BEN ROMERO (BARTON YARBOROUGH) & JOE FRIDAY (JACK WEBB).
WEBB'S DAYS BEFORE FRIDAY
When Dragnet replaced The Life of Riley for the summer on NBC in early June, 1949, its small audience was struck by its realism as described by Jack Webb’s flat, matter-of-factly, first person narrative. To most listeners the program’s trademark opening of Webb, as a Los Angeles police sergeant describing the set-up to each week’s episode before stepping into the procedural drama, was something new. They were unaware that Webb had been practicing the technique since 1946 in earlier programs as Pat Novak, Jeff Regan and Johnny Modero - now all but forgotten.
Only this time his character was the unforgettable Joe Friday, whose Network Radio run extended for eight years and his two careers in television ran from 1951 to 1959 and 1967 to 1970 - and still plays today in cable television syndication. Jack Webb’s Dragnet became an institution.
Jack Randolph Webb was born in Santa Monica, California, on April 2, 1920, literally a fatherless child whose birth certificate was never located. Neither was Samuel Webb, who deserted Margaret Smith when she was pregnant with Jack. The asthmatic youngster was raised in a rooming house run by his destitute mother and maternal grandmother in the rundown Echo Park district of Los Angeles with a strong assist from welfare agencies and Our Lady of Loretto Catholic Church.
Despite poverty, young Jack was an ambitious student showing talent in art and dramatics. His popularity with classmates resulted in his election as President of his senior class at Belmont High School while he picked up various odd jobs to help support his family. At graduation, was hired for an entry level job at Silverwoods Men's Clothing in Westwood that developed into an Assistant Manager's position several years later but precluded his accepting a scholarship at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles. Nevertheless he continued to hone his acting abilities in community theater productions.
Webb also took a night class in radio production at Los Angeles City College, participating in a mystery anthology series, A Half Hour To Kill. Moyer & Alverez report in their biography of Jack Webb, Just The Facts, Ma'am, that during this period red socks became his lifelong trademark.
Webb traded red for khaki in November, 1942. He enlisted in the Army Air Force but washed out of pilot training after two years. In January, 1945, he received a hardship discharge as the sole support for his ailing mother and grandmother.
Radio was suffering from a manpower shortage during the final year of World War II when Webb recorded an announcer's audition at KHJ/Los Angeles for its sister-station, KFRC/San Francisco, that wound up on the program director's desk at KGO/San Francisco. KGO was then the hub of ABC’s West Coast Network - feeding programs from the chain’s main trunk line to affiliates throughout California, Oregon and Washington. In addition, KGO originated programs - both sustaining and shows sold to regional advertisers - for ABC stations on the Pacific Coast leg of the network. (1)
Much to his surprise, Jack Webb found work on both sides of KGO’s operation. Locally, he was assigned the station’s morning disc jockey show, co-hosting the daily KGO Coffee Club, displaying his knowledge and love of classic jazz and swing. He also played roles in regional network productions. Whether a member of ensemble casts or flying solo and voicing all the characters in the racially charged weekly series One Out of Seven, also posted below, his persona as an actor was taking shape. It was also during this period that Webb worked closely with One Out of Seven’s creator, James Edward Moser. The two formed a friendship and strong working relationship that would pay dividends for both in just a few short years. (2)
Then, in early 1946, Webb’s career path crossed that of another young writer at KGO, Dick Breen - who later became known as Academy Award winning writer Richard Lyons Breen. (3) Together they shared an apartment and concocted a half hour of weekly nonsense on ABC/West, The Jack Webb Show. An episode of a this off-beat, short lived variety show is also posted below with silliness supported by John Galbraith, not to be confused with the noted economist of the same name. Both Webb and Breen had an appreciation for jazz, particularly Dixieland, as evidenced by the show’s music, provided by Phil Bovero’s small group with excellent vocals by Nora MacNamara and Clancy Hayes.
A few months later the Webb-Breen collaboration had a unique payoff when ABC sold the large West Coast retail shoe store chain, Gallenkamp‘s, on their series Pat Novak For Hire. The weekly melodrama featured Webb in the title role slinging Breen’s Sam Spade & Phillip Marlow type metaphors along the San Francisco waterfront where his office was located at Pier 19. (4) Although the ABC West Coast network was limited in coverage, Pat Novak was heard where it counted - in Los Angeles - and Webb was soon offered studio work back in his hometown.
Once settled in LA it didn’t take long for Webb and Breen to sell Mutual on a series that for all intents and purposes was Pat Novak Redux. Johnny Modero, Pier 23 debuted over the full Mutual network on April 24, 1947, but it was considered a sustaining “filler” and not picked up by many stations. It was cancelled on September 4th. Nevertheless, it was considered a good program as evidenced by a second episode also posted below. Sharp listeners will note the subtle phrasing of I Cover The Waterfront in the show’s theme and the familiar voices of Gale Gordon and William Conrad in the cast. Webb also received news coverage during the run of Johnny Modero for his marriage to 21 year old starlet-singer Julie London. (5)
Jack Webb had built a following on the West Coast with his roles in Pat Novak and Johnny Modero. His talent attracted studio jobs in such network shows as Escape, The Whistler and This Is Your FBI. Then, on July 10, 1948, he took the lead in Jeff Regan, Investigator on the CBS West Coast Network - revolving around the adventures of an insurance investigator. In addition, he picked up minor supporting roles in movies - one in particular that changed his life.
Webb was cast in the supporting film role of a police lab technician in the low budget, semi-documentary He Walked By Night in 1948. The plot was based on Los Angeles police records, tracing the actual events leading to the capture of a cop killer. During the filming Webb became friends with its technical adviser, Sergeant Marty Wynn of the LAPD, who claimed that case files from the department would be a good source for a realistic radio series based in facts and without the heroic frills common to most crime shows.
