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Finally, a theme that doesn’t involve a wealthy uncle and his nephews! Instead, we have a missing persons case (another popular mystery genre topic).

Our next drama is a 1955 Dragnet episode, “The Big Family” which continues this trend and brings up a sub-genre of mystery fiction: the police procedural.

We step into the world of Dragnet, which is perhaps the most famous and influential crime drama in media history.  This mystery style has its roots in true crime drama of generations past (and present—it is still popular).

Right away you’ll notice a change of point of view: you (listener/reader) are right there!   YOU are the detective. YOU have both the authority of the police, but also the  vulnerability of being in this risky position. And YOU have the responsibility to restore  the world (or at least Los Angeles in the 1950s and 60s) to order!

Read on to learn about Dragnet and its creator, Jack Webb.

As detailed by biographer Michael J. Hayde, "Dragnet" creator Jack Webb was born on  April 2, 1920, in Santa Monica, California. Shortly after his birth, Webb's father left the  family never to return. Webb would spend his formative years in LA's poverty-ridden  Bunker Hill neighborhood.

Raised by his alcoholic mother and his grandmother, Webb was a sickly child. A bout of  pneumonia nearly killed him at age four. Severely asthmatic, he was forbidden to play  with the neighborhood children and spent his days rummaging through garbage cans for  discarded magazines. Webb's grandmother taught him to read by outlining the letters  on a box of salt, and soon he was spending his days in the public library. On the rare  occasions when he could scrounge a nickel for the movies, he spent hours in the  theater.

While a student at Belmont High School, Webb began producing variety shows to raise money to help buy uniforms for the football team. It was during these fundraisers that he got a taste of his future radio career. An excellent student, he won a scholarship to the Chouinard Art Institute but, as his family's sole breadwinner, was unable to accept. 

With the outbreak of World War II, Webb joined the Army Air Corps with hopes of  becoming a combat aviator. Unfortunately, he washed out of the program without  earning his pilot wings. Soon after, his military career ended when he was given a  dependency discharge to care for his ailing and destitute mother and grandmother.

Jack Webb's time in the Army was not a complete waste. According to author Michael J.  Hayde, while working as an Army clerk and typist, Webb also began helping with USO  shows. Acting as an emcee, Webb developed the powerful voice, which would help land  a job at San Francisco radio station KGO after his discharge. A workaholic, Webb wrote  and produced a number of successful dramas and music programs including the  hardboiled crime series "Pat Novak for Hire" in which Webb also starred.

Dragnet origins were in Webb's small role as a police forensic scientist in the 1948 film  He Walked by Night, itself inspired by the violent 1946 crime spree of Erwin Walker, a  disturbed World War II veteran and former Glendale, California, police department  employee. After his military service, he became friends Marty Wynn (a LAPD sergeant  from the Robbery Division). Inspired by Wynn's accounts of actual cases and criminal  investigative procedure, Webb convinced Wynn that day-to-day activities of police  officers could be realistically depicted in a broadcast series, without the forced  melodrama heard in the numerous private-detective serials then common in radio  programming. 

Webb frequently visited police headquarters, rode along on night patrols with Sgt.  Wynn and his partner Officer Vance Brasher, and attended Police Academy courses to  learn authentic jargon and details that could be featured in a radio program. When he  proposed Dragnet to NBC officials, they were not especially impressed; radio was as warm with private investigators and crime dramas, such as Webb's earlier Pat Novak for  Hire. That program didn’t last long, but Webb received high marks for his role as the  titular private investigator, and NBC agreed to a limited run for Dragnet.

With writer James E. Moser, Webb prepared an audition recording, then sought the  LAPD's endorsement; he wanted to portray cases from official files to demonstrate the  steps taken by police officers during investigations. The official response was initially  lukewarm, but in 1949 LAPD Chief Clemence B. Horrall gave Webb the endorsement he  sought. Police wanted control over the program's sponsor, and insisted that police not  be depicted unflatteringly. This would lead to criticism, as less flattering departmental  aspects, such as LAPD's racial segregation policies, were never addressed.

Dragnet debuted inauspiciously. The early months were bumpy, as Webb and company  worked out the format and eventually grew somewhat comfortable with their  characters (Friday was originally portrayed as more brash and forceful than his later  usually flat demeanor). Gradually, Friday's deadpan, fast-talking persona emerged,  described by John Dunning as "a cop's cop, tough but not hard, conservative but caring." 

