Robert Logan, ‘77 Sunset Strip’ and ‘Wilderness Family’ Actor, Dies at 82

Robert Logan, who succeeded Edd “Kookie” Byrnes as the valet parking attendant on the famed ABC detective show 77 Sunset Strip and starred as the dad in a series of return-to-nature adventure movies, has died. He was 82.

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Logan died May 6 of natural causes in Estero, Florida, his son, Anthony Logan, told The Hollywood Reporter . His family chose to wait until this week to announce his death.

After Gerald Lloyd Kookson III was promoted from parking attendant at Dino’s Lodge — a nightclub owned by Dean Martin — to partner and private investigator at the detective agency next door, the Brooklyn-born Logan joined Warner Bros. Television’s 77 Sunset Strip to play his replacement, another hipster named J.R. Hale.

On the swanky series that starred Efrem Zimbalist Jr. and Roger Smith as the crime solvers Stu Bailey and Jeff Spencer, respectively, Logan portrayed Hale on 50 episodes of the show’s fourth and fifth seasons, through June 1963.

In The Adventures of the Wilderness Family (1975), Logan starred as Skip Robinson, a construction worker in Los Angeles who moves with his wife (Susan Damante) and two young kids to a cabin they built in the Rocky Mountains to escape the grime and crime of city life.

While the independent film did well at the box office and spawned two sequels, The Further Adventures of the Wilderness Family (1978) and Mountain Family Robinson (1979), Logan also was starring as another dad in two other return-to-nature family films — Across the Great Divide (1976) and The Sea Gypsies (1978).

The oldest of eight siblings, Robert Francis Logan was born in Brooklyn on May 29, 1941. His father, Frank, was a banker and his mother, Catherine, a homemaker. He and his family moved to Los Angeles, and he attended Junipero Serra High School.

Logan accepted a baseball scholarship to the University of Arizona, but a coaching change there led him to Los Angeles City College instead. At a restaurant late one night, he caught the eye of a talent scout from Warner Bros. and signed a contract.

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In 1961, he appeared on the studio’s shows Maverick , Surfside 6 and 77 Sunset Strip — not as Hale at first — and in the Diane McBain -starring film drama Claudelle Inglish .

After 77 Sunset Strip was canceled, Logan showed up on episodes of Dr. Kildare and Mr. Novak ; reunited with Byrnes for the musical comedy Beach Ball (1965); portrayed Jericho Jones alongside Fess Parker on NBC’s Daniel Boone in 1965-66; and joined the crew on the racing yacht Ticonderoga for its record-setting trans-Pacific run to Tahiti in 1964.

He worked in John Guillermin’s World War II epic The Bridge at Remagen (1969), shot in Czechoslovakia, then remained for several years in Europe before returning to the States for The Adventures of the Wilderness Family.

He starred as a secret agent in Death Ray 2000 , a pilot for the 1979-80 NBC series A Man Called Sloane , but Robert Conrad took over when it was picked up.

Logan’s résumé also included the films Kelly (1981), which he also wrote, and A Night in Heaven (1986) and episodes of Riptide and 1st & Ten. He retired from acting in the late 1980s and filmed documentaries.

In addition to his son, survivors include his wife of 39 years, Alina; his daughter, Courtney; his daughter-in-law, Hayley; his granddaughters, Elsa, Ingrid and Alma; and his siblings, Logan, Theresa, Janet and Timothy.

Donations in his memory can be made to the Notre Dame Club of Miami .

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