Case Closed

Arthur Hill, the Saskatchewan, Canada-born actor who played a small-town California lawyer in the ABC-TV series Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law (1971-1974), died last Sunday at a care facility in Pacific Palisades, California, after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 84 years old.

Memories are short, so many Rap Sheet readers who actually saw the show will probably have forgotten Owen Marshall by now. But it found the avuncular Hill playing a defense attorney who took on cases ranging from civil suits to

murder, with the assistance of several different younger lawyers, one of whom was Lee Majors, later to star in The Six Million Dollar Man. A write-up at the International Movie Database (IMDb) describes attorney Marshall as “the courtroom equivalent of medicine’s kindly Marcus Welby [Robert Young], and in fact the two series sometimes had joint episodes. Since Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law and Marcus Welby, M.D. were both produced under the executive producer and creator David Victor, as well as University of Wisconsin law professor Jerry McNeely.”

Other than Owen Marshall, Hill appeared in the films The Ugly American, Harper, Rabbit, Run, The Andromeda Strain, and A Bridge Too Far. He also showed up frequently on television, both in series (Route 66, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The F.B.I., The Bold Ones, Little House on the Prairie, and Columbo) and in teleflicks (The Other Man, The Return of Frank Cannon, etc.). His final dramatic role, according to IMDb, was in a 1990 episode of Murder, She Wrote.

READ MORE: “Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law Promotional Spots” (Television Obscurities); “Underrated Performer of the Week: Arthur Hill,” by Robert Ryan (Classic Film and TV Café).