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
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here