Dragnet: The Missing Realtor
Enjoy this great episode of Dragnet 1968 – some good legwork by Joe & Bill, as a missing person’s case slowly becomes a murder case. Keep an eye out for the legendary Scatman Crothers (sporting some stylish hair)!
Just the facts, Ma’am
I came upon this neat story of the real-life Detective Joe Friday, courtesy of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Enjoy!
City was protected by the real Joe Friday
By AMY RABIDEAU SILVERS
of the Journal Sentinel staff
Last Updated: Sept. 17, 2001
Little did Edmund and Hedwig Friday realize 75 years ago what a nuisance their son’s name would be for much of his life.
Joseph E. Friday grew up to be a Milwaukee police officer and detective. By the time he wore a badge, TV Detective Joe Friday had made the name famous, his deadpan “Just the facts, ma’am” a part of television history.
“That name always gave him trouble,” said Detective Jim Cler in 1986, as his partner retired after 32 years.
“I used to listen to him on the phone. He’d say, ‘This is Joe Friday of the Milwaukee Police. . . . Well, my name is Joe Friday. . . . No, I’m not putting you on.’ ” Cler repeated. “Sometimes it would take a little convincing.”
The real Detective Joe Friday died of lung cancer Tuesday, going quietly in his sleep while in hospice care at his Brookfield home. He was 75.
Born in Stevens Point and raised in Milwaukee, he served with the Army in Europe and Africa during World War II.
“During the Battle of the Bulge, he and a friend got caught behind enemy lines,” said his son, Paul J. Friday of Milwaukee. “They were hidden by civilians and made it back to our side.”
Also memorable for Friday, something of an amateur musician, was performing with the USO.
“He played guitar with Jack Benny,” said another son, Mark J. Friday of New Berlin.
After the war, Friday worked as a tool and die maker until switching to police work in 1954.
By then, “Dragnet” was one of the biggest hits of early television. The show began as a radio program in 1949, moving to television in 1951. Jack Webb continued acting in his Joe Friday role until 1959, later returning to the program in 1967 for two more years.
Soon after Friday was hired, he received a telegram from Webb.
“Very best wishes on your new job from both of us, Joe Friday and me,” the actor wrote.
In 1955, the two met when Webb stopped in Milwaukee to promote his movie, “Pete Kelly’s Blues.”
Webb “told me he had looked all over the country for a name he could use, and he thought there wasn’t anyone with the name Joe Friday,” Friday later recalled. “He apologized, and we went out to dinner. I enjoyed his company.”
The name also necessitated the unusual step of getting an unlisted phone number in the 1950s.
“I’d get phone calls all night long, at 3 and 4 in the morning,” Friday said. “Mostly kids who would sing, ‘dum-de-dum-dum,’ and hang up.”
This is the city
The great Badge 714 website has reproduced this short entry from Scholastic Book’s TV 70, a look at the upcoming television season sold in classrooms across the fruited plain! It’s great to see Dragnet 1970 get some good press! Enjoy!
Jack Webb’s Dragnet Tells It Like It Is
by Peggy Hudson(from “TV 70″, published in 1970 by Scholastic Book Services)
It must be doing something right.
What other TV show has been put back on the beat?This is the city: Los Angeles.
Population: 2,479,015—some good, some evil.
One of its natives carries a badge. His name: Joe Friday. We visited him on a Tuesday.
The time: 11:06 A.M.My partner and I had been assigned the interview detail. The Chief had briefed us. He said Dragnet had started as a radio show in 1949. Switching to television in 1952, it had become one of the medium’s all-time popular shows.Then, eight years later, it had abruptly dropped from sight. Now, under a number of aliases—from Dragnet 1967 to Dragnet 1970—it had reappeared and resumed full-time operations. Our assignment: To learn at firsthand the program’s “MO.”
At 11:07 A.M.. we drove into the sprawling grounds of Universal City. We knew that this was Friday’s headquarters. Friday, in real life, operates under the name of Jack Webb.
