77 Sunset Strip began as a episode of an anthology series called Conflict, and the story starred Efrim Zimbalist, Jnr as a private detective who staggers, wounded, into his office and tells his sorry story to a tape recorder, in clear imitation of Double Indemnity. The idea was developed into a series by Warner Brothers guru Roy Huggins, generating a formula from which many clones would be derived. The formula of these caper shows was constant —a private eye or two, a nutty sidekick or two and an exotic location. But Sunset Strip always remained the primary piece.
    Huggins later dreamed up such classic television shows as The Rockford Files, Alias Smith and Jones, Maverick, and The Fugitive among many others.
    Stuart Bailey (Efrim Zimbalist,  Jr.) and Jeff Spencer (Roger Smith) were a cool pair of private eyes with an office located at 77 Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Their brand-new sports cars shared a driveway with a swinging nightspot called Dino’s, a rat-pack type hangout that was an important chick (and trouble) magnet for the boys.
    Other series regulars were Roscoe (Louis Quinn), the racetrack informant that liked to hang out with the guys, and Suzanne (Jacqueline Beer) as the detective agency’s sexy French receptionist.
    Parking the cars at Dino’s was Gerald Lloyd Kookson, II (aka “Kookie” played by Edd Byrnes) who snapped his fingers in beatnik style all the way to genuine teen idol status. Actually, Byrnes appeared in the original Conflict pilot feature  as a cold-blooded killer who compulsively combs his hair while waiting to kill his victims. But Byrnes proved so popular despite his evil role, that the series producers decided to retain him.
    Just before the second episode aired, Efrim Zimbalist, Jr. appeared out of character and announced: “We previewed this show, and because Edd Byrnes was such a hit we decided that Kookie and his comb had to be in our series. So this week, we’ll just forget that in the pilot he went off to prison to be executed.”
    It was a wise move—Kookie and his comb became a huge TV cult figure. He and Connie Stevens had a huge hit song in 1958 with Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb (featured in the second episode), and that single helped the television show to the top of the ratings.
    Hep talking Kookie’s dialogue was unforgettable. “That chick’s the ginchiest”, “Let’s peel from this gig”, and “I’m piling on some Z’s” were examples of his weird lines. Bailey and Spencer would often have to snap there fingers at him, as a means of having him translate his phrases into English.
    The scripts were often routine and frequently recycled from other Warner Brothers shows, but sometimes they were remarkably experimental. One example was The Silent Caper, in which Spencer investigates a murder, solves the mystery and catches the killer, all without a single word being spoken. In another, Bailey is stalked by a killer he once put away, but for the whole hour, Bailey was the only character to appear on screen. The killer was always off-screen somewhere and Bailey talked to himself rather more than usual, but it worked well. In the climax, the killer sets the building alight but Bailey traps him in a locked room, calling on him to surrender through the door. When he refuses, Bailey can only save himself from the flames.
    Still another was based on a British movie SOS Pacific, renamed Secret Island, in which Bailey is amongst survivors of a plane crash and discover that they are cast away on an island that has all sorts of abandoned military equipment and realise it is the site of a H-bomb test going down later that day.
    The series ran way beyond its use-by date, undergoing cast and situation changes and finally fizzled out altogether. But it was top class TV drama while it lasted.