Well known tv cop who walked the "Streets Of SanFrancisco. Aged 97 after many Years of ill health.

when I first arrived in Oz there was raging scandal in the media concerning rent boys and a notorious Kings Cross hang-out called the 'Carousel"

If you believed tales in the tabloids the impression given was that on any one night a dozen 12 year old boys would be seated at the bar waiting for men to arrive and take them to a back-room.

It sounded highly improbable to me. Supposedly the boys would drift there late at night after hanging outside another notrious hustler hangout, The Wall,a few hundred yards away just by the gay area of Oxford Street- a very tall convict built wall that formed part of an old jail.

One former rent-boy sold his tale to a tabloid and then attempted to access criminal compensation.

He gave a string of names of customers which a News Ltd tabloid repeated faithfully..they included a well known department store heir, an antique dealer (who had fled from London owing a fortune) and the actor Karl Malden.

I happened to know of the dept store heir-he was gay but into very well built 30 year old black men and was known to have never enter a bar in his life. I knew the antique dealer from London..always so drunk by mid-day he could never make it into a bar at night and had lived with his South American lover for a decade.

Karl Malden had never been to Australia in his life. The antique dealer told me he couldn't be bothered suing as he was moving to Chile.

The stories disappeared without trace..the rent boy got his compensation although no-one was ever charged with anything.

And a policeman told me he despaired whenever these tales appeared on the front page because every run-away would read them and think The Wall was the place to go and make money and he would have to end up dealing with all these broken kids who got quickly into smack.

But newspapers were sold and that's all that matters.

I think he was one of the oldest living hollywood actors. Only a few oldies left like Eli Wallach, Kirk Douglas etc.