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EDD BYRNES
The conquest of
Hollywood
EDO found no shortage of straggles on way up in Hollywood. Tenacity kept him going.
A novice from the sidewalks of New York, Edd got the "No Help Wanted" treatment from filmtown but hung on to win fame in "77 Sunset Strip"
I,
By BILL TUSHER
.N THE ENCHANTED city of New York not many moons ago, two star-struck teenage youths hatched a scheme to gain an audience with one of their idols, Kirk Douglas. Meeting a star face to face was their major ambition in life, aside from the audacious dream that gave the first wish such urgency — the dream of being stars someday themselves.
Until Douglas, the dashing emissary of Hollywood nobility, checked in at the Sherry Netherlands Hotel, these young men had had very little luck meeting up with visiting royalty from the magic land of sound stages. They avidly followed the newspapers for word of arriving stars and counted themselves fortunate if they got so much as a fleeting glimpse of them.
But such piddling rewards were insufficient for these brash movie enthusiasts. So in a moment of supreme resolve they put their acting potentials to a test. One of them, a sandy-haired, laughing-eyed, soft-spoken six-footer named Edward Byrnes — who had been cutting classes at Haaren High School to bone up on the muse at the Dramatic Workshop and the West Side Neighborhood Playhouse: — summarily decided that the time had come to demonstrate how much he had learned about acting during all this bootlegged training.
He sidled into a phone booth and dialed the Sherry Netherlands. He represented himself as a reporter for the Daily News, announced he was on his way to interview Douglas, and asked for the actor's room number. A moment later he hung up and rejoined his anxious friend, another adventurous lad named Joe Flynn.
"We're in," Byrnes chortled, and couldn't resist the play on his pal's name. "In like Flynn!" And so it seemed.
"We got all sharped up," as Edd Byrnes puts it, "went to the hotel, ran into the elevator hoping we wouldn't be found out, got out on Douglas'
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