Dragnet (1951 TV series)

During its early success on radio, Dragnet was popular enough to move to television. More important was that it brought continuity between the television and radio series, using the same script devices and many of the same actors. Liggett & Myers sponsored Dragnet, both on radio and on TV, during the 1950s, with Webb seen smoking Chesterfields.[4]

Webb was comfortable playing Joe Friday on radio but balked at the prospect of playing the role before the cameras; according to author-biographer Michael J. Hayde, Webb's choice for the TV Joe Friday was Hollywood actor Lloyd Nolan, whose casual underplaying Webb admired. But Webb was too well established in the radio Dragnet and the network insisted that he continue in the leading role.

The template for the TV show was simply the proven radio formula, embellished with visuals. Most early episodes were directly adapted from earlier Dragnet radio shows, and writer James E. Moser wrote the vast majority of the show's episodes through the end of 1954. Webb directed every episode of Dragnet, and was also a very occasional writer on the show.

The two familiar leads, Jack Webb and Barton Yarborough, settled in for the first season, disrupted when Yarborough suffered a fatal heart attack. Under Webb's authority, the writing staff worked his partner's demise into the storyline, and Sgt. Friday rode with various partners until settling on Ben Alexander as detective Frank Smith, providing some sporadic comic relief. Most of the episodes available to viewers today feature Webb and Alexander. Alexander was also an occasional writer on the show.

John Robinson joined the writing staff in 1953, and by 1955 (after Moser left the show for a time), Robinson became Dragnet's most frequent script contributor. Note that despite some sources claiming that Robinson was a pen-name of Jack Webb, it was not; Robinson was a separate individual with a long and well-documented scriptwriting career. (Webb, whose full legal name was "John Randolph Webb", did occasionally write under the similar pen name of "John Randolph".) Frank Burt joined the staff in 1955, and along with Robinson wrote most of the mid-period Dragnet episodes. Moser returned for the final two seasons, while Robinson and Burt reduced their participation in these final years. Overall, well over 200 of the 276 episodes of Dragnet were written (or co-written) by at least one of Moser, Robinson or Burt. There were other less frequent contributors, and two notable Star Trek writers caught an early break, each writing a very late-running Dragnet episode: Gene L. Coon and John Meredyth Lucas.

The 1950s Dragnet episodes in black-and-white differ significantly from the 1960s Dragnet episodes in color. This first TV series took a documentary approach, with Sgt. Friday and the police force often encountering the seedy side of Los Angeles, with a steady succession of callous fugitives, desperate gunmen, slippery swindlers, and hard bitten women. Most of the cast members were veteran radio actors who could be relied upon to read the matter-of-fact dialogue naturally. Webb used most of his ensemble players again and again in different roles: Jack Kruschen, Vic Perrin, Harry Bartell, Art Gilmore, Peggy Webber, Barney Phillips, Herb Ellis, Carolyn Jones (then billed as Caroline Jones), Clarence Cassell, Virginia Christine, Ralph Moody, Kathleen Freeman, Stacy Harris, Natalie Masters, Virginia Gregg, Olan Soule, Herb Vigran, Peter Leeds, Sarah Selby, and many others. Martin Milner and Lee Marvin made one of their earliest TV appearances on the series; and at the time, going against type playing heavies, Raymond Burr (billed as Ray Burr) appeared in the series' first episode, as Sgt. Friday's superior, Captain Thad Mumford. Webb staged each story with newsreel-like authenticity, enhancing the visual action with extremely tight close-ups (unheard of in the days of tiny television screens), location photography, and unusual camera angles. Much of this inventiveness went unused in the 1960s revival. Although still using convincing dialogue readings, the new Dragnet lost much of the documentary appearance.

Just before the show took its final commercial break, the show's announcer would inform the audience of something related to the case, usually the opening date on which the perpetrator's trial would take place in the Los Angeles County Superior Court (this would be accompanied by an onscreen card so the viewer could read along). After the break the camera faded in for what was presumably the perpetrator's mug shot, consisting of him standing uncomfortably against the wall, while the results of the trial, including the sentencing, were announced. The perpetrator's name and fate were then superimposed over the screen. In most cases, this superimposed material specifically stated in what prison the perpetrator had been incarcerated, or, in the case of perpetrators deemed unfit to stand trial, to what state mental hospital or psychiatric facility they were committed.

In rare cases, where the perpetrator was found guilty of murder and the death penalty was applied, the place and method of execution was noted on screen. In even rarer cases, such as in the episodes "The Big Show" or "The Big Little Jesus", there was no trial. In the episode "The Big Little Jesus", the content of the episode made it clear that no trial was to be held, and there was no final announcement. In the very rare other Dragnet episodes that did not result in a trial, the narrator would briefly explain why there was no trial, and the on-screen superimposition would describe the fate of the episode's perpetrator.

While one early episode of Dragnet centered around a criminal who was found "not guilty" by a jury at the start of the episode, no episode ended with a perpetrator caught by Friday and his partner being found "not guilty" by a court.

Half of the episodes of this series are in the public domain, with an estimated fifty-two episodes released on many DVD labels. A number of these collections recycle the same fifty-two episodes. These include "The Human Bomb," "The Big Actor," "The Big Mother," "The Big Cast," "The Big September Man," " The Big Phone Call," "The Big Casing," "The Big Lamp," "The Big Seventeen," "A .22 Caliber Rifle For Christmas," "The Big Grandma," "The Big Show," "The Big Break," "The Big Frank," " The Big Hands," "The Big Barrette," "The Big Dance," "The Big Betty," "The Big Will," "The Big Thief," "The Big Little Jesus," "The Big Trunk," "The Big Boys," "The Big Children," " The Big Winchester," "The Big Shoplift," "The Big Hit & Run Killer," "The Big Girl," "The Big Frame," "The Big False Make," "The Big Producer," "The Big Fraud," "The Big Crime," "The Big Pair," "The Big Missing," "The Big Bar," "The Big Present," "The Big New Year," "The Big Rod," "The Big Lift," "The Big Gap," "The Big Look," "The Big Glasses," "The Big Bird," "The Big Smoke," "The Big Bounce," "The Big Deal," "The Big Hat," "The Big Net," "The Big War," "The Big Oskar," and "The Big Counterfeit." Often some are mislabeled as there are no onscreen titles.

Eclectic DVD released a collection of three episodes.

Platinum Video released seven episodes from the original series in 2002. The episodes are: "Big Crime," "Big Pair," "Big Producer," "Big Break," "Big September Man," "Big Betty," and "Big Trunk." The two disc set includes episodes from Burke's Law; Peter Gunn; Richard Diamond, Private Detective; Mr. Wong, Detective; and Bulldog Drummond.

• Jason Mittell, Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture. Routledge, 2004, ISBN 0-415-96903-4.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dragnet (series).

• Dragnet (1951–59) at IMDb
• Dragnet (1951) at TV.com