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A big part of mystery fiction, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, is the process of inquiry, and especially how our crime solvers collect evidence and piece together the clues. Up to now we’ve followed some masters: Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot,and Raffles are a few examples.

Let’s fast forward to the 1940s and explore what was then a new branch of mystery we call 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).

This also might remind you of the hard-boiled detective. Joe Friday, of course, is the epitome of following the law. But contrast the precision of the LA Police Department’s approach to the rough and rowdy ways of Continental Op guys (and Sam Spade, and other tough guys you can imagine).

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!

I used two website articles for this write-up-Dragnet Radio, 2022; and Wright, 2021.  I’ve also included a brief history of the crime of kidnapping.

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.

Read this interesting article (below) about Dragnet's production.

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."

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.]

Kidnapping falls into what I would call the especially creepy category of crime.

The word’s origins are obvious: “kid” refers to child, and “nap” derived from “nab” or snatch. Early examples occurred as early as 1673, referring to the stealing of children to be used as laborers or servants in the American colonies. Since 1768, the word “abduction” is also used synonymously.  Usually kidnapping involves some kind of extortion (money, most often).

This heinous act targets a range of victims. Other types of kidnapping include:

• Bride kidnapping (traditional in some Central Asia nomadic groups)

• Child abduction (removal by a stranger for criminal purposes, or by a parent in a divorce or separation scenario)

• Cults (for deprogramming purposes)

• Stockholm syndrome: this refers to the relationship between hostage and kidnapper. In some cases the hostage shows loyalty to the hostage taker, even in dangerous situations.

• The Patty Hearst case of 1974 is an example. The granddaughter of millionaire William Randolph Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, whose cause she joined (and participated in a robbery).

• Tiger kidnapping: this refers to taking an innocent hostage (or loved one) and making them do something, such as commiting a crime.

Early Famous Cases:

In 1836 the Commanche Indians reportedly kidnapped 9-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker. Four years later she was located as a member of the tribe and was unwilling to return to her family.

In 1874 in Philadelphia, an unnamed boy was kidnapped by two men who promised to buy him candy. The child’s family paid a  $20,000 ransom for the child’s return.

In 1900, Charley Ross, 16-year-old son of the millionaire owner of Cudahy Packing Company, was kidnapped in Omaha. The Pinkerton Detective Agency was hired to find the kidnapper (a local butcher) and return Ross to his family.

The most notorious kidnapping of the century was the 1932 abduction of the Lindbergh baby. Charles Lindbergh made many attempts to meet ransom demands over a 3 month period. Bruno Hauptmann was found guilty of first-degree murder and was sentenced to death.

This was important because it led to Congress creating the Federal Kidnapping Act. Today the FBI handles kidnapping cases.

Through the 1970s kidnapping cases occurred in the U.S. and around the world. Usually they involved abduction of children of wealthy and/or celebrated families like Lindbergh, Frank Sinatra, John Paul Getty III, and Patty Hearst.

Today acts like the Amber Alert program help law enforcement to apprehend kidnappers in abduction cases.  FBI procedures have also improved, helping to decrease kidnapping incidences.  One form of kidnapping on the rise is human trafficking.

There is another notorious kidnapping case that might have inspired this 1949 episode, “The Sullivan Kidnapping.”

In Los Angeles in 1927, 12-year-old Marion Parker, daughter of a wealthy banker, was abducted from her school. Her abductor, who once worked for her father, came to her school and told the office that her father had been in an accident and she was needed at home. The kidnapper, William Hickman, sent a series of three ransom notes to the Parker home signed “Fate,” “Death,” and  “The Fox.”  

Hmmm.  Knowing this bit of history might explain the Dragnet audience’s interest in this episode.

As you listen to our drama this week, keep in mind how it follows Webb’s vision for the  show. 

What is your impression of Friday and Ben Romero and the various other suspects and  characters?

How does Friday and his team conduct their investigation to follow the trail of clues left by “The Wolf” and how does that compare to the style of other detectives we’ve read about?

What would a foreigner learn about American culture from listening to or watching  Dragnet?

How do you think Dragnet influenced future mystery writing—say, books published  post-1960s?

Looking forward to hearing your memories of Dragnet.  You can even go beyond “Just  the facts, m’aam.”

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.

Kidnapping. (2024). Retrieved from https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Kidnapping

Thomas, H. (2020). America’s Most Notorious Kidnappings. Retrieved from https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2020/01/americas-most-notorious-kidnappings/

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

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