Webb was skeptical and thought the idea was boring. He was working at the time with fellow radio actor Herb Ellis on the pilot for a private eye television show titled, Joe Friday - Room Five. But when film critics praised the semi-documentary approach of He Walked By Night, Jack had second thoughts about his conversations with Marty Wynn. He wrote in 1959, "I get a little queasy when I think how I almost missed the boat."
The more the two talked, the more the idea of a series following cases from the perspectives of police detectives excited Webb. He began riding with Wynn and his partner as they worked cases, hanging around police squad rooms and attending Police Academy classes to sharpen his accuracy for routine and jargon. Webb later told TV Guide, "My fascination with police work came while I was researching Dragnet. It was pretty much virgin territory then. Here was a group of men trying to upgrade their work against all odds. I felt, and still do, that there was high drama to it."
When it came to naming the show, Webb and his detective friends rejected The Cop as too informal and The Sergeant as too military sounding. In a conversation with Herb Ellis, Webb hit on "Dragnet", defined as, "A system of coordinated procedures for apprehending criminal suspects or other wanted persons." The title was perfect and Webb revived the name Joe Friday for its lead character.
While Dragnet took shape, Webb and Breen revived Pat Novak For Hire for ABC’s coast-to-coast network on February 13, 1949. It ran for seven weeks in the Sunday night suicide spot opposite Jack Benny on CBS. An episode from this run of Pat Novak, co-starring Raymond Burr as Inspector Hellman is also posted below. The show was sustaining and unrated, yet mercifully moved from April 2nd until May 7th to ABC’s Saturday schedule at 9:30 then back to 8:00 on Saturdays from May 14th to June 25th.
Michael Hyde's excellent 2001 volume, My Name's Friday, reports that Webb first pitched the Dragnet concept to his theatrical agent, George Rosenberg, who said it was doomed because it lacked a "Sam Spade kind of hero." Undaunted, Webb proposed the series to CBS without his agent and was turned down flat. He later recalled, "CBS saw no future for a cop show that paid so much attention to detail and listeners never got to hear a crime being committed."
Webb moved on to NBC in April and presented the program to West Coast Operations Manager Homer Canfield and his staff, who were under attack of the CBS talent raid and becoming panicky for new ideas. Canfield praised the Dragnet proposal, gave Webb $2,000 to fund an audition recording and promised to give the show a summer tryout if the LAPD agreed to cooperate. Webb was given a month to get the jobs accomplished.
Agent Rosenberg re-entered the picture to handle the contracts with NBC and administer the program's payroll - giving Webb, its creator, star, ex-officio producer and director, $150 a week. On paper, Rosenberg also claimed ownership of Dragnet, a matter that was eventually resolved out of court giving Webb title to the program in exchange for a cash settlement but not without bad blood between the two.
Casting the role of his co-star, Joe Friday's partner, Ben Romero, was easy for Webb. He was a fan and a friend of Barton Yarborough, 46, known to radio listeners as Cliff Barbour from One Man’s Family and Doc Long on I Love A Mystery, both creations of Carleton E. Morse. The easy drawl of Texas born Yarborough was great counterpoint to Webb’s flat and matter-of-factly delivery. Charter members of Webb's Dragnet stock company with roles in the audition program included Harry Bartell, Herb Ellis, Virginia Gregg, Jack Kruschen, Bill Johnstone, Charles McGraw, Vic Perrin, Barney Phillips and Peggy Webber. (6)
Armed with the audition record, Webb got an appointment with Los Angeles Police Chief C.B. Horrall. Horrall listened briefly to the pilot program and agreed to give Dragnet's writers access to the department’s case files on three conditions - that no confidentiality would be compromised, that the police would not be cast in an unflattering light and that the LAPD would have the right to refuse any sponsor of the show that it deemed objectionable. (7) The terms were easily acceptable and after a year of preparation Dragnet was about to become a reality.
With four weeks still remaining in Pat Novak’s run on ABC, Dragnet debuted at 10:00 p.m. ET on Friday, June 3, 1949, the first of its many stops on the NBC schedule. The second broadcast in the series from June 10th is posted below. It will leave some listeners confused because it lacks Walter Schumann’s familiar theme, The Dragnet March, with its signature four note opening. The theme was introduced on the broadcast of June 17, 1949, also posted below. (8)
Dragnet's first days were a test of Webb's convictions. NBC's East Coast brass, agent Rosenberg and the show's writer Rosenberg hired, Bob Ryf, all demanded that Webb allow more gunplay and "snappy" dialogue to make the show sound more like a "real cop show" - everything he promised the LAPD that Dragnet would not become. The show was operating on a month-to-month option so it could be cancelled on just a week's notice and the future was looking bleak.
Then syndicated radio critic John Crosby's column appeared in the New York Herald-Tribune on June 13th and everything changed when he wrote: "Dragnet is an astonishing cops and robbers job simply because nothing very astonishing happens on it. ... The show rings with an authenticity that I found absorbing. ... If we have to have whodunits on the air, I greatly prefer the real McCoy to the malarkey that is normally served up. .... Quite a few crime shows now claim to be based on somebody or other's files. Few of them sound as authentic as Dragnet."
The Crosby column had ramifications. It got NBC's Eastern bureaucrats off Webb's back, lessened George Rosenberg's influence and emboldened Webb to fire disgruntled writer Ryf and replace him with his old friend from KGO, Jim Moser, who understood what Jack was trying to accomplish with Dragnet and promptly contributed the program's familiar opening and closing formats.
