Peggy Lipton Dead: Remembering 'The Mod Squad' Star and Singer

When it comes to Classic TV, The Mod Squad may not be the first television show from the late ‘60s/early ‘70s to come to mind — at least not in the same way that, say, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, The Brady Bunch, The Odd Couple, All in the Family or M*A*S*H might. That said, memories of the show have definitely come rushing back with news that Peggy Lipton, at 72, has died after a 15-year struggle with colon cancer.

Rashida Jones and Kidana Jones, Peggy’s daughters from her marriage with music producer Quincy Jones, issued the following statement shortly after she passed on May 11: “She made her journey peacefully with her daughters and nieces by her side. We feel so lucky for every moment we spent with her. We can’t put all of our feelings into words right now, but we will say: Peggy was and will always be our beacon of light, both in this world and beyond. She will always be a part of us.”

peggy-lipton — Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images for Netflix

She was born Margaret Ann Lipton in New York City on August 30, 1946, and was raised on Long Island. Describing herself as a nervous and withdrawn child, she struggled with a stuttering problem and was also sexually abused by an uncle. In 1964, the family moved to Los Angeles, where she began to go through a personal metamorphosis, later describing herself as a “Topanga Canyon hippie.”

Peggy’s road to showbiz began while the family still lived in NYC. Her father, a corporate lawyer, arranged her first gigs as a model, while her mother, an artist, encouraged her to take acting lessons. All of this paid off when, at the age of 15, she was signed with the Ford Models and, shortly after they moved to L.A., she began acting. In 1965, she appeared on the TV shows Bewitched, Mr. Novak, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The John Forsythe Show, followed over the next few years with a number of other shows and the feature film Blue (1968).

For more on Peggy Lipton, please scroll down.

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‘The Mod Squad’ (1968-73)

This is the project which in many ways defined Peggy’s acting career. Google describes the show as follows: “Police Capt. Adam Greer recruits a trio of ‘hippie cops’ with checkered pasts to infiltrate the counterculture and nail the adult criminals preying on clueless young Southern Californians. This ‘youth squad’ is made up of Pete, whose wealthy parents kicked him out of their posh Beverly Hills home; Linc, a survivor of the ghetto; and Julie (Peggy), a former hooker arrested for vagrancy.”

As to the way the show came about, the book Encyclopedia of the Sixties: A Decade of Culture and Counterculture, offers, “In the late 1960s, Aaron Spelling began a four-year partnership with actor Danny Thomas, creating Thomas-Spelling Productions. Between 1968 and 1972, the pair produced the iconic counterculture detective drama The Mod Squad, which earned six Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Drama Series. Based on the experiences of the series’ creator, Bud Ruskin, the series features a trio of troubled young characters, all recently arrested and on probation, who are offered the opportunity to work undercover for the police. Each of the three represented mainstream society’s chief fears involving youth in the 1960s: wealthy, bored, and out-of-control Peter Cochran (Michael Cole) was kicked out of his Beverly Hills home and arrested for stealing a care; African American Linc Hayes (Clarence Williams III) was arrested during the Watts riots — one of the longest and most violent real-life race riots in the city of Los Angeles; and Julie Barnes (Peggy Lipton) was a runaway arrested for vagrancy while fleeing from her prostitute mother. The three became members of a special squad intended to infiltrate the underbelly of the counterculture and arrest the adult criminals who victimized and manipulated their fellow youth. With Mod Squad, Spelling not only created a space for 1960s counter-culture music, fashion, language and art, but also introduced positive images of the era’s young people, as well as featuring one of television’s first female police officers in a leading role.”

Sex and The Beatle

Peggy offers no apologies for fully embracing her sexuality back during that whole “hippie” period, and in fact enjoyed her relations with Beatles singer-songwriter Paul McCartney. Although she imagined that the two of them would fall in love, the reality was their “relationship” was pretty much limited to a couple of sexual encounters while the British band was in California on their world tours.

