Edd Byrnes, the former teen heartthrob who appeared in Charlie’s Angels and Grease, has passed away, according to his son. He was 87 years old. Logan Byrnes, a news anchor who announced his father’s passing, included a press release from the family that characterized his passing as unexpected, and of natural causes. The veteran actor played Vince Fontaine in Grease, Kookie in 77 Sunset Strip, and dozens more roles over the course of a forty-plus year career. Roles on 77 Sunset Strip and Maverick may have made him a household name, but in the first two years of his career before landing those gigs, Byrnes had already been working steadily.
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Born Edward Byrne Breitenberger in New York City on July 30, 1933, Byrnes reportedly had a difficult childhood. His family struggled with poverty and an absent father who passed away when he was 13. After his father’s death, he changed his last name to honor his maternal grandfather. Between his father’s death in the late ’40s and his arrival in Los Angeles in 1955, Byrnes said in his autobiography that he had to scramble to make ends meet. Byrnes was married to Asa Maynor in 1962, with the marriage ending in 1971. His son was born in 1965, and Byrnes never remarried.
“It is with profound sadness and grief that I share with you the passing of my father Edd Byrnes,” the younger Byrnes shared on Twitter. “He was an amazing man and one of my best friends.”
According to the statement from Byrnes’s family, “His is the story of an ambitious young kid who in his early 20s, drove out to Hollywood from New York City with a few hundred dollars and a dream of making it big in the entertainment business.”
While Byrnes is said to have struggled somewhat with his time as Kookie — contract restrictions limited the roles he could take, forcing him to turn down some potentially lucrative feature films, and later, he would think that the series’ success had caused him to be typecast — he worked consistently until 1999, and wrote an autobiography in 1996. In it, he frankly discussed his harrowing childhood and the substance abuse problems that he endured in the ’60s and ’70s.
The character of Kookie would eventually give him some of his biggest successes, though; in 2005, he ranked No. 5 in TV Guide‘s list of “TV’s 25 Greatest Teen Idols.” He also earned a gold record for the song “Kookie Kookie Lend Me Your Comb.”