The month-old Dragnet was moved on July 7th to Thursday at 10;30 ET until September 1st, then to Saturdays at 7:30 from September 3rd until October 1st, then back to Thursdays at 10:30 where it remained for the rest of the 1949-50 season. After 18 weeks without a sponsor, it was picked up by Liggett & Myers Tobacco for its Fatima Cigarettes in November. (9) One of its last sustaining shows from September 17th and an initial sponsored broadcast for Fatima on November 24th are also posted below.
Although Dragnet was earning increased critical acclaim - the New York Times and Time magazine both shared Crosby's early opinion - it only averaged a humble 8.5 rating and 64th place for the season against First Nighter and Hollywood Playhouse on CBS which controlled seven of Thursday’s Top Ten programs.
Dragnet was moved twice again before the start of the 1950-51 season - to Thursday at 10:00 p.m. on June 8th and back an hour to 9:00 on August 24th where it remained for the next two seasons. It inched up to an 8.7 rating for both seasons, ranking 45th in 1950-51. But by this time Webb had other projects on his mind - Pete Kelly’s Blues and Dragnet’s adaptation for television.
Pete Kelly’s Blues was a “gimmie” to Webb by NBC in 1951. The network was still under siege of the CBS talent raid that began two years earlier and it would do most anything to protect its most valuable properties and please its creators. With Dragnet about to begin its run on NBC Television, giving Webb production money and a half hour of network time over the summer months to experiment with his pet project was a small price to pay to keep him happy.
Pete Kelly’s Blues was a 13 week trip back to the 1920’s on NBC’s Wednesday night schedule beginning on July 4th 1951. It revolved around the life and misadventures of the coronet playing leader of Pete Kelly’s Big Seven in a Kansas City speakeasy. (10) Always known for his loyalty to trusted co-workers and friends, Pete Kelly’s Blues reunited Webb with both Breen, (credited as its creator), and Moser, (listed as its head writer). In addition, Dick Cathcart, who played coronet and led the Big Seven, was a friend of Webb’s in the Army, singer Meredith Howard and Webb were high school friends and announcer George Fenneman - who doubled on Dragnet - befriended young Jack Webb in his early days at KGO.
Dragnet’s adaptation to television was the cause for another dispute between NBC's East Coast executives who wanted it to be a live program produced in the network's New York studios and Webb, who insisted that it be shot on film using real Los Angeles locations whenever possible. The network caved when Liggett & Myers sided with Webb and provided $38,000 to film a pilot episode.
Webb and his early television producer, Herb Strock, chose a Jim Moser teleplay based on Moser's Dragnet radio script from July 13, 1950, The Big Bomb, for their pilot. Much of the pilot was shot in the nearly empty Los Angeles City Hall over Columbus Day weekend in October, 1951. Close-ups were shot the following weekend at the Samuel Goldwyn studios. (11)
Webb‘s Mark VII Ltd. production company duplicated the realistic formula of the radio series with liberal use of solid radio actors with faces unknown to the television audience. Webb was also an early proponent of tight close-ups given the small size of the period's television screens. Close-ups had the added advantage of allowing his experienced actors to sight-read their lines from cue cards and early versions of TelePrompTers placed just off camera. This strategy enabled efficient production that could shoot a complete episode in three days for under $40,000. Webb later developed the practice of shooting multiple episodes simultaneously and trimmed his cost per episode to under $15,000.
Dragnet debuted on NBC-TV at 7:00 p.m. on Sunday, December 16, 1951, in the regular time period of Chesterfield Sound Off Time, a half hour variety show with alternate hosts Bob Hope and Fred Allen. The pilot was well received and the show faced a bright future. Then tragedy struck.
Barton Yarborough died of a heart attack on December 19th at age 51. Yarborough’s final Dragnet broadcast as Ben Romero on December 13, 1951, is posted below along with the program of December 27th, aptly titled, The Big Sorrow, in which his death is acknowledged and Barney Phillips takes the quickly created role of Sergeant Ed Jacobs, assigned as Joe Friday’s temporary partner after Ben Romero‘s sudden passing.
Dragnet’s radio series quickly recovered with Phillips and others filling in as Joe Friday’s partner until Ben Alexander first appeared as Sergeant Frank Smith on May 15, 1952, in the episode posted below. Alexander assumed the role as Friday's permanent partner on radio and television from the fall of 1952 until 1959.
Due to Network Radio’s audience attrition, Dragnet’s mere 8.7 was the highest rated program on Friday nights in 1951-52 and good for 14th place in the season’s Top 50. (12) Liggett & Myers moved the program on September 14, 1952, to Sundays at 9:30 where its 6.7 was NBC‘s highest rating of the night and finished the season in 15th place. The much traveled series was moved again on September 1, 1953 to NBC’s Tuesday night schedule where it stayed until leaving the air
Dragnet’s 318th and last original radio broadcast - and the final show for Chesterfield - titled The Big Close, was aired on September 20, 1955. It remained on NBC in rerun form as a participating spot carrier until February 26, 1957.
Jack Webb died of a heart attack on December 23, 1982, at age 62. In his honor Los Angeles city flags were flown at half mast and a memorial service was held on December 30th at the Los Angeles Police Academy. Joe Friday's badge 714 - selected by Webb for "luck and double luck" - was retired by the Los Angeles Police Department which considered him one of its own for telling its side of the story in real life terms.
(1) The Basic ABC West Coast Network at the time included: KECA/Los Angeles, KERN/Bakersfield, KEX/Portland, KFBK/Sacramento, KFSD/San Diego, KGA/Spokane, KGO/San Francisco, KJR/Seattle, KOH/Reno, KTKC/Fresno-Visalia, KTMS/Santa Barbara and KWG/Stockton.
