Actor and Singer David Soul Is Dead At 80

Images: Paramount / Education-files, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

While he was best known as Detective Ken “Hutch” Hutchinson in ABC’s Starsky & Hutch, he made is way to tearing around in that red 1976 Ford Gran Torino with the white stripe by way of Gamma Trianguli VI. David Soul, who appeared as Makora in Star Trek: The Original Series’s season two episode “The Apple,” has died at the age of 80. According to Deadline, Soul’s wife, Helen Snell, said he died last Thursday, January 4, “after a valiant battle for life in the loving company of family.”

Soul was born David Richard Solberg, in Chicago. His family moved frequently, and he graduated from high school in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and attended college there and in Mexico City. Soul had a passion for music and sang on The Merv Griffin Show before making television acting appearances. His first of those was in Flipper.

Following his role as Makora in Star Trek, he was a regular on Here Come the Brides (alongside Robert Brown, Lazarus from TOS’s first season’s “The Alternative Factor”) and guested on such shows as I Dream of Jeannie, McMillan & Wife, Cannon, Gunsmoke, All in the Family, and numerous TV movies and mini-series. Starsky & Hutch ran from 1975 – 1979.

Soul would go on to appear on television, in film, and on stage in both the US and UK, where he became a citizen. He also continued his musical career, which included chart toppers “Don’t Give Up on Us” in the US and “Silver Lady” in the UK.

Soul’s Starsky & Hutch partner, Paul Michael Glaser said, “David was a brother, a friend, a caring man. We shall never see his like again.”

Two weeks before his death, Soul concluded a post on X, “Love your neighbor like you give a damn.”

Please join us in offering our condolences to the friends and family of David Soul, and for more on his life and legacy, head over Deadline.