Hill Street Blues, Doogie Howser Actor Dies

James Sikking, who starred as a hardened police lieutenant on Hill Street Blues and as the titular character's kindhearted dad on Doogie Howser, M.D., has died at 90, per the AP. Sikking died of complications from dementia, said his publicist Cynthia Snyder.

• The Los Angeles native's early acting ventures included an uncredited part in Roger Corman's Five Guns West and a bit role in an episode of Perry Mason. He also secured guest spots in a litany of popular 1970s television series, including Mission: Impossible, M.A.S.H., The F.B.I., The Rockford Files, Hawaii Five-O, Charlie's Angels, Eight is Enough, and Little House on the Prairie.
• Hill Street Blues would debut in 1981, a fresh take on the traditional police procedural. Sikking played Lt. Howard Hunter, a clean-cut Vietnam War veteran who headed the Emergency Action Team of the Metropolitan Police Department in a never-named city. Sikking would earn an Emmy nomination for outstanding supporting actor in a drama in 1984.

• The acclaimed show was a drama, but Sikking's character's uptight nature and quirks were often used to comic effect. Sikking based his performance on a drill instructor he'd had at basic training when military service cut through his time at the University of California, Los Angeles. "The drill instructor looked like he had steel for hair and his uniform had so much starch in it, you knew it would sit in the corner when he took it off in the barracks," he said in 2014.
• After the end of Hill Street Blues, Sikking acted in nearly 100 episodes of Doogie Howser, M.D., reuniting with Steven Bochco, who co-created both Hill Street Blues and the Neil Patrick Harris-starring sitcom. He married Florine Caplan, with whom he had two children and four grandchildren.

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