(2) Besides his extensive work with Jack Webb, James Moser became a prolific writer for television, specializing in dramatic series with medical themes. Moser created and wrote episodes for Medic starring Richard Boone, (1953-56); Vince Edwards as Ben Casey, (1961-66); Slattery’s People with Richard Crenna, (1964-65); David Janssen as O’Hara, U.S. Treasury, (1971-72), and Doctors’ Hospital starring George Peppard, (1975-76).
(3) Dick Breen signed a contract with Paramount Pictures in 1948 and was nominated for an Oscar in 1949 for his work on A Foreign Affair with Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder. He and Brackett won the Academy Award for writing Titanic with Walter Reisch. Breen also wrote the screenplays for two of Webb's films, Dragnet in 1954 and Pete Kelly's Blues in 1955. Breen’s many accomplishments led to his election as President of the Screen Writers’ Guild from 1952-53 and he was the first President of the Writers’ Guild of America, West, from 1954-55. Breen wrote the film adaptations of Webb’s Dragnet in 1954 and Pete Kelly’s Blues in 1955.
(4) “You gotta put your best foot forward if you want to trip up a friend,” “She was the sort of girl you’d want to see in a choir loft…about three hours after choir practice,” “It felt like opening a hand grenade under the Christmas tree,” “Her eyes were as cold as rigor mortis,” “Is the water red or have you been shot a little?” “His bald head looked like a cantaloupe in the garbage,” “I was unhappy like a three legged man in a ballet school,” and “He was as dead as last year’s love” were just a few of Breen’s wise cracks mouthed by Pat Novak. Webb credited Breen with encouraging his underplayed delivery that began with Novak and led to Joe Friday.
(5) After several years of courtship, Webb married singer-actress Julie London, fka Gail Peck, on July 19,1947. The couple had two daughters before divorcing in 1954. They remained good friends and London, with her second husband Bobby Troup, starred in Webb’s television series Emergency! from 1972-78. Webb subsequently married and divorced Dorothy Towne, (1955-57), and Jackie Loughery, (1958-64). He was married to Opal Wright in 1980 until his death in 1982.
(6) Webb had a special fondness for Peggy Webber, who at age 22 debuted as Ma Friday, the hero's widowed mother. Other roles, both recurring and one-shots were filled by first-call radio players including Tol Avery, Parley Baer, Raymond Burr, Herb Butterfield, Whit Connor, Sam Edwards, Georgia Ellis, Stacy Harris, Earl Lee, Olan Soule and Herb Vigran. The program's first announcer, Eddy King, was replaced during its first month by Hal Gibney who was joined shortly afterwards by George Fenneman to create Dragnet's unique announcing duo.
(7) Chief Horrall was quoted by Webb after their initial meeting: "You're on the right track. You don't make heroes of cops and you're reflecting the day-to-day drudgery of police work." In response Webb created three guidelines for Dragnet: 1/ Never glorify or defame police officers, 2/ Represent police officers as average, regular human beings, and 3/ Follow the facts of a genuine LAPD case. To insure compliance, LAPD Officers Marty Wynn, Vance Brasher and Jack Donohue were allowed to serve as Dragnet's technical advisers in their off-duty hours for $25.00 a week, increased to $100 a week when the television version of the show was added.
(8) Walter Schumann’s Dragnet theme became a best selling Capitol record by Ray Anthony’s band in August, 1953, reaching Number Three in the Billboard rankings. The respected Schumann then realized that he had subconsciously taken its main four-note theme from his friend Miklos Rozsa’s score for the film, The Killers. An agreement was reached that royalties for the composition would be shared.
(9) Liggett & Myers was Dragnet’s sole sponsor on both radio and television. Its initial radio sponsorship of Dragnet for $4,000 a week earned Webb a salary increase to $300 a week. The company dropped its Fatima cigarettes in the early 1950's and switched the program's sponsorship to its Chesterfield brand. Webb smoked two to three packs of cigarettes a day although suffering from asthma since childhood.
(10) Pete Kelly’s Big Seven consisted of Dick Cathcart, leader/coronet; Matty Matlock, arranger/clarinet; Elmer Schneider, trombone; Ray Schneider, piano; Bill Newman, guitar; Marty Carb, bass, and Nick Fatool, drums. The group played at least two songs in every show.
(11) Dragnet historians also trace the television pilot's roots to the seventh episode in the radio series, Moser's script for The Attempted City Hall Bombing broadcast on July 21, 1949. Once television production got underway, interiors were first shot at Republic Studios then moved to permanent sets Webb had constructed at Walt Disney Studios.
(12) The television version of Dragnet settled into its scheduled bi-weekly run on Thursday, January 3, 1952, and finished the season in 20th place with a 36.3 Nielsen rating. With a summer hiatus from June 19 to September 11, it continued on a every-other-week schedule for the rest of 1952. Dragnet become a weekly television series on January 1, 1953, and won the first of its four consecutive Emmys as the Best Mystery/ Adventure Series. It finished the 1952-53 television season as Thursday’s most popular program with a 46.8 rating. Dragnet was the first of Webb’s successes in television production which eventually included Adam 12 and Emergency! He sold all rights to Dragnet in 1953 to Sherry Television, a subsidiary of Music Corporation of America, for $5.0 Million.
Copyright © 2016 Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
When Dragnet replaced The Life of Riley for the summer on NBC in early June, 1949, its small audience was struck by its realism as described by Jack Webb’s flat, matter-of-factly, first person narrative. To most listeners the program’s trademark opening of Webb, as a Los Angeles police sergeant describing the set-up to each week’s episode before stepping into the procedural drama, was something new. They were unaware that Webb had been practicing the technique since 1946 in earlier programs as Pat Novak, Jeff Regan and Johnny Modero - now all but forgotten.
