Actress and star of Ironside

Born: December 1, 1947;

Died: September 30, 2017

ELIZABETH Baur, who has died aged 69, was one of the first actresses to play a police detective in a mainstream hit drama series when she was cast as one of the principal characters in Ironside in 1971. In subsequent decades many other actresses followed her, including her own cousin Sharon Gless, who was Cagney in Cagney and Lacey in the 1980s.

Baur was not the first actress to play a female detective on Ironside, a distinction that went to Barbara Anderson, whose character was a socialite who swapped cocktail parties for murder scenes. Nevertheless her casting was a big deal at the time. “Elizabeth Baur’s a pistol-packin’ cutie” was the headline in one California newspaper, in an article that went on to discuss her looks, weight and height – a mere 5 ft 4 inches.

The writer thought it unlikely that such a “petite charmer” would be employed in Los Angeles Police Department. “Probably it’s a good thing in Ironside she works for the San Francisco Police Department instead.”

Baur replaced Anderson, as a different character – Officer Fran Belding. She appeared in more than 80 episodes and remained with the show until its finale in 1975.

Ironside began in 1967 and from the start had challenged the conventional notion of what a police detective looks like. The title character, played by Raymond Burr, was paralysed from the waist down after being shot, he uses a wheelchair and is employed as a consultant. Another regular, played by Don Mitchell, was an African-American and former juvenile delinquent.

Baur told one interviewer: “Cy Chermak (the producer) saw 130 actresses. He chose 14 to read for the role and seven were given screen-tests… I think he picked me because I didn’t look like a policewoman.”

Baur was born in Los Angeles in 1947 into a family of Basque descent. They had been there for five generations and had seemingly owned much of Beverly Hills, selling up before it became the most fashionable, and most expensive, address in California.

Her father was a casting director and tried to dissuade her from becoming an actress because the business was so tough. However, he paid for acting lessons, she got a job in a television commercial for Kellogg’s Corn Flakes with Jimmy Durante and was accepted into a 20th Century-Fox training programme, leading to appearances in the TV series of Batman (1968) and the film The Boston Strangler (1968).

She got her big break with a regular role on the western series Lancer. She played the ward of the Lancer family patriarch played by Andrew Duggan in more than 50 episodes between 1968 and 1970.

It fulfilled a childhood ambition of appearing in westerns and she learned to rope and ride. But she found the work less than challenging. She was regularly left at home while the male characters rode off to each new adventure. But it did get her noticed, opening the way for Ironside.

Baur gave up acting in the late 1970s after she married and had a daughter, Lesley Worton, who is now a film producer. She did reprise the role of Fran Belding in the 1993 TV movie The Return of Ironside, alongside Raymond Burr, Don Mitchell and Barbara Anderson.

Her first marriage ended in divorce. As well as her daughter, she is survived by her second husband Steven Springer.

BRIAN PENDREIGH