Trivia / 77 Sunset Strip

• All-Star Cast: The ambitious five-part episode "5" that kicked off the brief Jack Webb period featured an amazing cast of performers, among them Tony Bennett, George Jessel, Brian Keith, Burgess Meredith, William Shatner and Ed Wynn.
• Executive Meddling: As mentioned on the main page, the arrival of Jack Webb meant that drastic changes were on the way for 77 Sunset Strip.
• Follow the Leader: The success of 77 Sunset Strip inspired Warner Bros. to create other detective series featuring detective teams in exotic locales. Hawaiian Eye debuted a year later and ran for four seasons. Bourbon Street Beat, set in New Orleans, also debuted a year later, but only ran for one season. Finally, in 1960, Surfside Six, set in Miami, debuted and ran for two seasons.
• He Also Did:
  • Both Roger Smith and Edd Byrnes made records for Warner (Bros.) Records. Byrnes had a hit with "Kookie, Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb)", which also featured fellow Warners contract player Connie Stevens, who was a regular on Hawaiian Eye.
  • Years later, Byrnes hosted the pilot of Wheel of Fortune, and did so while totally trashed! Merv Griffin decided after that debacle that maybe he wasn't the best choice to host the show and went instead with Chuck Woolery.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: As popular as the show was, it's surprisingly not available in any form on home video.
• Playing Against Type: Peter Breck was known for playing tough guys in Western series such as Black Saddle and The Big Valley, as well as guest shots on series like 77 Sunset Strip. However, in one of his four Strip appearances, "Nightmare", he played a scared, vulnerable man, an artist who has a dream in which he sees a woman in danger of being killed, and hires the detectives to save the woman. In a case of Real-Life Relative, the woman is played by Breck's real-life wife Diana.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Chances are, if Sherry Jackson is in an episode, her stepfather Montgomery Pittman wrote and directed it.
  • Roger Smith's then-real-life wife, Australian actress Victoria Shaw, guest-starred in "The Down Under Caper".
  • Adele Mara, then-wife of series creator Roy Huggins, guest-starred in a couple of episodes.
• Recycled Script: This had to be done, due to a writer's strike. A tip for finding a recycled script in any Warner Bros. series, be it a Western or a detective series: look for episodes where 'W. Hermanos' is credited as one of the writers. 'Hermanos' is Spanish for 'brothers'. It doesn't take much imagination to figure out what the 'W' stands for.
• Similarly Named Works: The sixth season episode "Paper Chase" has absolutely no connection to The Paper Chase.
• What Could Have Been: A revival was planned for The WB for the 1995-96 season as the network's first hour-long drama. Clint Eastwood would've produced and four then-unknowns — Jim Caviezel, Vince Vaughn, Timothy Olyphant and Maria Bello — were the leads. Per an interview with Olyphant, Eastwood quit the project early on, and it ultimately never made the air; the got as far as a 25-minute pilot, and an internal video seen at a WB affiliate conference featured both the show's logo (as part of the WB backlot motif) and the cast (notably at around 0:35).
• Written by Cast Member: Roger Smith wrote or co-wrote a few episodes, including the classic "The Silent Caper", which features not one word of dialogue!
• You Look Familiar: Many actors made multiple appearances on the show, but here are two very notable examples of this trope...
  • Edd Byrnes was the villain, Kevin Smiley, in the first episode, "Girl On the Run". Starting with the second episode, he played the character we all know and love, Kookie.
  • Richard Long turned up twice after his one season as a regular, albeit in different roles, in the episodes "Nine to Five" and "The Fumble". Long also appeared in two episodes before he was a regular.

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