Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 5, 1994 TAG: 9403050205
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-15 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Susan King Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: HOLLYWOOD LENGTH: Medium
No doubt about it, "77 Sunset Strip" was one of the ginchiest detective series ever made.
For those who don't remember the popular 1958-64 ABC series, ginchiest was slang for "the greatest." On Friday, the Museum of Television & Radio pays tribute to "77 Sunset Strip" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Scheduled to appear are stars Efrem Zimbalist Jr. (Stuart Bailey), Edd Byrnes (Gerald Lloyd "Kookie" Kookson III) and Byron Keith (Lt. Roy Gilmore), as well as associate producer Hugh Benson, producer Roy Huggins and executive producer William T. Orr. The "Once Upon a Caper" episode will be screened, followed by a question-and-answer session.
The first hourlong detective show, "77 Sunset Strip" followed the adventures of the Hollywood-based Spencer Private Investigators. Zimbalist played Stuart Bailey, the suave, former OSS officer, who was an expert in languages. He also happened to have a Ph.D. from an Ivy League school. Roger Smith was his partner, Jeff Spencer, a former government undercover agent with a law degree. Their offices were at 77 Sunset Strip.
Next door was their favorite hangout, the posh restaurant called Dino's. Kookie (Byrnes), the eatery's jive-talking young parking attendant, frequently would help Bailey and Spencer on their various cases. He became a member of the firm during the 1961-62 season.
Not only did the theme song by Mack David and Jerry Livingston hit the charts, so did Byrnes and Connie Stevens' single, "Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb," which capitalized on Kookie always combing his hair.
The "Kookie" song came about, Byrnes says, because "Warner Bros. Records was starting at the time. I was pretty much the hot property. They probably thought they would make a lot of money with me. They were right. They did. I had about three girls answering my fan mail at that time and they were earning more money put together than I was!"
And there was plenty of mail to answer. During his years on "Sunset Strip," Byrnes received 15,000 fan letters a week, "more than any other actor in all of Warners Bros.' history, including Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney. I was getting more exposure. See, on TV, every week 30 or 40 million people were watching, where in the movies it would take quite a bit of time for that many people to see you."
Byrnes believes he captured the audience's attention because he was "the first young guy on TV who was in a series. It was the case of being at the right place at the right time. I was always looking for something to get attention and somehow the comb appeared. I would always do my own stunts because I was a gymnast in New York."
Zimbalist, who later starred in the long-running ABC series "The FBI," was under contract to Warner Bros. to do features when the studio informed him they wanted him to do a TV series.
"They came to me and said, `We are going to make a pilot with you.' I said, `Not with me, you're not.' They showed me the contract and where it said they could put me and use me in television."
The father of actress Stephanie Zimbalist, though, has fond memories of the show. "We had a great time," he says. "We were all good friends. We laughed a lot and we had some wonderful people that were on it and contributed to it."
According to Byrnes, several producers are interested in doing a "77 Sunset Strip" reunion movie "if Efrem doesn't demand that the script be `Citizen Kane.' Efrem says, `Edd, if we do this as a movie, the script has to be really good.' I said, `Efrem. Come on. We aren't doing "Schindler's List." We're doing "77 Sunset Strip"! We are just going to have some fun and earn some money.' "
by CNB