Written & Directed by JAMES KOMACK Guest Cast SAMMY DAVIS Jr. as Kid Pepper PETER BROWN as Timmy Ellison DICK FORAN as Lt. Ellison ROY GLENN by Big John Pepper SAMMY DAVIS, Sr. as Cashier JIM WATERS as Checker

Sammy Davis Jr., Edd Byrnes & Peter Brown

77 Sunset Strip was one of several  Warner Brothers detective shows which ran in the late 1950's/early 1960's.  77 Sunset Strip was one of the most successful, running from October 1958 through September 1964.  The regular stars included Efrem Zimbalist Jr., and Roger Smith as Stuart Bailey and Jeff Spencer, the original partners in the detective agency;  Edd Byrnes, originally the jive talking parking attendant Kookie who became a full-fledged detective after a job action against Warners;  Louis Quinn as Roscoe their colorful "pony tipster", Jacqueline Beer as the French secretary Suzanne and Robert Logan who replaced Kookie as parking attendant after Kookie moved up.

It was very common for Warners contract players from one series to appear on another series, sometimes in character.  Peter Brown's appearance in this episode came after Lawman ended its run in the fall of 1962.  Peter plays the alienated son of a police lieutenant who has taken up with pool hall riff raff.  Sammy Davis, Jr. plays Peter's best friend, the alienated son of a janitor who fancies himself a bad ass criminal.  He has a plan to rip off one of the companies his father works for by copying his father's keys.   Lt. Ellison seeks out his friend Stuart Bailey to help him get his son off the path to perdition to a more mature course,  [Would it have helped to stop calling him "Timmy"?]  Kookie is sent to infiltrate the pool hall crowd because detective or not, he's still cool.  His ex-con, jive talking cover quickly impresses the two would-be crooks who are convinced that with the addition of Kookie, they can pull off the intended burglary.  However, during the course of the burglary Kookie brings Sammy to his knees when he puts an [unloaded] handgun to his father's head and threatens to kill him.  Sammy declares his love for his father and begs Kookie not to kill him.  Lt. Ellison and Stuart Bailey enter.  Ellison announces he will have to turn them over to the law but that he will stand behind  his son all the way.  In Peter's touching moment, he declares that was all he wanted.

We'll bet Peter had  fun making this episode with his friends Sammy and Edd, with the added touch of Sammy Davis Sr. in a bit part.  Although it was nice seeing the three of them together, the episode didn't have much else enduring about it.  We admit we probably liked it better when we saw it almost 40 years ago.   In our opinion Warners detective series didn't hold up as well as the Western series much as we liked them at the time.  Of course, few people have been able to make the comparison as most of the series are only available in bootleg version.  We haven't seen them rerun much in the VCR age with the exception of Maverick which had the advantage of the popularity of James Garner Rockford Files in which he played a similar character.  Dated as they are, we'd love to see them again.

Note:  TVLand did a limited airing of thirty episodes of 77 Sunset Strip in the fall of  2000.  They didn't  run this episode.

Sammy Davis Jr. as Kid Pepper

Peter Brown as Timmy

Dick Foran as Lt. Ellison

Edd Byrnes as Kookie Looking instense

Peter Brown looking intense

Sammy Davis looking intense