Ed Bernard (right) with Charles Dierkop on NBC's 'Police Woman.' Columbia Pictures TV/Courtesy Everett Collection Ed Bernard, who portrayed the undercover cop Joe Styles alongside Angie Dickinson on NBC’s Police Woman and the principal Jim Willis opposite Ken Howard on CBS’ The White Shadow, has died. He was 86.
Bernard died Jan. 23 in Northridge, his family announced.
The Philadelphia native appeared on two episodes of the Joseph Wambaugh-created NBC drama Police Story, including the March 1974 installment “The Gamble” that served as the de facto pilot for Police Woman.
As Det. Styles, Bernard partnered in an LAPD undercover unit with Dickinson’s Sgt. “Pepper” Anderson, Earl Holliman‘s Sgt. Bill Crowley and Charles Dierkop‘s Det. Pete Royster for 90 episodes over all four seasons (1974-78) of the series.
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When that show wrapped, Bernard segued to play Willis on The White Shadow, starring Howard as Ken Reeves, a former Chicago Bulls player who is hired to coach hoops at the fictional Carver High School in South Los Angeles. (Jason Bernard, no relation, played Willis in the pilot.)
Willis was a former classmate of Reeves’ at Boston College. After two seasons, the character left to take a job with the Oakland Board of Education, with Sybil Buchanon (Joan Pringle) serving as Carver High principal for the third and last season.
Born in Philadelphia on Independence Day in 1939, Bernard appeared off-Broadway for American Place Theatre artistic director Wynn Handman in Five on the Black Hand Side in 1969.
He made his film debut in Gordon Parks’ Shaft (1971), then appeared as one of the doomed heist men in Across 110th Street (1972) and as a cop in Peter Yates’ The Hot Rock (1972) before playing Mr. Kool, a popular neighborhood police officer who’s murdered, in Together Brothers (1974).
Bernard recurred as Lt. Bill Giles opposite Brian Keith and Daniel Hugh Kelly on the Stephen J. Cannell NBC series Hardcastle and McCormick in 1984-85.
He also showed up on episodes of Mannix, Kojak, What’s Happening!!, T.J. Hooker, NYPD Blue, JAG, ER, Becker and Cold Case and in the 1983 John Badham-directed film Blue Thunder.
Survivors include his sons, Edward and Mark, and his grandchildren, Liz, Joshua, Samantha and Alexandra. His wife of 44 years, Shirley, died in 2005. Donations in his memory can be made to the International Black Theatre Festival.
“While the world knew him as a star, his family knew him as a devoted father, a proud grandfather and a man of deep curiosity,” his family noted. “Ed was a true ‘foodie’ who loved sushi and healthy cooking, a lifelong learner and a man of great faith.”
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