DETROIT (AP) – Gil Hill, a former Detroit city councilman and one-time mayoral candidate better known to action movie fans as the salty-tongued police Inspector Douglas Todd in three Beverly Hills Cop films, has died.

Hill died Monday afternoon, Detroit’s Sinai Grace Hospital spokeswoman Bree Glenn said. He was 84.

A cause of death was not released.

”Gil had been recently hospitalized and was on the road to recovery,” family spokesman Chris Jackson said. “We are relieved that his passing was peaceful and painless.”

Hill spent 30 years with the Detroit Police Department and about a dozen years on the City Council. He unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2001.

“He never stopped believing in our city and dedicated his life to making our city a better place for all,” Mayor Mike Duggan said Monday night in a statement.

Hill was head of the Detroit Police Department’s homicide division when he landed the supporting role in 1984’s action-comedy, Beverly Hills Cop.

In the film, Todd was boss to Eddie Murphy’s Detective Axel Foley character. Todd, who was killed off early in the third film in the series, often would erupt with expletives due to Foley’s rule-bending investigative methods.

Hill was elected Detroit City Council president in November 1997, unseating incumbent Maryann Mahaffey. It was his third four-year term on the council.

As a councilman, Hill supported casino gambling in th-e city and helped broker deals for new baseball and football stadiums downtown.

He finished second to then-state Rep. Kwame Kilpatrick in the 2001 Detroit mayoral primary, but lost a close race to Kilpatrick in the November general election.

Funeral service details were not immediately released.

And in Los Angeles, Tony Burton, a veteran character actor best known for brief but memorable turns as a tough, no-nonsense trainer and corner man in Sylvester Stallone’s first six Rocky films, has died at age 78.

Burton died of pneumonia Thursday at a Southern California hospital, his wife, Aurelain ‘Rae’ Burton, said Friday.

Failing health had prevented him from appearing in Creed, the seventh Rocky movie and the one for which Stallone was nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar.

“People would always ask him, ‘What’s Sylvester Stallone like,’ his wife recalled with a chuckle. “He’d just say, ‘Sylvester’s a nice guy.’ That’s all he’d ever say.”

Burton, a former boxer himself, had a long career as a character actor.

He appeared in The Shining and Stir Crazy and was one of the ballplayers in the 1976 film The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings.

He was a regular in the television series Frank’s Place and appeared in Chicago Hope, The Rockford Files and Sanford and Son.

His last major film was 2006’s Rocky Balboa, in which he prepares the nearly 60-year-old Rocky Balboa character played by Stallone for an exhibition against the current champion, telling Balboa to “bring some hurtin’ bombs.”

In the first two Rocky films, his character, Tony ‘Duke’ Evers, was trainer and manager to Rocky’s world-champion opponent, Apollo Creed, played by Carl Weathers.

In Rocky II, Burton tries to talk the champion, who barely won that first fight, out of giving Balboa a rematch.

“He’s all wrong for us, baby,” his character says. “I saw you beat that man like I never saw no man get beat before and the man kept coming after you. … Let it go.”

Born and raised in Flint, Michigan, Burton was a top Golden Gloves boxer in his youth and had a brief professional boxing career.

In addition to his wife of 36 years, he is survived by his son, Jomo and daughters Juanita and Christal. Another son, Martin, preceded him in death.

Funeral services are pending.