As soon as we’d stepped into Webb’s reception room, we knew we were in the right place. Hanging in a big frame on one wall was a large collection of police stars, shields, and other badges from such cities as East Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Troy, New York. Some have Jack Webb’s name inscribed upon them.
In a large museum case were other police memorabilia, including an ancient lock and handcuffs. Beside it, in another frame, was a fan letter simply addressed: “Dum-de-dum-dum”—and decorated with appropriate musical notes. The postman, undoubtedly a Dragnet fan himself, delivered the letter—possibly even humming the program’s theme music as he did so.
Led into Webb’s office, we found ourselves in a different world. This was no precinct station. It looked like a living room. Wall-to-wall carpeting. Easy chairs. Tall lamps. One wall was decorated with etchings of U. S. presidents. On a small table stood an American flag.
A man was in the room. Dressed in shirt sleeves and slacks, he was seated at the big desk, talking on the telephone. He wore big black horn-rimmed glasses.
Even behind the glasses, though, it was evident that this was our man. Realizing that the disguise was useless, he hung up the phone, whipped off the glasses, and stood up to shake hands.
Webb is a slight man with narrow shoulders but a powerful build. His natural expression is serious, but he smiles quickly. He graciously waved us to a seat.
We weren’t about to be put off. “We have a few questions we’d like to ask you,” we said. Webb nodded. The interrogation began.
The story you are about to read is real.
Dragnet has an air of authenticity seldom matched by rival cops-and-criminals TV shows. Other police dramas have been gunned down by the ratings, but Dragnet has survived. “Why?” we wondered aloud.Webb looked thoughtful. “We’ve tried to tell it like it is for many years,” he said in his dry, Sgt. Friday’s voice. “We work very closely with the Los Angeles Police Department. We have meetings three or four times a year with division commanders and at least one meeting a year with police officials of even higher rank.
“We try to find out what the latest police problems are, what they’d like said. It’s really their program as much as ours. “We aren’t allowed—and don’t want—to read actual case histories. We deal with stories that are accurate, but the dialogue is recreated.
“All of our hardware is authentic. There’s a policeman assigned to each show as technical adviser. Each of our scripts passes through 12 to 15 officers’ hands, from the rank of captain down to sergeant. This is done to catch us in any technical slip-ups. To my knowledge, Dragnet and our other show, Adam-12, are the only police programs done as semidocumentaries.”
Webb created Dragnet 20 years ago. A former radio announcer turned radio serial actor, he got a big break in 1948, shortly after his discharge from I the Army Air Corps. He was cast in a supporting role in the movie, He Walked By Night.
It was a bigger break than even Webb realized. During the filming of the movie, he struck up a friendship with the film’s technical adviser, an officer of the Los Angeles Police Department.
“He sparked my interest in police work, and I found myself spending nights in police prowl cars and researching the crime lab files by day when time permitted,” Webb recalled. “Through this Dragnet was born.”
The show was one of the few programs to survive the transition from radio to television. After its long TV run, Webb voluntarily took Dragnet off the air in 1959.
“I think the public grew a little weary after eight years,” Webb admitted. “We’d done 275 half-hour TV shows and over 500 radio shows.”
But in January, 1967, Dragnet did the unprecedented. It became the first TV program to come from “retirement” and make a successful comeback.
“Had Sgt. Friday gotten restless to get back on the beat?” we asked Webb.
He smiled. “There was no driving urgency on my part,” he said. “It was more or less NBC’s idea, though I thought we could make some kind of statement on law and order.”
In making that statement, Dragnet dramas present all the variety to be found in real-life police work—from homicide to housebreaking. Shows frequently deal with the problems of young people.
When dealing with teenagers on the program, Sgt. Friday and Officer Bill Gannon—played by Harry Morgan—seem tuned in to the younger generation. “Do you think such cops really exist?” we asked Webb.
