One of the stars of NBC crime drama “Hill Street Blues” is gone. The family of Jon Cypher announced that the actor passed away August 3 at his home in Central Point, Oregon.
Throughout the series’ seven-season run from 1981 until 1987, Cypher portrayed Chief of Police Fletcher Daniels.
Some of Cypher’s other notable roles included playing Prince Charming opposite Julie Andrews in the 1957 television presentation of “Cinderella,” and Man-at-Arms in 1987’s “Masters of the Universe,” the cult favorite starring Dolph Lundren.
A Memorable Role
Despite accumulating more than 90 screen credits, Cypher is best known for appearing as Chief Daniels in 71 episodes of “Hill Street Blues.”
Far from a heroic figure, Daniels was a penny-pinching politician who frequently clashed with Capt. Frank Furillo (Daniel J. Travanti) by placing budgets and bureaucracy over the safety of citizens.
Big Break
As The Hollywood Reporter points out, Cypher was “a virtual unknown” when he was cast in his first onscreen role in “Cinderella.”
That proved to be his big break, leading to further television work throughout the late 1950s through to the early 2000s, when he retired.
Among the numerous TV series he guest-starred in are “Flipper,” “Nanny and the Professor,” “Bonanza,” “Mission: Impossible” and many more. He also starred opposite Burt Lancaster in the big-screen western “Valdez is Coming.”
More recently, he appeared in series including “JAG” and “Law & Order,” and voiced villain Spellbinder in the animated series “Batman Beyond.”
A Soap Opera Staple
Cypher also worked extensively in the world of soap operas, both the daytime and primetime varieties.
In the latter, he portrayed record producer Jeff Munson on “Knots Landing” during the 1982-’83 season, and then played sleazy lawyer Dirk Maurier on “Dynasty” from 1983 to 1987.
His work on daytime drama includes stints as Max Van Stadt on “General Hospital,” Dr. Alexander Keith on “As the World Turns,” and Dr. Arthur Donnelly on more than 50 episodes of “Santa Barbara.”
‘An Interesting Profession’
While Cypher had a long and successful career, he also experienced the ebbs and flows that are typical in an actor’s journey through Hollywood.
“It’s an interesting profession,” Cypher observed in a 2014 interview.
“I’ve starred in a lot of stuff that I didn’t want to do, because I needed to make a living,” he explained.
“A lot of television and movies are not the finest stuff,” he added. “I did 60 national commercials at a certain point in my career. In 1981, I got a Volkswagen commercial; I almost couldn’t say the words, saliva filled my mouth. I didn’t want to sell somebody’s product. But it was a lucrative way of making a living, if you were a New York actor in those days.”
A Love of Limericks
Later in life, Cypher added author to his résumé, authoring a book of limericks published in 2019, “If You’re Not Depressed You Oughta Be in Therapy.”
The limericks, he explained in that interview, tackled some serious subjects, offering “commentary on the genesis of the idea that created the limerick. A hundred of them on peace, war … Most of the time, I think that I’m living in an insane asylum, and the patients have taken over the helm of the institution in terms of how we are treating this precious planet, the creatures that must survive on this planet, what we’re doing to it, what we’re doing to the oceans, to the heavens. And now we want to put weapons in space. Now you can read any license (plate) on the planet; you can take out anybody on the planet.”
According to Cypher’s family, he’ll be buried on Tuesday, August 11 at the Forest Conservation Burial Ground in Ashland, Oregon, “under tall trees in a meadow, wrapped in a completely natural, biodegradable shroud, obliging his wish to return to nature.”
