Bernie Hamilton, black actor, dies

Bernie Hamilton, an actor best known for his role as a police captain in the TV cop show Starsky and Hutch, has died at the age of 80 in Los Angeles.

His son Raoul told the Los Angeles Times that Hamilton suffered a fatal cardiac arrest at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Beginning with a small part as a baseball player in The Jackie Robinson Story, Hamilton appeared in more than 60 movies and television shows. He won critical praise as a black man involved with a white woman in the low-budget 1964 movie One Potato, Two Potato.

But he is remembered as Capt. Harold Dobey, the no-nonsense commander of the hip police officers played by Paul Michael Glaser and David Soule. Starsky and Hutch ran on ABC from 1975 to 1979.

At the hospital last night, one of the doctors came by and said, ‘Wow, I remember him from ‘Starsky and Hutch,’ his son said Wednesday.

In his later years, Hamilton moved into the music business, producing R&B and gospel records on the Chocolate Snowman label. He was the brother of the jazz drummer Chico Hamilton.