77 Sunset Strip (TV Series) The Double Death of Benny Markham (1960) User Reviews

Off-beat episode tries for pathos--and actually achieves it!

[sdiner82 · 9/10 · 15 November 2018]

In the 11th episode of its 3rd season, "77 Sunset Strip" tries for something different--pathos--and achieves just that without ever becoming maudlin. Credit must go to Roger Smith who has always seemed the most compassionate of the group, and though now only 27, appears to be handsomer and in even better shape than when the series began when he was a mere 25. Nor should I need to remind his fans that the writers, as with nearly every episode, always remember to include a scene that requires Smith to remove his shirt! This time, while he's in London, his diminutive, lovable, leprechaun-like friend Benny Markham comes to him asking his help. Benny has just made off with an isotope the man who hired him neglected to tell him is radioactive, and despite Jeff's immediately rushing him to seek medical help, is told by the physician that Benny has only two weeks to live. After making sure the sympathetic doctor aids Benny with the necessary drugs to help alleviate his failing eyesight and pain, Jeff poses as an intimidating Canadian in a complicated scheme to bring to justice the heartless man responsible for Benny's impending death. It's an action-packed episode tainted with the knowledge that its outcome will be expectedly sad. And Smith & Walter Burke (the terrific Irish-American character actor who plays the doomed Benny) enact it with such subtle empathy that the writers' ill-advised attempt to end it on a light-hearted note by adding a scene of Kookie snuggling with an anonymous cutie in his telephone-equipped convertible (!) simply doesn't work. Otherwise, this unusual episode of "77 Sunset Strip" is more than well-worth watching with kudos to Smith & Burke for making their 'Odd Couple' friendship not only credible but, at times, unexpectedly touching.

Radioactive danger

[searchanddestroy-1 · 6 January 2016]

Jeff receives the visit of his friend Benny, who tells him he was hired to rob a warehouse in Liverpool, from which he took a radioactive isotope. So two problems have to be solved, they have to save Benny's life and find out how those isotopes happened to be in this warehouse. Were they stolen? And by who? Scotland Yard is also put in the confidence in this case. Radioactive caper is a scheme that is often used in many series. Besides, you see, there are British settings here, England instead of L.A. and Benny as a sidekick instead of Kookie. One good sequence, when Jeff is pursued by the police on roofs, with the always splendid jazzy score Not the best but a good time waster. One last thing, you have an expected but sad ending here.

China Mary!

[fchase-72474 · 10/10 · 17 October 2017]

Be patient, all ye Kookster fans. We get Jeff for 45 minutes in studio- bound London, doing yeoman work to make things right for good old Walter Burke (always great having him around). AND: getting kissed by China Mary, who in real life is Gale Garnett (yes, that Gale Garnett). With pseudo-Chinese garb and odd accent (she's actually a Kiwi) China Mary presides over the raffish pub where Burke hangs out and where all the action is--and takes over the episode . . .

. . . That is, until the last two minutes where we get the Kookster putting the moves on some babe in his pre-Cannon telephone- equipped convertible. Ahh, what it must've been like to be the Kookster!