Friends of Michael Cole and fans of The Mod Squad.
We are a group of friends from this wide internet community that would like to share with the younger generation and the not so young about a great TV show and one of its stars.
Saturday, April 21, 2018
The memoir is here! You can order it on amazon
Michael Cole Bigraphy
Michael Cole has written a long awaited memoir.
You can now pre-order from Amazon.com.
Please, leave your review and comments.
A nice birthday or Christmas gift, right?
Friday, December 26, 2014
Sunday, December 14, 2014
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
Monday, November 3, 2014
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Monday, September 29, 2014
Sunday, August 3, 2014
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Friday, June 13, 2014
Help us out on facebook. Thank you
Jen Cole
A note from my Mama Shell:
"If you have fond memories of The Mod Squad and or Michael, please "like" and share this link and help it go viral....Could help close a book deal!!!!!".
Thank you every body for helping out today.
Much love, peace, and light always,
xo Jen
The Mod Squad is a "hippie" undercover cop show that ran on ABC from September 24, 1968, until August 23, 1973. It starred Michael Cole as Pete Cochran, Peggy Lipton as Julie Barnes, Clarence Williams III as Linc Hayes, and Tige Andrews as Captain Adam Greer. The executive producers of the series we...
TV Show: 7,620 like this
A note from my Mama Shell:
"If you have fond memories of The Mod Squad and or Michael, please "like" and share this link and help it go viral....Could help close a book deal!!!!!".
Thank you every body for helping out today.
Much love, peace, and light always,
xo Jen
"If you have fond memories of The Mod Squad and or Michael, please "like" and share this link and help it go viral....Could help close a book deal!!!!!".
Thank you every body for helping out today.
Much love, peace, and light always,
xo Jen
The Mod Squad is a "hippie" undercover cop show that ran on ABC from September 24, 1968, until August 23, 1973. It starred Michael Cole as Pete Cochran, Peggy Lipton as Julie Barnes, Clarence Williams III as Linc Hayes, and Tige Andrews as Captain Adam Greer. The executive producers of the series we...
TV Show: 7,620 like this
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
I was
going to begin by saying I have developed this nice friendship with a man I’ve
never actually met, but that’s not true. We met once, 40 years ago.
I was 13
years old and he was famous, an overnight sensation in Hollywood . If
you had told me then that four decades later, we’d be long-distance telephone
pals, I’d have laughed.
Michael Cole
was, as he puts it, "the white guy" on "The Mod Squad,"
which was a hip hit for ABC-TV from 1968 to 1973. Cole co-starred with Peggy
Lipton and Clarence Williams III as young toughs who avoid a jail sentence by agreeing to become
undercover cops.
Cole, who
lives in Los Angeles ’ San Fernando Valley , grew up in Madison and gets back here once in a while. Last summer, he made an
appearance at a Monona Terrace charity event, Outdoors Without Limits. There he
spoke with Bobby Hinds, the Madison fitness entrepreneur. Hinds had been a teacher at East High,
from which Cole dropped out. "I didn’t like school," Cole said,
"but I love education."
Last year,
Cole mentioned that he’d been thinking about doing a book on his life.
"Whenever anyone brought it up before," he said, "I would say
that there are too many people still alive." Now it was time. He felt he
had some important things to say. He had been to the top and bottomed out, too.
Hinds gave him my phone number.
The first
time Cole called, last fall, I explained that I was in the middle of a book
about the late NFL star, Lyle Alzado, and couldn’t commit to another project.
But we talked, and agreed to talk again.
He called
every couple of weeks or so. Mostly, we chatted about Madison .
"You know that Thomas Wolfe line about never being able to go home
again?" he said. "I think it’s the opposite. I don’t think you ever
really leave. There’s always something beating in my heart for Madison ."
He loves the
city despite having it anything but easy when he lived here. He had a mother
and brother he loved, and a father he never knew. The early years were in
Schenk’s Corners. Money was short. Cole disengaged. "My place to
hide," he said, "was along the Yahara River , about a half-mile from the locks. There was a little community
of people there who didn’t have any place to go."
Eventually,
with a buddy, he took off. California beckoned. Cole found his way to an acting workshop run by a
woman named Estelle Harman. She’d taught at UCLA.
When I asked
Cole about the break that led to "The Mod Squad," he began talking
about the workshop and said one day he accompanied another student to her
audition at Paramount .
"I had
never been inside a studio," he said. They read a scene from
"Picnic" for a casting director. The woman did fine, but it was Cole,
just along for the ride, who made an impression.
The casting
man brought Cole to the attention of Howard Koch, Paramount ’s
head of production. Word reached Aaron Spelling, in need of a charismatic rebel
to headline "The Mod Squad."
When they
met, Cole scoffed at playing a cop. "That’s the attitude I want!"
Spelling said.
It was
January 1969, just after the show hit, that Cole and the entire "Mod
Squad" cast came to Madison for a March of Dimes fundraiser on Channel 27, the city’s ABC
affiliate. My dad was the station’s general manager, so I met everyone,
including Cole. What I remember, truly, was how nice Clarence Williams was.
Cole and Peggy Lipton seemed a little remote.
It had to be
a strange time, that first rush of stardom. Cole had started drinking in Madison at
14, and it escalated with his fame. There was an incident at an awards show in Australia . Word got around. After "Mod Squad," he did dinner
theater, but his star dimmed.
Twenty years
ago, he met Shelley, the woman he would marry and who convinced him to enter
rehab. He went to Betty Ford. "I remember standing by the serenity pond
talking with Mickey Mantle," he said.
Renewed, Cole
found roles on television’s "ER" and in the Kevin Costner film
"Mr. Brooks." He thinks there might be a place for him in Wisconsin ’s fledgling film industry. "I’ve never felt more like
acting," he said.
Maybe one day
that book will happen, too. The calls come sometime after noon . "It’s Michael," he’ll say, and begin a story. He has
some good ones.