Actor and star of 77 Sunset Strip

Born: December 18, 1932;

Died: June 4, 2017

ROGER Smith, who has died aged 84, was an actor who brought glamour to the detective genre as the hip private eye Jeff Spencer in the 1950s and 60s television show 77 Sunset Strip.

From 1958 to 1963, he co-starred with Efrem Zimbalist Jr on the glossy ABC series. It made stars of both men and a teen heartthrob out of Edd Byrnes, who played a colourful parking lot attendant named Kookie.

77 Sunset Strip had been created by producer-writer Roy Huggins, who also created Maverick, and it spawned a host of spin-offs including Hawaiian Eye, Surfside 6 and Bourbon Street Beat.

According to Smith, the series aimed to show that private investigators were well-trained, serious men, and not the movie and TV stereotype with "dangling cigarettes and large chips on their shoulders". He was chosen for the part because "I don't look like a detective".

Smith stayed with the show until 1963 when the entire cast except Zimbalist was dropped in attempt to revitalise it. The show lingered for only one more year while Smith got the title role in Mister Roberts, a comedy-drama about Navy life. It lasted from 1965-66.

When he first gained fame, Smith had been married to a glamorous Australian actress, Victoria Shaw, with whom he had three children. They divorced in 1965.

Meanwhile he was dating Ann-Margret, the dynamic singer, dancer and actress of Bye Bye Birdie, Viva Las Vegas and other films. They were married quietly in Las Vegas in 1967. Smith later quit to manage her career.

For decades Smith guided Ann-Margret's career with great care. She broke her sex kitten stereotype in dramatic fashion in 1971 when she appeared in Mike Nichols's Carnal Knowledge as the abused mistress of Jack Nicholson. Critics praised her performance and she was nominated for an Oscar for supporting actress.

She was nominated again in 1975 for her portrayal of Roger Daltrey's mother in the film version of the Who's rock opera Tommy.

In 1965, Smith was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, a disorder that disrupts the transmission of nerve signals to the muscles, causing severe muscle weakness. Despite the disease, Smith continued working when he was able as the effects of the disease varied over time.

"I have this great dream that when Ann-Margret gets out of movies, she and I will co-star in a Broadway play," he told New York magazine in 1976. "But right now I still think it's impossible to be married to a successful actress and have your own career and have the marriage work."

Roger LaVerne Smith was born in 1932, in South Gate, near Los Angeles. When he was six, his parents enrolled him in a professional school in Hollywood where he learned singing and dancing. When he was 12 the family moved to Arizona, where he excelled in the high school acting club and football team.

Smith served two-and-a-half years in the Navy Reserve, and in Hawaii he sang at social events. James Cagney, who was there making a film, suggested that Smith might try for a film career. When Smith's Navy service ended, he signed a contract with Columbia Pictures.

Cagney recommended Smith for a role in Man of a Thousand Faces, the 1957 film biography of silent star Lon Chaney. Cagney was Chaney, while Smith played Chaney's son as a young man. Smith then was cast in Auntie Mame, playing star Rosalind Russell's nephew, Patrick, as a young man.

Smith and Ann-Margret had no children; in the 1980s, she told interviewers she had tried in vain to get pregnant for over a decade.