JAMES B. SIKKING
(5 March 1934 - 13 July 2024)
The American actor James B. Sikking became well-known through popular television series such as Hill Street Blues and Doogie Howser M.D. He made his film debut in 1955’s Five Guns West, in an uncredited role as a Union sergeant – nominally, the stars were John Lund and Dorothy Malone. Perhaps the most important aspect of the film was that it was produced and directed by Roger Corman – that man got everywhere. A debut with Corman was a guarantee of getting further work and it wasn’t long before Sikking made his mark on television in his 1961 debut TV appearance on Perry Mason. Once established, there was no stopping him and he kept both career strands going until 2012 after 58 years in the business and now, at the age of 90, James B. Sikking has died following complications from dementia.
He was born James Barrie Sikking to Arthur and Sue Sikking who founded a Unity church in Santa Monica. James attended the University of California in Los Angeles, where he appeared in college theatre productions. His debut on the professional stage was in Damn Yankees. After service in the US army, he had some parts in several films and made appearances on TV but it took him a long time to get established in leading roles. In 1972 he was in The Magnificent Seven Ride – a sequel to the 1960 film – with Lee Van Cleef, then Michael Winner’s spy thriller Scorpio with Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon. He covered crime in The New Centurions, science fiction in The Terminal Man, space travel in Capricorn One, a Western in The Electric Horseman and, perhaps best of all Robert Redford’s Ordinary People. The 1980s were then quite successful when Sikking nabbed the part of Lt Howard Hunter, the unpredictable officer in NBC’s cop series Hill Street Blues. This highly popular show took him through all seven seasons. A slow starter, it became such an influential hit that it won 26 Emmys during its run.
Sikking’s other big TV success was the sitcom of Doogie Howser M.D. that ran from 1989 to 1993. Sikking played Dr David Howser (father of Doogie), a Vietnam vet with a family practice. Neil Patrick Harris was Dr Douglas Howser, a teenage physician with all the problems of being both a practising doctor and a teenager. It was all very American but funny too. There were no more long-running TV shows for Sikking after that but he continued to play in episodes of other series. He was, however, in 22 episodes of Brooklyn South, a police drama that lasted for one season, and he did voiceover work on 13 episodes of Invasion America, the DreamWorks sci-fi animation series created by Steven Spielberg.
The rest of Sikking’s film career embraced such titles as the sci-fi thriller Outland with Sean Connery, written and directed by Peter Hyams who also did the same for The Star Chamber, a crime thriller with Michael Douglas; and then Hyams surfaced again to direct Gene Hackman and Sikking in Narrow Margin. There was more sci-fi in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, which Leonard Nimoy directed, and the awful Morons from Outer Space. One of Sikking’s last and best was Alan J. Pakula’s The Pelican Brief (1993), a legal thriller based on John Grisham’s novel in which Sikking was the FBI director Denton Voyles. With Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington, Sam Shepard, Stanley Tucci and Sikking in the cast, it was a huge hit.
Sikking worked in films and TV until 2012, after which he retired. He was married to Mary Blakeman between 1953-1956 and then married the cookbook writer Florine Caplan in 1962 and they were together until his death. They had two children, Andrew and Emily.
MICHAEL DARVELL