Best known to movie audiences for his single acting role as the irascible Inspector Todd in the Beverly Hills Cop movies, Detroit cop and councilman Gil Hill has died, aged 84.
His career had already made him famous even before Inspector Todd came calling. Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, he fell in love with Detroit when stationed there during a stint in the US Air Force. He joined the city's police department in 1959 and over the next two decades established himself as a homicide detective with an exemplary record. When a national team of "super cops" was assembled to investigate the Atlanta Child Murders in 1979, he was an integral choice.
"I loved being a detective," he reminisced in later life. "I was good at it. At one time I would have rated myself among any of the best homicide detectives in the world."
By 1982 Hill was the inspector in charge of the Detroit PD's entire Homicide Division: the capacity in which he met Beverly Hills Cop director Martin Brest as an advisor. Brest was so taken with him that he cast him. Hill was essentially playing himself, although he said he didn't swear as much in real life. He turned down other offers of acting work in the wake of Beverly Hills Cop's success, but did come back for Tony Scott and John Landis' sequels. He was killed off in Beverly Hills Cop 3 at his own request.
His career as a detective ended on a downbeat note in 1989, with Detroit having been dubbed the "murder capital of America" in 1985 and Hill reassigned to a smaller office where he ran the traffic, mounted police, aviation and harbourmaster sections. Ironically, given his authoritarian movie role, some said he butted heads with his superiors once too often. Perhaps there was some Axel in him after all.
Following his retirement, Hill was elected to the Detroit City Council, and was its president by 1997. He ran for mayor in 2001 but was ultimately unsuccessful, losing out to the "controversial" Kwame Kilpatrick.
Hill had been suffering from respiratory problems for the last two years, and eventually succumbed to pneumonia at the Sinai-Grace Hospital in Detroit yesterday. His wife of 60 years, Dolores, died in 2015. They are survived by their three children, three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.