Only this time his character was the unforgettable Joe Friday, whose Network Radio run extended for eight years and his two careers in television ran from 1951 to 1959 and 1967 to 1970 - and still plays today in cable television syndication. Jack Webb’s Dragnet became an institution.
Jack Randolph Webb was born in Santa Monica, California, on April 2, 1920, literally a fatherless child whose birth certificate was never located. Neither was Samuel Webb, who deserted Margaret Smith when she was pregnant with Jack. The asthmatic youngster was raised in a rooming house run by his destitute mother and maternal grandmother in the rundown Echo Park district of Los Angeles with a strong assist from welfare agencies and Our Lady of Loretto Catholic Church.
Despite poverty, young Jack was an ambitious student showing talent in art and dramatics. His popularity with classmates resulted in his election as President of his senior class at Belmont High School while he picked up various odd jobs to help support his family. At graduation, was hired for an entry level job at Silverwoods Men's Clothing in Westwood that developed into an Assistant Manager's position several years later but precluded his accepting a scholarship at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles. Nevertheless he continued to hone his acting abilities in community theater productions.
Webb also took a night class in radio production at Los Angeles City College, participating in a mystery anthology series, A Half Hour To Kill. Moyer & Alverez report in their biography of Jack Webb, Just The Facts, Ma'am, that during this period red socks became his lifelong trademark.
Webb traded red for khaki in November, 1942. He enlisted in the Army Air Force but washed out of pilot training after two years. In January, 1945, he received a hardship discharge as the sole support for his ailing mother and grandmother.
Radio was suffering from a manpower shortage during the final year of World War II when Webb recorded an announcer's audition at KHJ/Los Angeles for its sister-station, KFRC/San Francisco, that wound up on the program director's desk at KGO/San Francisco. KGO was then the hub of ABC’s West Coast Network - feeding programs from the chain’s main trunk line to affiliates throughout California, Oregon and Washington. In addition, KGO originated programs - both sustaining and shows sold to regional advertisers - for ABC stations on the Pacific Coast leg of the network. (1)
Much to his surprise, Jack Webb found work on both sides of KGO’s operation. Locally, he was assigned the station’s morning disc jockey show, co-hosting the daily KGO Coffee Club, displaying his knowledge and love of classic jazz and swing. He also played roles in regional network productions. Whether a member of ensemble casts or flying solo and voicing all the characters in the racially charged weekly series One Out of Seven, also posted below, his persona as an actor was taking shape. It was also during this period that Webb worked closely with One Out of Seven’s creator, James Edward Moser. The two formed a friendship and strong working relationship that would pay dividends for both in just a few short years. (2)
Then, in early 1946, Webb’s career path crossed that of another young writer at KGO, Dick Breen - who later became known as Academy Award winning writer Richard Lyons Breen. (3) Together they shared an apartment and concocted a half hour of weekly nonsense on ABC/West, The Jack Webb Show. An episode of a this off-beat, short lived variety show is also posted below with silliness supported by John Galbraith, not to be confused with the noted economist of the same name. Both Webb and Breen had an appreciation for jazz, particularly Dixieland, as evidenced by the show’s music, provided by Phil Bovero’s small group with excellent vocals by Nora MacNamara and Clancy Hayes.
A few months later the Webb-Breen collaboration had a unique payoff when ABC sold the large West Coast retail shoe store chain, Gallenkamp‘s, on their series Pat Novak For Hire. The weekly melodrama featured Webb in the title role slinging Breen’s Sam Spade & Phillip Marlow type metaphors along the San Francisco waterfront where his office was located at Pier 19. (4) Although the ABC West Coast network was limited in coverage, Pat Novak was heard where it counted - in Los Angeles - and Webb was soon offered studio work back in his hometown.
Once settled in LA it didn’t take long for Webb and Breen to sell Mutual on a series that for all intents and purposes was Pat Novak Redux. Johnny Modero, Pier 23 debuted over the full Mutual network on April 24, 1947, but it was considered a sustaining “filler” and not picked up by many stations. It was cancelled on September 4th. Nevertheless, it was considered a good program as evidenced by a second episode also posted below. Sharp listeners will note the subtle phrasing of I Cover The Waterfront in the show’s theme and the familiar voices of Gale Gordon and William Conrad in the cast. Webb also received news coverage during the run of Johnny Modero for his marriage to 21 year old starlet-singer Julie London. (5)
Jack Webb had built a following on the West Coast with his roles in Pat Novak and Johnny Modero. His talent attracted studio jobs in such network shows as Escape, The Whistler and This Is Your FBI. Then, on July 10, 1948, he took the lead in Jeff Regan, Investigator on the CBS West Coast Network - revolving around the adventures of an insurance investigator. In addition, he picked up minor supporting roles in movies - one in particular that changed his life.
Webb was cast in the supporting film role of a police lab technician in the low budget, semi-documentary He Walked By Night in 1948. The plot was based on Los Angeles police records, tracing the actual events leading to the capture of a cop killer. During the filming Webb became friends with its technical adviser, Sergeant Marty Wynn of the LAPD, who claimed that case files from the department would be a good source for a realistic radio series based in facts and without the heroic frills common to most crime shows.
Webb was skeptical and thought the idea was boring. He was working at the time with fellow radio actor Herb Ellis on the pilot for a private eye television show titled, Joe Friday - Room Five. But when film critics praised the semi-documentary approach of He Walked By Night, Jack had second thoughts about his conversations with Marty Wynn. He wrote in 1959, "I get a little queasy when I think how I almost missed the boat."
