LOS ANGELES — Robert Culp, the actor who teamed with Bill Cosby in the racially groundbreaking TV series “I Spy” and was Bob in the critically acclaimed sex comedy “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice,” died Wednesday after collapsing outside his Hollywood home, his agent said. Culp was 79.
His manager, Hillard Elkins, said the actor was on a walk when he fell. He was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead just before noon. The actor’s son was told he died of a heart attack, Elkins said.
Culp had been working on writing screenplays, Elkins said.
“I Spy,” which aired from 1965 to 1968, was a television milestone in more ways than one. Its combination of humor and adventure broke new ground, and it was the first integrated television show to feature a black actor in a starring role.
Culp played Kelly Robinson, a spy whose cover was that of an ace tennis player. (In real life, Culp actually was a top-notch tennis player.)
Cosby was fellow spy Alexander Scott, whose cover was that of Culp’s trainer. The pair traveled the world in the service of the U.S. government.
The series greatly advanced the careers of both actors.
Cosby, who had achieved fame as a standup comedian, proved he could act. Culp, who had played mostly heavies in movies and TV, went on to become a film star.
He followed “I Spy” with his most prestigious film role, in “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.” The work of first-time director Paul Mazursky, who also co-wrote the screenplay, it lampooned the lifestyles of the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Bob and Carol (Culp and Natalie Wood) were the innocent ones who were introduced to wife-swapping by their best friends, Ted and Alice (Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon).
Culp also had starring roles in such films as “The Castaway Cowboy,” “Golden Girl,” “Turk 182!” and “Big Bad Mama II.” His teaming with Cosby, however, was likely his best-remembered role.
Robert Martin Culp, born in 1930 in Oakland, Calif., led a peripatetic existence as a college student, attending three colleges before landing at the University of Washington’s drama school.
Then, at age 21, a semester removed from his degree, he moved to New York, where he began landing roles in off-Broadway plays. After he won a role in a production of “He Who Gets Slapped” in Greenwich Village, “the floodgates opened,” he said.
Good reviews and an Obie award led to offers from Hollywood.
Culp was married five times, to Nancy Ashe, Elayne Wilner, France Nuyen, Sheila Sullivan and Candace Faulkner. He had four children with Ashe and one with Faulkner.
