Stuart Bailey
Created by Roy Huggins

Roy Huggins' decidedly downscale Chandleresque private eye STUART BAILEY appeared in a pretty good novel and a few short stories and was even brought to the big screen in the now-forgotten but surprisingly effective 1948 film noir I Love Trouble, which sarred Franchot Tone as Bailey, along with Janet Blair, Raymond Burr and a well-rounded cast of crime flick vets.

But it was a few years later, after Huggins' considerable success in the burgeoning TV market, that Bailey really made a splash. Having already created and produced Maverick and The Fugitive, Huggins decided to dust Bailey off, move him out of the seedy little office and bestow upon him a fluency in foreign languages, a past as a government agent, a slick wardrobe and a partner. The result was 77 SUNSET STRIP, inarguably one of the most influential TV private eye shows in history -- for better and worse.

So successful, in fact, that Warner Brothers itself began spewing out copy cat versions such as Hawaiian Eye , Bourbon Street Beat, and Surfside Six almost immediately. Other studios were quick to follow suit, and the formula of handsome male leads, "wacky" characters who drop by and "cool" premises and locations, not to mention the now almost-ubitquious 60-minute format, can be seen in everything from Riptide to Magnum P.I. to Las vegas.

NOVELS

• The Double Take (1946; also appeared in the March 1946 issue of Mammoth Mystery, possibly in condensed form)

SHORT STORIES

• "Now You see It" (/May 25, 1946, The Saturday Evening Post)
• "Appointment With Fear" (September 28, 1946, The Saturday Evening Post)
• "Death and the Skylark" (December 1952, Esquire)

COLLECTIONS

• 77 Sunset Strip (1959, collects all three previously-mentioned short stories)

FILM

• I LOVE TROUBLE
  (1948, Columbia Pictures Corporation / Cornell Pictures)
  93 minutes, Black and White
  Screenplay: Roy Huggins
  Based on his novel The Double Take
  Director: S. Sylvan Simon
  Starring Franchot Tone as STUART BAILEY
  Also starring Robert Barrat, Janet Blair, Raymond Burr, Janis Carter, Edward Ciannelli, Donald Curtis, Glenda Farrell, Steven Geray, John Ireland, Adele Jergens, Lynn Merrick, Tom Powers, Sid Tomack

TELEVISION

• ANYTHING FOR MONEY
  (April 16, 1957)
  Pilot; shown as episode of anthology series CONFLICT)
  Based on short story "Death and the Skylark"
  
  
• GIRL ON THE RUN
  (October 10, 1958)
  Pilot; series started following week
  90 minutes
  
  
• 77 SUNSET STRIP
  (1958-64, ABC)
  205 60-minute episodes

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. And thanks to Arthur Lortie for his valuable help in filling in the blanks.