Robert Logan, best known as the valet parking attendant on the ABC detective show “77 Sunset Strip” has died. He was 82.
Anthony Francis Logan confirmed to The Times on Thursday that his father died on May 6 of natural causes in Estero, Fla. His family waited until this week to announce his death to ensure his official obituary was finished.
“He was just an amazing person. … He was a really fantastic, hands-on adventurous father really similar to Skip Robinson in the movies,” Logan said. “[We are] so lucky to have experienced that and so blessed to know him.”
Robert Francis Logan Jr. was born in Brooklyn on May 29, 1941. He was the oldest son of eight children born to bank executive Francis Logan and Catherine Quigley. He attended the University of Arizona on a baseball scholarship where he was scouted by a Warner Bros. talent agent.
Logan’s breakout role was as the “hip, slang-talking” valet driver J.R. Hale in the detective series “77 Sunset Strip.” The series starred Efren Zimbalist Jr. and Roger Smith as the wisecracking, womanizing detectives Stu Bailey and Jeff Spencer who work in an office at the 77 Sunset Strip of Los Angeles. Logan played Hale in 50 episodes of the show’s fourth and fifth season. He eventually replaced the previous valet Kookie, played by Edd Byrnes, who joined the detective duo.
Following the cancellation of “77 Sunset Strip,” Logan appeared in episodes of “Dr. Kildare” and “Mr. Novak.” He reunited with Byrnes for the musical comedy “Beach Ball” in 1965 and he co-starred with Fess Parker as Jericho Jones on NBC’s “Daniel Boone.”
Cast members from the television detective series “77 Sunset Strip” sit in a convertible outside a restaurant circa 1963. Edd Byrnes, from left, Efrem Zimbalist Jr, Roger Smith, Louis Quinn (holding dog in his lap) and Robert Logan.
(Hulton Archive / Getty Images)
Logan was also known for his role as Skip Robinson in the 1975 film “The Adventures of the Wilderness Family.” In order to escape the filth and criminality of city life, Skip Robinson, a construction worker in Los Angeles, moves to a cabin he built in the Rocky Mountains with his wife Susan Damante and their two young children.
The independent film garnered great success, grossing $28.8 million at the box office. The success led to two sequels, “The Further Adventures of the Wilderness Family” in 1978 and “Mountain Family Robinson” in 1979.
His last major role was as a rocket engineer and estranged husband in the 1986 erotic romance film “A Night in Heaven.”
Logan was preceded in death by his parents, Frank and Catherine, his sisters Maureen Messrah and Carol Dawson, his brother Francis Logan Jr., his niece Brittany Bertram, and his nephew by marriage, Scott Wilson.
He is survived by his wife of 39 years, Alina; his daughter, Courtney Worthington; son, Anthony; daughter-in-law, Hayley; his three granddaughters, Elsa Worthington, Ingrid, and Alma Logan; as well as his siblings Logan “Patty”Lahey, Theresa Bertram, Janet Haines, Timothy Logan; and many nieces and nephews.
Logan is interred at Cedar Grove Cemetery on the campus of the University of Notre Dame.