Friday's first partner was Sergeant Ben Romero, portrayed by Barton Yarborough, a  longtime radio actor. After Yarborough's death in 1951 (and therefore Romero's, who  died of a heart attack, on the December 27, 1951 episode "The Big Sorrow"), Friday was  partnered with Sergeant Ed Jacobs (December 27, 1951 - April 10, 1952, subsequently  transferred to the Police Academy as an instructor), played by Barney Phillips; Officer  Bill Lockwood (Ben Romero's nephew, April 17, 1952 - May 8, 1952), played by Martin  Milner (with Ken Peters taking the role for the June 12, 1952 episode "The Big  Donation"); and finally Frank Smith (introduced in "The Big Safe", May 1, 1952), played  originally by Herb Ellis (1952), then Ben Alexander (September 21, 1952 - 1959)  (Alexander would reprise the role of Smith for the initial television version and the 1954 film, making him Friday's longest serving partner in all the franchise's media). Raymond  Burr was on board to play the Chief of Detectives. When Dragnet hit its stride, it was  one of radio's top-rated shows.

Interesting article about the show (below)...

Webb insisted on realism in the show. The dialogue was clipped, understated and  sparse, influenced by the hard-boiled school of crime fiction. Scripts were fast moving  but did not seem rushed. Every aspect of police work was chronicled, step-by-step:  From patrols and paperwork, to crime scene investigation, lab work and questioning  witnesses or suspects. 

The detectives’ personal lives rarely took center stage. (Friday was a bachelor who lived  with his mother; Romero, a Mexican-American from Texas, was an ever-fretful husband  and father.) "Underplaying is still acting", Webb told Time. 

Most later episodes were entitled "The Big _____", where the key word denoted a  person or object in the plot. In numerous episodes, this would be the principal suspect,  victim, or physical target of the crime, but in others was often a seemingly  inconsequential detail eventually revealed as key evidence in solving the crime. For  example, in "The Big Streetcar" the background noise of a passing streetcar helps  establish the location of a phone booth used by the suspect.

Webb was a stickler for accurate details, and Dragnet used authentic touches, such as  the LAPD's actual radio call sign (KMA367), and the names of actual department  officials, such as Ray Pinker and Lee Jones of the crime lab or Chief of Detectives (and  later LAPD Chief from 1967-69) Thad Brown.

Two announcers were used. Episodes began with announcer George Fenneman intoning  the series opening ("The story you are about to hear is true; only the names have been  changed to protect the innocent.") and Hal Gibney describing the premise of the  episode. "Big Saint" (April 26, 1951) for example, begins with "You're a Detective  Sergeant. You're assigned to auto theft detail. A well organized ring of car thieves begins  operations in your city. It's one of the most puzzling cases you've ever encountered.  Your job: break it."

Friday would then narrate where he or both he and his  partner were going, then the time he/they arrived at the location followed by a door  opening and an elaboration of the location: "I was on my way in to work, and it was 4:58  PM when I got to Room 42 ... (door opening) Homicide." ("The Big String", January 18,  1953).

Friday offered voice-over narration throughout the episodes, noting the time, date and  place of every scene as he and his partners went through their day investigating the  crime. The events related in a given episode might occur in hours, or might span a few  months. At least one episode unfolded in real time: in "City Hall Bombing" (July 21,  1949), Friday and Romero had less than thirty minutes to stop a man who was  threatening to destroy the City Hall with a bomb. In one episode, "The Big Ben" (March  15, 1951), after Friday was shot and hospitalized Romero took over the voice-over  narration for the remainder of the episode.

At the end of the episode, usually after a brief endorsement by Jack Webb for the  sponsor's product, announcer Hal Gibney would relate the fate of the suspect, usually  tried in "Department 187 of the Superior Court of the State of California, in and for the  City and County of Los Angeles", convicted of a crime and sent (in most episodes) to  "the State Penitentiary, San Quentin California" or "examined by psychiatrists  appointed by the court", judged mentally incompetent and "committed to a state  mental hospital for an indefinite period". Murderers were often "executed in the  manner prescribed by law" or "executed in the lethal gas chamber at the State  Penitentiary, San Quentin California". Occasionally, police pursued the wrong suspect,  and criminals sometimes avoided justice or escaped, at least on the radio Dragnet. In  1950, Time quoted Webb: "We don’t even try to prove that crime doesn’t pay ...  sometimes it does."

While most radio shows used one or two sound-effect experts, Dragnet used five: a  script clocking in at just under 30 minutes could require up to 300 effects. Accuracy was  underlined: The exact number of footsteps from one room to another at Los Angeles  police headquarters were mimicked, and when a telephone rang at Friday's desk, the  listener heard the same ring as the telephones in Los Angeles police headquarters. A  single minute of ".22 Rifle for Christmas" is a representative example of the evocative  sound effects featured on Dragnet.

While Friday and others investigate bloodstains in a suburban backyard, the listener  hears a series of overlapping effects: a squeaking gate hinge, footsteps, a technician  scraping blood into a paper envelope, the glassy chime of chemical vials, bird calls, and a  dog barking in the distance.

