Peggy Lipton
1946 - 2019
How about this for a coincidence? Just let week, my pal Mike Shanley posted to Facebook a Blog Post of his (shanleyonmusic.blogspot.com) about Peggy Lipton, the beautiful actress from television's "The Mod Squad" and "Twin Peaks". Specifically, he was writing about Lipton's lesser known career as a singer, and his rediscovering this 1970's era album of hers:
That caused he and I to have little back and forth about Miss Lipton's career and also prompted a listen to some of the songs on that album. Very pleasant listening I might add.
Then, of course, the news came of Peggy Lipton's death this past Saturday due to cancer at the age of 72.
Lipton had a lengthy career as an actress (49 credits in IMDB), including the television series "Twin Peaks", but she will be best known, at least to me and those of my generation, for playing Julie Barnes on television's "The Mod Squad". The show ran on ABC from 1968-73 and produced 124 episodes. The premise of the show was to take three young "hippie/outlaw" types (Julie, for example, was a teen age runaway - her mother was a hooker!!! - who got arrested for vagrancy), and make them undercover cops and have them infiltrate the Sixties-era counter culture, and arrest the various bad guys who preyed upon them. The series co-starred Michael Cole and Clarence Williams III and produced, for my money, one of the best tag lines in series television history: "Three cops. One white, one black, one blonde."
The Mod Squad
Michael Cole, Clarence Williams III, Peggy Lipton
Lipton went on to an acting career of some note, released several record albums, won a Golden Globe, was nominated for an Emmy four times, and married composer Quincy Jones, and that marriage produced two daughters, Rashida Jones and Kadida Jones, who are actresses of some renown today.
On his podcast yesterday, Tony Kornheiser related the story that Peggy Lipton attended the same summer camp in northeastern Pennsylvania that he did for several summers during their teen aged years. Even then, the New York born and raised Peggy Lipton was possessed of the ethereal kind of California Girl beauty that made most teen aged boys realize that THIS was the kind of woman with whom any normal teen aged boys would have never had a chance!
Peggy Lipton certainly had a "look" that captivated young men who watched "The Mod Squad" back in the day, and she remained a beautiful woman to the end.
RIP Peggy Lipton.
By the way, for more on Peggy Lipton the singer, here is a link to Mike Shanley's blog post referred to in the first paragraph above.
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