The more the two talked, the more the idea of a series following cases from the perspectives of police detectives excited Webb. He began riding with Wynn and his partner as they worked cases, hanging around police squad rooms and attending Police Academy classes to sharpen his accuracy for routine and jargon. Webb later told TV Guide, "My fascination with police work came while I was researching Dragnet. It was pretty much virgin territory then. Here was a group of men trying to upgrade their work against all odds. I felt, and still do, that there was high drama to it."
When it came to naming the show, Webb and his detective friends rejected The Cop as too informal and The Sergeant as too military sounding. In a conversation with Herb Ellis, Webb hit on "Dragnet", defined as, "A system of coordinated procedures for apprehending criminal suspects or other wanted persons." The title was perfect and Webb revived the name Joe Friday for its lead character.
While Dragnet took shape, Webb and Breen revived Pat Novak For Hire for ABC’s coast-to-coast network on February 13, 1949. It ran for seven weeks in the Sunday night suicide spot opposite Jack Benny on CBS. An episode from this run of Pat Novak, co-starring Raymond Burr as Inspector Hellman is also posted below. The show was sustaining and unrated, yet mercifully moved from April 2nd until May 7th to ABC’s Saturday schedule at 9:30 then back to 8:00 on Saturdays from May 14th to June 25th.
Michael Hyde's excellent 2001 volume, My Name's Friday, reports that Webb first pitched the Dragnet concept to his theatrical agent, George Rosenberg, who said it was doomed because it lacked a "Sam Spade kind of hero." Undaunted, Webb proposed the series to CBS without his agent and was turned down flat. He later recalled, "CBS saw no future for a cop show that paid so much attention to detail and listeners never got to hear a crime being committed."
Webb moved on to NBC in April and presented the program to West Coast Operations Manager Homer Canfield and his staff, who were under attack of the CBS talent raid and becoming panicky for new ideas. Canfield praised the Dragnet proposal, gave Webb $2,000 to fund an audition recording and promised to give the show a summer tryout if the LAPD agreed to cooperate. Webb was given a month to get the jobs accomplished.
Agent Rosenberg re-entered the picture to handle the contracts with NBC and administer the program's payroll - giving Webb, its creator, star, ex-officio producer and director, $150 a week. On paper, Rosenberg also claimed ownership of Dragnet, a matter that was eventually resolved out of court giving Webb title to the program in exchange for a cash settlement but not without bad blood between the two.
Casting the role of his co-star, Joe Friday's partner, Ben Romero, was easy for Webb. He was a fan and a friend of Barton Yarborough, 46, known to radio listeners as Cliff Barbour from One Man’s Family and Doc Long on I Love A Mystery, both creations of Carleton E. Morse. The easy drawl of Texas born Yarborough was great counterpoint to Webb’s flat and matter-of-factly delivery. Charter members of Webb's Dragnet stock company with roles in the audition program included Harry Bartell, Herb Ellis, Virginia Gregg, Jack Kruschen, Bill Johnstone, Charles McGraw, Vic Perrin, Barney Phillips and Peggy Webber. (6)
Armed with the audition record, Webb got an appointment with Los Angeles Police Chief C.B. Horrall. Horrall listened briefly to the pilot program and agreed to give Dragnet's writers access to the department’s case files on three conditions - that no confidentiality would be compromised, that the police would not be cast in an unflattering light and that the LAPD would have the right to refuse any sponsor of the show that it deemed objectionable. (7) The terms were easily acceptable and after a year of preparation Dragnet was about to become a reality.
With four weeks still remaining in Pat Novak’s run on ABC, Dragnet debuted at 10:00 p.m. ET on Friday, June 3, 1949, the first of its many stops on the NBC schedule. The second broadcast in the series from June 10th is posted below. It will leave some listeners confused because it lacks Walter Schumann’s familiar theme, The Dragnet March, with its signature four note opening. The theme was introduced on the broadcast of June 17, 1949, also posted below. (8)
Dragnet's first days were a test of Webb's convictions. NBC's East Coast brass, agent Rosenberg and the show's writer Rosenberg hired, Bob Ryf, all demanded that Webb allow more gunplay and "snappy" dialogue to make the show sound more like a "real cop show" - everything he promised the LAPD that Dragnet would not become. The show was operating on a month-to-month option so it could be cancelled on just a week's notice and the future was looking bleak.
Then syndicated radio critic John Crosby's column appeared in the New York Herald-Tribune on June 13th and everything changed when he wrote: "Dragnet is an astonishing cops and robbers job simply because nothing very astonishing happens on it. ... The show rings with an authenticity that I found absorbing. ... If we have to have whodunits on the air, I greatly prefer the real McCoy to the malarkey that is normally served up. .... Quite a few crime shows now claim to be based on somebody or other's files. Few of them sound as authentic as Dragnet."
The Crosby column had ramifications. It got NBC's Eastern bureaucrats off Webb's back, lessened George Rosenberg's influence and emboldened Webb to fire disgruntled writer Ryf and replace him with his old friend from KGO, Jim Moser, who understood what Jack was trying to accomplish with Dragnet and promptly contributed the program's familiar opening and closing formats.
The month-old Dragnet was moved on July 7th to Thursday at 10;30 ET until September 1st, then to Saturdays at 7:30 from September 3rd until October 1st, then back to Thursdays at 10:30 where it remained for the rest of the 1949-50 season. After 18 weeks without a sponsor, it was picked up by Liggett & Myers Tobacco for its Fatima Cigarettes in November. (9) One of its last sustaining shows from September 17th and an initial sponsored broadcast for Fatima on November 24th are also posted below.