Sometimes the mundane intruded. When shows ran short, directors stalled for time. In  "The Big Crime", Dragnet interrupted a scene while a real-estate agent spent a full  minute answering and explaining a phone call, simply filling in time. The old radio programs ended each week with a remembrance of fallen officers who died on the job. The remembrance would be read over somber organ music, and would be officers from all over the country.

Scripts tackled topics, ranging from the thrilling (murders, missing persons and armed  robbery) to the mundane (check fraud and shoplifting), yet Dragnet made them all  interesting due to fast-moving plots and behind-the-scenes realism. In "The Garbage  Chute" (December 15, 1949), they even had a locked room mystery.

Though tame by modern standards, Dragnet, especially on the radio, handled  controversial subjects such as sex crimes and drug addiction with unprecedented and  even startling realism. In one such example, Dragnet broke an unspoken (and rarely  broached) taboos of popular entertainment in the episode ".22 Rifle for Christmas"  which aired December 22, 1949 and repeated at Christmastime for the next three years. 

Due in part to Webb's fondness for radio drama, Dragnet persisted on radio until 1957  (the last two seasons were repeats) as one of the last old time radio shows to give way  to television's growing popularity. A total of 314 original episodes were broadcast from 1949 through 1957. 

In fact, the TV show proved to be a visual version of the radio show,  as the style was virtually the same [including the scripts, as the majority were adapted  from radio]. The TV show could be listened to without watching, with no loss of  understanding of the storyline.]

The scenes take us to the police station, the Jarrett mansion, the daughter’s apartment, the tennis club, and even to Oregon (great action image of United airplane in flight!).

Characters:

In a 27-minute drama there’s not much time to mess around, so these characters get right to their stereotypical point.

We have our police characters, Friday and Frank Smith (Smith offers a bit of levity through his role, a bit bumbling). The partners explain their actions through dialogue, and of course Friday narrates as the case progresses.

• The boozy wife (“a drunk”) who doesn’t seem too broken up by her husband’s disappearance.  Notice Friday and Smith rolling their eyes as she sips her brandy. She just doesn’t care.  She wants to be left alone.

• Ditto the son (26) and daughter (23).  Interviews real the same sentiment: they don’t care.

• He’s a tennis bum without a real job.  She’s already been married twice.  Nice poodle! (my favorite character)

Plot:

John “Keith” Jarrett has disappeared, leaving an abandoned car, a suicide note, and a gun with used bullet casings. 

Why do you think Friday perceives this as a suspicious case?

• What other clues does Friday discover?  What are the red herrings?

• Hand-written note

• Gun (what’s the story on the gun?)

• What questions does he ask in various interviews with those who know Jarrett and the family?

Theme:

It occurs to me that this is also a story about staging a scene (think of the Italian Nobleman, and also Hang Once).  What details did Jarrett miss?

An interesting conclusion as “Walter Mitchell” just wants a do-over in his life.  He is traveling, fishing, and learning to cook!

He tells the officers he has done nothing wrong (except cause the cops to go up some blind alleys), and warns that it’s an invasion of his rights if they reveal his whereabouts.

What do you think of that conclusion? What would have happened with this case in 2025?

This episode reflects the mindset of the 1950s. Post WWII, families were supposed to be happy.  Think of “Ozzie and Harriett.”  John/Walter says, “I have them money to keep them out of trouble.  They are rotting away, all three of them.”

He asks: “What would you have done if you had my family?” 

But there is a strong moral message that even if Jarrett did not commit a crime (“It’s no crime to get lost,” Friday says in the end), choosing to desert your family leads to loneliness and even death in an anonymous grave!

Think back over our readings this semester, this story is more than just a faking-one’s-death scenario. I think you’ll be surprised by how many cases we see about disappearance—and re-appearance.  This is closely related to disguised identity as well (someone is not where they should be, or they are not who they appear to be).

Consider Mr. Barns (“Unknown Man”), Silver Blaze, the Italian nobleman, characters in Miss Marple’s story, and even Sam Spade assumed an alternative identity to gain entry into the Binnett household.

Stay tuned.  We’ll experience even more of these “who really is it” phenomenon this semester.  Be aware!

Dragnet Radio Show.  (2022). Retrieved from 

http://www.1640radio.net/artists/dragnet-radio-show-27

Hyde, M. (2001). My Name is Friday: The Unauthorized But True Story of Dragnet.  Cumberland Publishing.

Scroggins, R. (2023). Retrieved from https://www.acfe.com/fraud-resources/fraud-examiner-archives/fraud-examiner-article?s=check-fraud-evolution

Wright, W. (2021). The untold truth of Dragnet. Retrieved from 

https://www.grunge.com/604804/the-untold-truth-of-dragnet/