In 1974, Lipton married Jones and, with the exception of a 1979 “Mod Squad” reunion TV movie, stepped away from her career to focus on raising a family. I had no idea how to be comfortable with the press. “I never saw myself as trend-setting,” Lipton told The Times in 1993. The “Mod Squad’s” edgy music and hip slang marked a significant shift from “Gunsmoke” and “Leave It to Beaver.” But while the show turned the mini-skirt-and-bell-bottoms-clad Lipton into a fashion icon, she found the spotlight uncomfortable. Her role and later marriage to Jones, who is black, put Lipton at the center of the passions of a restive America dealing with racism and a post-World War II generation who were breaking free from their parents.
Over five seasons, the series earned Lipton, one of the “it” girls of her time, four Emmy nominations and a 1971 Golden Globe award for best actress in a TV drama. One of pop culture’s first efforts to reckon seriously with the counterculture - and one of the first TV shows to feature an interracial cast - the series, which costarred Michael Cole and Clarence Williams III, dealt with issues such as domestic violence, abortion, police brutality, the Vietnam War and drugs.
The waifish, blond Lipton had just turned 21 when she rocketed to fame in 1968 as the street-smart flower child Julie Barnes, one of a trio of Los Angeles undercover “hippie cops” on the ABC crime series “The Mod Squad.”
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