Although Dragnet was earning increased critical acclaim - the New York Times and Time magazine both shared Crosby's early opinion - it only averaged a humble 8.5 rating and 64th place for the season against First Nighter and Hollywood Playhouse on CBS which controlled seven of Thursday’s Top Ten programs.
Dragnet was moved twice again before the start of the 1950-51 season - to Thursday at 10:00 p.m. on June 8th and back an hour to 9:00 on August 24th where it remained for the next two seasons. It inched up to an 8.7 rating for both seasons, ranking 45th in 1950-51. But by this time Webb had other projects on his mind - Pete Kelly’s Blues and Dragnet’s adaptation for television.
Pete Kelly’s Blues was a “gimmie” to Webb by NBC in 1951. The network was still under siege of the CBS talent raid that began two years earlier and it would do most anything to protect its most valuable properties and please its creators. With Dragnet about to begin its run on NBC Television, giving Webb production money and a half hour of network time over the summer months to experiment with his pet project was a small price to pay to keep him happy.
Pete Kelly’s Blues was a 13 week trip back to the 1920’s on NBC’s Wednesday night schedule beginning on July 4th 1951. It revolved around the life and misadventures of the coronet playing leader of Pete Kelly’s Big Seven in a Kansas City speakeasy. (10) Always known for his loyalty to trusted co-workers and friends, Pete Kelly’s Blues reunited Webb with both Breen, (credited as its creator), and Moser, (listed as its head writer). In addition, Dick Cathcart, who played coronet and led the Big Seven, was a friend of Webb’s in the Army, singer Meredith Howard and Webb were high school friends and announcer George Fenneman - who doubled on Dragnet - befriended young Jack Webb in his early days at KGO.
Dragnet’s adaptation to television was the cause for another dispute between NBC's East Coast executives who wanted it to be a live program produced in the network's New York studios and Webb, who insisted that it be shot on film using real Los Angeles locations whenever possible. The network caved when Liggett & Myers sided with Webb and provided $38,000 to film a pilot episode.
Webb and his early television producer, Herb Strock, chose a Jim Moser teleplay based on Moser's Dragnet radio script from July 13, 1950, The Big Bomb, for their pilot. Much of the pilot was shot in the nearly empty Los Angeles City Hall over Columbus Day weekend in October, 1951. Close-ups were shot the following weekend at the Samuel Goldwyn studios. (11)
Webb‘s Mark VII Ltd. production company duplicated the realistic formula of the radio series with liberal use of solid radio actors with faces unknown to the television audience. Webb was also an early proponent of tight close-ups given the small size of the period's television screens. Close-ups had the added advantage of allowing his experienced actors to sight-read their lines from cue cards and early versions of TelePrompTers placed just off camera. This strategy enabled efficient production that could shoot a complete episode in three days for under $40,000. Webb later developed the practice of shooting multiple episodes simultaneously and trimmed his cost per episode to under $15,000.
Dragnet debuted on NBC-TV at 7:00 p.m. on Sunday, December 16, 1951, in the regular time period of Chesterfield Sound Off Time, a half hour variety show with alternate hosts Bob Hope and Fred Allen. The pilot was well received and the show faced a bright future. Then tragedy struck.
Barton Yarborough died of a heart attack on December 19th at age 51. Yarborough’s final Dragnet broadcast as Ben Romero on December 13, 1951, is posted below along with the program of December 27th, aptly titled, The Big Sorrow, in which his death is acknowledged and Barney Phillips takes the quickly created role of Sergeant Ed Jacobs, assigned as Joe Friday’s temporary partner after Ben Romero‘s sudden passing.
Dragnet’s radio series quickly recovered with Phillips and others filling in as Joe Friday’s partner until Ben Alexander first appeared as Sergeant Frank Smith on May 15, 1952, in the episode posted below. Alexander assumed the role as Friday's permanent partner on radio and television from the fall of 1952 until 1959.
Due to Network Radio’s audience attrition, Dragnet’s mere 8.7 was the highest rated program on Friday nights in 1951-52 and good for 14th place in the season’s Top 50. (12) Liggett & Myers moved the program on September 14, 1952, to Sundays at 9:30 where its 6.7 was NBC‘s highest rating of the night and finished the season in 15th place. The much traveled series was moved again on September 1, 1953 to NBC’s Tuesday night schedule where it stayed until leaving the air
Dragnet’s 318th and last original radio broadcast - and the final show for Chesterfield - titled The Big Close, was aired on September 20, 1955. It remained on NBC in rerun form as a participating spot carrier until February 26, 1957.
Jack Webb died of a heart attack on December 23, 1982, at age 62. In his honor Los Angeles city flags were flown at half mast and a memorial service was held on December 30th at the Los Angeles Police Academy. Joe Friday's badge 714 - selected by Webb for "luck and double luck" - was retired by the Los Angeles Police Department which considered him one of its own for telling its side of the story in real life terms.
(1) The Basic ABC West Coast Network at the time included: KECA/Los Angeles, KERN/Bakersfield, KEX/Portland, KFBK/Sacramento, KFSD/San Diego, KGA/Spokane, KGO/San Francisco, KJR/Seattle, KOH/Reno, KTKC/Fresno-Visalia, KTMS/Santa Barbara and KWG/Stockton.
(2) Besides his extensive work with Jack Webb, James Moser became a prolific writer for television, specializing in dramatic series with medical themes. Moser created and wrote episodes for Medic starring Richard Boone, (1953-56); Vince Edwards as Ben Casey, (1961-66); Slattery’s People with Richard Crenna, (1964-65); David Janssen as O’Hara, U.S. Treasury, (1971-72), and Doctors’ Hospital starring George Peppard, (1975-76).
