Dick,
Re your comment below:
"He was parking convertibles at Dino's on the Strip, for
goodness sake. It should be noted that neither he [Kookie],
nor Dino's nor Jeff Spencer for that matter appear in the
source novellas by Roy Huggins that first ran in Esquire and
the Saturday Evening Post."
And don't forget the novel THE DOUBLE TAKE, which introduced
Stu Bailey, even before the short entries in the slicks you
mentioned. Franchot Tone played Bailey some years before
Zimbalist in a 1948 film version of TAKE called I LOVE
TROUBLE.
The two pilots were closer in tone to Huggins's Bailey
stories. The first, shown as an episode of the anthology
series CONFLICT, was directly based on one of the novelletes.
This was Zimbalist's first appearance as the Bailey
character.
The second, a 90-minute special run as the first episode of
the series in the States, and released to theatres in Europe,
"Girl on the Run," was written by Marion Hargrove from an
original screen story by Huggins. It was tougher, less jokey,
and depicted Bailey as a singleton PI, sans partner, knockout
French switchboard babe, Damon Runyonesque racetrack tout,
and tag-along parking lot attendant, with a small office on
the Strip.
Interestingly, in that 90-minute debut episode, Byrnes played
a jive-talking, incessantly hair-combing, psychopathic hit
man, referred to in the script as only "the Kook." In
previews, reaction to that character was so positive that the
producers to decided to create a similar, good-guy character
around the same actor.
One of the things that always puzzled me about 77 SUNSET
STRIP was this. You look at the opening sequence of PERRY
MASON, and you see the credit "based on characters created by
Erle Stanley Gardner." You look at the opening sequence of
MIKE HAMMER, and you see the credit "based on the characters
created by Mickey Spillane" (in fact, the offical title of
the show was MICKEY SPILLANE'S MIKE HAMMER). You look at the
opening sequence of LANIGAN'S RABBI, and you see
"based on the 'Rabbi Small' novels by Harry Kemelman."
You look at the closing sequence of GIDEON'S WAY and
you see the credit "based on the novels by John Creasey." You
even look at the closing sequence of LONGSTREET, and you see
the credit "based on the character created by Baynard
Kendrick," even though Mike Longstreet bore barely a whit of
resemblance to Captain Duncan Maclain aside from their both
being a blind private detectives.
But nowhere in 77 SUNSET STRIP was there a credit along the
lines of "based on the character created by Roy Huggins,"
even though he wrote the novel introducing Bailey, the short
stories featuring Bailey
(including the one adapted into the CLIMAX episode), and,
finally, provided the storyline for the debut episode.
Can anyone more familiar than I with the vicissitudes and
foibles of Hollywood explain this?
JIM DOHERTY
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