"Dragnet" (1951-1959), Creator-Director-Star Jack Webb's Legendary and Influential Police Serial

[DonRocks]

"Dragnet" (1951 TV Series) Main Cast 
Series created and directed by Jack Webb

Jack Webb as Detective Sergeant Joe Friday
Ben Alexander as Officer Frank Smith

The theme song, with its well-known four-note opening, is from the 1946 film, "The Killers," and was composed by Miklós Rózsa.

Season 1 (Dec 16, 1951 - Jun 19, 1952)
 (available in the public domain)

1.1 - "The Human Bomb" - Dec 16, 1951 -   
Written by Jack Webb and James E. Moser (Emmy Nominee for "Best Written Dramatic Material" for "White Is the Color" on "Medic")
Featuring Barton Yarborough as Sergeant Ben Romero (Doc Long in "The Devil's Mask"), Raymond Burr as Deputy Chief Thad Brown (Lars Thorwald in "Rear Window," Perry Mason on "Perry Mason," Robert T. Ironside on "Ironside") , Stacy Harris as Vernon Carney (Jim Taylor on "This is Your FBI"), Herbert Butterfield as Lieutenant Lee Jones (The Commissioner on "Dangerous Assignment"), Barney Phillips as Sam Erickson (Haley in "Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up?" on "The Twilight Zone")

[In the opening, Sergeant Friday is describing Los Angeles, and mentions that it has two-million people. A particularly cruel note: three days after this episode aired, and the day after the second episode was filmed, Barton Yarborough died of a heart attack (Yarborough did spend three years co-starring in the radio version of Dragnet, which aired from 1949-1957). Yarborough's character, Ben Romero, is the first name ever mentioned in the televised Dragnet series. "The Human Bomb" is the first of 448 televised episodes of the "Dragnet" franchise (to go along with 314 episodes on the radio, for a total of 762). Furthermore, it influenced the terrific Adam-12 series (174 episodes). This was a star-studded, exciting half-hour of television, and was surely one of the first-ever shows working in quasi "real-time" - it has to do with a man wielding a bomb in Los Angeles City Hall, and they have about 25 minutes to stop him. Even though this episode is 66-years old, it provides riveting, never-a-dull-moment entertainment, and you'll get to see Raymond Burr before he went on to great fame in "Perry Mason" and "Ironside," not to mention "Rear Window." Barney Phillips is also a man you may recognize, especially from "The Twilight Zone" episode, "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" Given the historical importance of "Dragnet," watching the first-ever episode will certainly not be a waste of your time - note, however, that there's currently a YouTube video (<--- don't watch this) that's labeled as "The Human Bomb," but isn't; the episode can be found, as of today, on Vimeo (<--- do watch this). Some parting words about the final moments: The lighting as Friday falls down is terrific, inciting a split-second of panic in the viewer; the first line of dialog after he falls is a legendary, "No shit, Sherlock," moment, and the final word spoken in the episode is laugh-out-loud funny.]

[Mark Slater]

Many years ago, I worked at a hotel where Jack Webb stayed often. His one personal quirk was that he always wore bright red socks.