‘Mod Squad’ star Michael Cole dies at 84
LOS ANGELES, CA - SEPTEMBER 15: Actor Michael Cole attends the weSpark Cancer Support's 15th Anniversary Celebration Comedy Night at Skirball Cultural Center on September 15, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Michael Schwartz/WireImage) (Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES - Funeral services were pending Wednesday for actor Michael Cole, best known for his role on the 1968-73 ABC counter-culture police crime drama "The Mod Squad."
Cole died Tuesday in Tarzana, a nephew, also named Michael Cole, announced on Facebook. He was 84. A cause of death was not announced.
"He was my inspiration to the craft of acting and helped guide me my whole career," the younger Cole wrote. "He taught me of his passion as an artist ... as a story teller ... as an actor."
Cole portrayed long-haired rebel Pete Cochran, who was evicted from his wealthy parents' Beverly Hills home, then arrested and put on probation after he stole a car.
The premise of the series, produced by Aaron Spelling and Danny Thomas, was to match three rebellious, disaffected young social outcasts (Cole, Clarence Williams III and Peggy Lipton) and convince them to work as unarmed undercover detectives as an alternative to being incarcerated.
The series' tagline was "One Black, one white, one blonde."
In 1970, it received an Emmy nomination for outstanding drama series, losing to the ABC medical drama, "Marcus Welby, M.D."
A made-for-television reunion movie, "The Return of The Mod Squad," reuniting all four cast members -- Tige Andrews played Capt. Adam Greer -- aired on ABC in 1979.
Cole was the last surviving member of the cast. Andrews died in 2007, Lipton in 2019 and Williams in 2021.
Cole was born on July 3, 1940, in Madison, Wisconsin. He never knew his father, who abandoned him, his mother and his older brother when he was born. Cole dropped out of high school, got married at 16 and had two children, and was divorced by 20. He also began drinking at a young age, an addiction he opened up about in interviews and in his 2018 memoir, "I Played the White Guy."
Cole left Wisconsin and moved to Las Vegas, where he worked as a bartender and met the pop singer Bobby Darin who encouraged him to pursue his dreams of acting.
Cole then moved to Los Angeles and was forced to live under freeways as he sought to establish an acting career, he said in an interview with Australian television. His early credits included a 1966 episode of the long- running CBS Western series "Gunsmoke" and the science fiction film, "The Bubble."
Cole's post "Mod Squad" credits include "The Love Boat," "Fantasy Island," both also produced by Spelling, "CHiPs," two episodes of "Murder, She Wrote," the 1990 horror miniseries, "It," and "ER."
In addition to his nephew, Cole is survived by his wife, Shelley Funes, daughter Jennifer and sisters Deborah and Colleen.