Her Music Career

Finding herself drawn to singing and recording music, Peggy recorded a self-titled 1968 album released by Ode Records. Additionally, between 1968 and 1970 she released the singles “Wear Your Love Like Heaven” (backed with “Honey Won’t Let Me”), “Stoney End” (backed with “San Francisco Glide”), “Red Clay County Line” (backed with “Just a Little Lovin’”), “Lu” (backed with “Let Me Pass By”), and “Let Me Pass By” (backed with “Hands Off the Man”).

“I loved writing music as a young woman,” she told the Georgian Journal. “I just loved music. I listened to it constantly. It makes our mind and senses expand. I always think an aspiring musician should indulge in old sounds of the great music we have had in America. A true legacy. I also like to write.”

Life with Quincy Jones

Peggy met and fell in love with music producer Quincy Jones, with the two of them getting married in 1974. In the aftermath, she stunned pretty much everyone when she decided to take a hiatus from acting and singing to help raise their family. “I never saw it as heroic and of course times have changed,” she detailed. “There just was nothing better that I could possibly imagine than having a family and adoring my husband and two daughters. I fell in love with Quincy the minute I saw him. It was on a boat trip in the Bahamas. The timing wasn’t right until two years later. Honestly we instantly fell in love and I knew babies were coming. He had been an executive, was scoring films and was a jazz musician for many years. I was in awe of his talent. We spent many years building a home and his career together, and he wrote and produced. The times weren’t easy in terms of a mixed race marriage. But the people we loved were always around us. In 1974 when our oldest daughter was then months old, he almost died when he suffered two brain aneurysms. Then we got married. I was a hippie and wasn’t going to, but I wanted us to be close and to know we were committed to each other. Happily he recovered fully and we had another baby. These were the happiest times of my life. We are still close and see each other often. We share the most amazing memories.”

Michael Jackson Ruined Her Marriage

In 1986, Peggy and Quincy separated and were divorced four years later. She attributes the collapse of her marriage pretty specifically to the success of Michael Jackson’s seminal album Thriller, which Quincy produced. Peggy related to People, “Our love never changed, but Quincy’s life changed after his success. The popularity made demands on his time and his life, and he had to change to meet them. Eventually it just wasn’t working as a marriage anymore. It was a mutual decision based on a lot of things. By ’86 he was doing his own thing, and I was doing mine. It was over.”

Return to Acting: ‘Twin Peaks’ and More

By 1988, Peggy made the decision to return to acting (though as a favor to producer Aaron Spelling she had previously reprised the role of Julie Barnes in the 1979 TV movie The Return of the Mod Squad). Her first few roles on returning were the films War Party (1988), Purple People Eater (1988) and Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects. Then, in 1990, she became a part of the David Lynch cult series Twin Peaks, playing the character Norma Jennings. “It was very scary,” Lipton told the L.A. Times in a 1993 interview regarding the decision to act again. “I had a push-pull thing inside me that I wanted to do it … I had become so insulated in my world as a mother, that I didn’t know how to pick up the phone and call anybody to put myself out there.”

As to Twin Peaks, she added, “I met David Lynch when I was called to his office. I arrived and he and Mark Frost, his cowriter and producer sat at a large table with nothing on it but my photo. I thought they knew the character so well and I fit it. I was thrilled. I had read the script and was so intrigued. I shot the pilot and the feeling inside me was pure excitement. I loved being Norma. Later on while visiting an ashram in India I found out it was an unexpected hit.”

Peggy’s Final Years

Peggy would go on to act in another seven feature films (three of which after her struggles with colon cancer began), and appeared on a wide variety of TV shows and TV films, including an episode of daughter Rashida’s Angie Tribeca, and reprising the role of Norma Jennings in the revived version of Twin Peaks. In the aftermath of Peggy’s 2004 diagnosis, Rashida appeared on a talk show where she offered up the philosophy between mother and daughter over the situation: “Just because a situation is grim, doesn’t mean you don’t have every right to smile. It isn’t about ‘being strong’ and pretending everything’s okay. It’s about finding joy where you can. My dad has always said, ‘Approach life with love and not fear.’ It’s such a dynamic way to live.”