(3) Dick Breen signed a contract with Paramount Pictures in 1948 and was nominated for an Oscar in 1949 for his work on A Foreign Affair with Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder. He and Brackett won the Academy Award for writing Titanic with Walter Reisch. Breen also wrote the screenplays for two of Webb's films, Dragnet in 1954 and Pete Kelly's Blues in 1955. Breen’s many accomplishments led to his election as President of the Screen Writers’ Guild from 1952-53 and he was the first President of the Writers’ Guild of America, West, from 1954-55. Breen wrote the film adaptations of Webb’s Dragnet in 1954 and Pete Kelly’s Blues in 1955.
(4) “You gotta put your best foot forward if you want to trip up a friend,” “She was the sort of girl you’d want to see in a choir loft…about three hours after choir practice,” “It felt like opening a hand grenade under the Christmas tree,” “Her eyes were as cold as rigor mortis,” “Is the water red or have you been shot a little?” “His bald head looked like a cantaloupe in the garbage,” “I was unhappy like a three legged man in a ballet school,” and “He was as dead as last year’s love” were just a few of Breen’s wise cracks mouthed by Pat Novak. Webb credited Breen with encouraging his underplayed delivery that began with Novak and led to Joe Friday.
(5) After several years of courtship, Webb married singer-actress Julie London, fka Gail Peck, on July 19,1947. The couple had two daughters before divorcing in 1954. They remained good friends and London, with her second husband Bobby Troup, starred in Webb’s television series Emergency! from 1972-78. Webb subsequently married and divorced Dorothy Towne, (1955-57), and Jackie Loughery, (1958-64). He was married to Opal Wright in 1980 until his death in 1982.
(6) Webb had a special fondness for Peggy Webber, who at age 22 debuted as Ma Friday, the hero's widowed mother. Other roles, both recurring and one-shots were filled by first-call radio players including Tol Avery, Parley Baer, Raymond Burr, Herb Butterfield, Whit Connor, Sam Edwards, Georgia Ellis, Stacy Harris, Earl Lee, Olan Soule and Herb Vigran. The program's first announcer, Eddy King, was replaced during its first month by Hal Gibney who was joined shortly afterwards by George Fenneman to create Dragnet's unique announcing duo.
(7) Chief Horrall was quoted by Webb after their initial meeting: "You're on the right track. You don't make heroes of cops and you're reflecting the day-to-day drudgery of police work." In response Webb created three guidelines for Dragnet: 1/ Never glorify or defame police officers, 2/ Represent police officers as average, regular human beings, and 3/ Follow the facts of a genuine LAPD case. To insure compliance, LAPD Officers Marty Wynn, Vance Brasher and Jack Donohue were allowed to serve as Dragnet's technical advisers in their off-duty hours for $25.00 a week, increased to $100 a week when the television version of the show was added.
(8) Walter Schumann’s Dragnet theme became a best selling Capitol record by Ray Anthony’s band in August, 1953, reaching Number Three in the Billboard rankings. The respected Schumann then realized that he had subconsciously taken its main four-note theme from his friend Miklos Rozsa’s score for the film, The Killers. An agreement was reached that royalties for the composition would be shared.
(9) Liggett & Myers was Dragnet’s sole sponsor on both radio and television. Its initial radio sponsorship of Dragnet for $4,000 a week earned Webb a salary increase to $300 a week. The company dropped its Fatima cigarettes in the early 1950's and switched the program's sponsorship to its Chesterfield brand. Webb smoked two to three packs of cigarettes a day although suffering from asthma since childhood.
(10) Pete Kelly’s Big Seven consisted of Dick Cathcart, leader/coronet; Matty Matlock, arranger/clarinet; Elmer Schneider, trombone; Ray Schneider, piano; Bill Newman, guitar; Marty Carb, bass, and Nick Fatool, drums. The group played at least two songs in every show.
(11) Dragnet historians also trace the television pilot's roots to the seventh episode in the radio series, Moser's script for The Attempted City Hall Bombing broadcast on July 21, 1949. Once television production got underway, interiors were first shot at Republic Studios then moved to permanent sets Webb had constructed at Walt Disney Studios.
(12) The television version of Dragnet settled into its scheduled bi-weekly run on Thursday, January 3, 1952, and finished the season in 20th place with a 36.3 Nielsen rating. With a summer hiatus from June 19 to September 11, it continued on a every-other-week schedule for the rest of 1952. Dragnet become a weekly television series on January 1, 1953, and won the first of its four consecutive Emmys as the Best Mystery/ Adventure Series. It finished the 1952-53 television season as Thursday’s most popular program with a 46.8 rating. Dragnet was the first of Webb’s successes in television production which eventually included Adam 12 and Emergency! He sold all rights to Dragnet in 1953 to Sherry Television, a subsidiary of Music Corporation of America, for $5.0 Million.
Copyright © 2016 Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
| one_out_of_seven_____2-6-46.mp3 |
| jack_webb_show_______4-17-46.mp3 |
| pat_novak_for_hire____11-24-46.mp3 |
| johnny_modero_pier_23_____6-19-47.mp3 |
| johnny_modero_pier_23___6-26-47.mp3 |
| jeff_regan_investigator___7-17-48.mp3 |
| jeff_regan_investigator____11-13-48.mp3 |
| pat_novak_for_hire____3-06-49.mp3 |
| dragnet______6-10-49.mp3 |
| dragnet______6-17-49.mp3 |
| dragnet____9-17-49.mp3 |
| dragnet______11-24-49.mp3 |
| pete_kellys_blues_____8-22-51.mp3 |
| pete_kellys_blues____8-29-51.mp3 |
| dragnet____12-13-51.mp3 |
| dragnet_12-27-51.mp3 |
| dragnet______5-15-52.mp3 |