limited by severe COPD following decades of the kind of heavy smoking that you just don’t see these days.
Soul’s personal life was also unquestionably affected by heavy chemical dependencies. In 1983, he was arrested after drunkenly beating his third wife, Patti Carnell Sherman, while she was pregnant with his child. Soul would make semi-regular trips to rehab, either by court order or at the urging of those close to him, throughout the ‘80s.
On Jan. 4, 2024, David Soul passed away at 80 years old, following years of poor health. In a statement from his fifth and final wife, Helen Snell, it was reported that he was surrounded by his loved ones in his last moments. “His smile, laughter, and passion for life will be remembered by the many whose lives he has touched,” she wrote.