CLARENCE WILLIAMS III: R.I.P.

Clarence Williams III  passed away Friday at the age of 81. Clarence Williams III starred in The Mod Squad, I Spy, Purple Rain, and Sugar Hill, as well as other stage, movie, and TV productions. 

From the NYT:

Clarence Williams III, the reflectively intense actor who starred as Linc Hayes, a young, hip undercover police officer on ABC’s “The Mod Squad,” died on Friday in Los Angeles. He was 81.

“The Mod Squad,” which ran from 1968 to 1973, was one of the first of its kind — a prime-time network series that focused on members of the hippie generation at the same time that it exploited them.

The show had two ad taglines. “First they got busted; then they got badges” summarized the show’s back story: three hippies in trouble with the law who then joined the police force as plainclothes cops with built-in disguises — their youth and their counterculture personas.

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