Court of the Lions: Cosby, Culp, and Love

Barbara K Emanuele

I’ve spent the past several years trying to keep a legend alive.  A few legends actually.  They live inside a TV series called I Spy in the court of the lions of its stars, Robert Culp and Bill Cosby.  And like all great legends, the space occupied by those narratives has had sheath after shadow thrown over it, weaving it into a collection of stories that have become both unbelievable and unknown.  Under all those covers the truth of the series fights for its space in cultural history.  Its truth, like many others can be rooted in the great equalizer: Love.

Legend Number One:  The ancient Saint Valentine wrote letters to his followers to bolster their budding faith.  He signed them, “Your Valentine.” 

When it was decided that Bill Cosby would in fact star with (not co-star, not support.  Star with) Robert Culp in I Spy, Bob told Bill that they had to talk every day before they started filming.  They had to have a relationship so that Kelly and Scotty could exist.  So they talked, every day, sometimes for hours into the night, building up who they were, who they would be.  When Bob finished writing “The Loser” for Bill, he called it his Valentine’s Day present.   It would win Bill Cosby his first of three consecutive Emmy awards for Best Actor.  Robert Culp was also nominated in that category each of those three years.  He lost in name but not in deed.  In Cosby winning, they all won.  We all won.

I Spy was one of the few correct and true things NBC, or for that matter any network, has ever done.  NBC knew it was doing something right but had no idea how many rights they were winning.  At a time when the nation needed to see in a non-proselytizing manner that all men are created equal, I Spy gave us a weekly fifty-minute non-statement.   Kelly and Scotty slept side by side in beds with their shared hairbrush resting on the nightstand between them.  The closet contained the clothes they took turns wearing.  They went over mission details while one brushed his teeth in the bathroom and the other dried off.   They complained about the job, or women, or both as they ate off each other’s plates.  Nothing mattered as long as they got the job done and had fun.  The end. 

This steady dose of Kelly Robinson and Alexander Scott living side by side was absorbed subliminally and obviously and hearts began to change.  The justifications for White Fear were slowly being obliterated.   Ninety episodes later Kelly Robinson and Alexander Scott gave Americans a fine blueprint on how to be a good human being. 

This is what Sheldon Leonard, the show’s creator and executive producer wanted to do.  This is what Robert Culp and Bill Cosby wanted to do.  And they did it.  And they did more.

Legend number two: Love Is Love Is Love Is Love… 

…As long as it fits into the neatly constructed societal norms of who can love whom and when and how.   Historians reading Alexander Hamilton’s letters to his friend and fellow revolutionary John Laurens, have wondered the former’s declaration: “Cold in my professions, warm in my friendships, I wish, my Dear Laurens, it might be in my power, by action rather than words, to convince you that I love you.”  What is this love Hamilton wanted to act on but dare not name?

Culp became deathly ill while filming the original pilot for the series, “Affair In T’Sien Cha.”  He told no one but Cosby, who would literally carry him through a chase sequence on the rooftops in a Hong Kong ghetto.  When Dr. King was killed, they knew where they had to be, so they went.  Soccer legend Everald Cummings and Samuel L. Jackson would later recall quiet men of purpose at gatherings in the days immediately after the assassination.   Coretta Scott King would recall the unobtrusive way they cared for her and her family in their grief before and after the funeral.   Press agents need not apply to recount their activities; it wasn’t for them. Years later as Culp directed them in the feature film Hickey & Boggs, he was recovering from surgery and again told no one but Cosby who would know something was off. 

There was intimacy.  There was trust.  There were deeds.  There were sacrifices.  Between the two their trust was inviolate, immaculate, much like it was between Laurens and Hamilton who were part of a band of brothers who gave our country its start.  Cosby and Culp were their own band pushing this hesitant country forward.

They were brothers.  Those were the easiest words to use to explain their relationship.  How else do you define them within the social mores regarding the love between two men?  But then again, within the social mores, the races weren’t supposed to mix.  Kelly and Scotty did.  Bob and Bill did.  How does one account for their friendship that went on for decades, though business and family and time and travel might keep them from the phone for weeks on end, only to find them back together, picking up right where they left off, speaking of things only they knew, as only they could?

Legend Number Three: “Thus piteously Love closed what he begat: / The union of this ever-diverse pair!” 

 As genius as Lin-Manuel Miranda is, the sonnet he recited at the Tony’s was not his alone.  It came in part from George Meredeth’s “Modern Love” whose final stanza begins with the lines cited above.

There is a notion that we all have a great love.  It is supposed to be a member of the opposite sex, as if only romantic love can inspire us to be our best selves.  And yet how many friendships have done just that – given us that firm foundation to stretch, to try out for that play or team, to go for that degree or job?   Look at the IMDB lists for Culp and Cosby.  A better than fair argument can be made that they did their best work with each other.  Robert Culp’s longest sustained writing eras were with I Spy. Two of the four times he ever directed anything, Culp directed Cosby.  Culp said it was impossible to stay depressed when Cosby was around.   Cosby has said that watching I Spy was watching two men in love with each other. 

So maybe then we are led to this, the other lesson they taught us:  Love need not be in a box called “friendship” “romantic” “familial” it may be all of them and greater than them.   It may just be.  And we need to accept that and accept that LOVE all powerful will find us no matter our gender or race, our religion or creed. 

And if this was the end of the story then fifty-five years on, as the world desperately seeks comfort from illness within the body, mind, soul, I Spy would be our medicine.  But it isn’t.  Love is many things; so is hate.

Legend Number Four:  Legends never die, they merely fade away.

If only.

We seek the same answers we sought fifty-five years ago, but can no longer ask Culp and Cosby.    Culp left this earth ten years ago, warning us in final interview of the cultural tensions yet to come, and Cosby has joined the ranks of those who have left us asking “how did we not see this coming?”  If only Cosby would just fade away, but he does not.  His every tweet since his conviction of the most foul of crimes forces us to confront the space he occupies and decide if there is anything in that vortex worth saving.

We ask questions with conscious eyes that want to open and unconscious hearts that fear the openness.  We huddle in front of our TV sets and hike in the streets.  We work now, as they did then, to open spaces that were closed. 

As they redefined the boundaries of love through the space of race and sex, let us then do the same.  As we move through the court of these lions, we do so without the naiveté that only saw the best parts of their Leo selves: the creative, passionate, generous, warm-hearted, cheerful, and humorous characteristics that taught us how to live.  In thoughts and deeds, in conversations and carrying each other, in picking up where they left off, with the realities of their lives and ours, let us create a space in love to exist together, to find and build trust.

To love as legend and as life.