“Positively, yes, “he replied. “We have only 23 1/2 minutes to tell a story which actual police officers may have spent months on. The officers in real life might have shown even more understanding than Harry and I are able to in such a short time.”
Webb is concerned about the lack of public support for police departments in some areas of the country. “It’s no secret that being called a ‘pig’ affects a man’s morale,” he said. “If we don’t do something quickly, the spirit of accomplishment will be taken away from men on the job. When that happens, low morale can spread through a department. Eventually you risk having no department at all.
“Today, being a policeman is a distasteful, almost tragic, way to make a living. The abuse he takes is ridiculous.
“If the public doesn’t begin to loudly support their policemen, I’m afraid we’re heading for a bleak period in urban history.
“We hope in some way we make the policeman’s job easier for him.”
The Three Stooges Parody Dragnet
Well, most people who know me even casually know that two of my many passions are Dragnet and The Three Stooges! I know what you’re thinking – those two things are among everyone’s many passions! And you’re probably right!
So when those Knuckleheads decided to parody Dragnet, it simply can’t fail! So please join Moe, Larry, & Shemp in their 1955 short, Blunder Boys.
Drugs aren’t cool!
Fridays for Friday returns with a vengeance! Today’s clip is from the classic episode, The Big Prophet. It’s a minimalist episode done almost entirely on one set between Joe Friday, Bill Gannon, and Brother William Bentley (Liam Sullivan), a Timothy Leary-type counterculture guru who advocates experimentation of all sorts of mind altering drugs.
Needless to say, Mr. Webb sets him straight! All I have to say is, “Thank God, It’s Friday!”
LSD isn’t the Answer
In the mid 1960s, serious cultural changes were in the works. Those with their finger on the pulse of America saw the changes coming. People were becoming more cavalier, and less responsible, with sexuality. And drug use was on the rise – and more problematic, encouraged and glorified by certain segments of the culture.
Mr. Jack Webb noticed, and he didn’t like it one bit.
When the network decided to give him a chance to re-imagine his classic radio drama/1950s tv hit Dragnet, Mr. Webb was enthusiastic. One reason was that he saw the cultural trends that encouraged drug use, and wanted to address those trends.
The tv movie, Dragnet 1966, pleased the network executives so much that they ordered a weekly tv series. And Mr. Webb delivered – 17 episodes of Dragnet 1967, kicking off a successful 4-year run of 98 episodes. Interestingly, the 1966 tv movie didn’t air until 1969!
In any event, the drug issue was important to Mr. Webb and it is prominent in the tv series pilot, The LSD Story, which aired on January 12, 1967. It’s a memorable episode because of the subject matter and the way it is handled. The junkie in the episode, Blue Boy enjoys a well deserved footnote in television history!
A YouTube user edited together the best parts of the episode, and thanks to him I can present selections from The LSD Story as part of our series, Fridays for Friday.
Enjoy!
Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!
Those who know me know that I am a big fan of Bullwinkle and his pal Rocky, as well as Boris, Natasha, and the rest of their family of characters! Well, mix the antics of Bullwinkle with the antics of Dragnet, and you have a sure formula for success!
Sit back and enjoy!
“You need more tonic, boy”
One of the most memorable Woody Woodpecker animated shorts is ‘Under the Counter Spy,’ a neat spoof on Dragnet. I have to admit, this is one of the darker Woody Woodpecker cartoons and downright creepy at times! Still, it’s a classic and very enjoyable!
Lee Marvin on Dragnet
Thought I would share a Dragnet classic this week – an entire episode! This episode is ‘The Big Cast’ and featured a young Lee Marvin before he would go on to greater success.
The episode was first broadcast on February 14, 1952, and is brought to you today courtesy of the magic of YouTube!
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Jack Webb has never led me in a wrong direction! Enjoy the Webb-wisdom of this public service announcement regarding the importance of seat belts!
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