How ‘Dragnet’ Launched a New Era in Crime Television

Ann Robinson, Jack Webb, Ben Alexander in the feature film "Dragnet” (1954)

By Paul Parcellin

Some might quibble over whether or not “Dragnet,” the TV show, movie and radio program, is noir. In fact, the series is as noir as noir can be — but more about that later. 

The story of “Dragnet” begins when the show’s creator and star, Jack Webb, played a police forensic scientist in the feature film “He Walked by Night” (1948) starring Richard Basehart. Inspired by a violent 1946 crime spree, it tells the story of troubled World War II veteran Erwin Walker who was a former Glendale, Calif., police department employee. The film presents the story in a documentary-like style popular in that era and it had a powerful influence on Webb. Many of the film’s elements would later be echoed in “Dragnet": the opening title explaining that the names had been changed to protect the innocent, the use of modern crime-fighting methods, the portrayal of Los Angeles as a vast expanse of urban sprawl. 

During production, Webb met the film's police technical adviser Marty Wynn who was fed up with unrealistic shoot-em-up crime shows. He told Webb that he should make a show that depicts the way the police really crack cases.

Emphasizing modern crime fighting techniques, “Dragnet” episodes are built around the methodical approach to a detective’s job rather than melodramatic police chases ending in shootouts. In contrast, “Dragnet” episodes mostly conclude without violence with the captured perpetrator explaining what led him or her down the path of lawlessness. Often the accused display resignation to their fate and even show remarkable self awareness. 

On radio, “Dragnet” ran from 1949 to ’57 with 314 original episodes. The TV show, shot in black and white, premiered Dec. 14, 1951 and broadcast the last of its 276 episodes on Aug. 23, 1959. In addition, “Dragnet” (1954), a feature film brought Joe Friday to the big screen. It starred Webb, Ben Alexander as Friday’s partner Officer Frank Smith, Ann Robinson as Officer Grace Downey and Richard Boone as Capt. James E. Hamilton. The weekly show was later syndicated as “Badge 714.” 

Ben Alexander and Jack Webb in the 'Dragnet' episode 'The Big Trunk' (1954)

The 1960s saw the series revived with all new episodes shot in color and starring Webb and Harry Morgan as his sidekick. It starts as “Dragnet 1967” and ends with “Dragnet 1970” and has 98 episodes broadcast over four seasons. The 1960s “Dragnet” looks more polished than the one made a decade earlier, but Webb keeps his trademark deadpan throughout both. So dedicated to the idea of maintaining straight-ahead, no-nonsense performances from his actors he had them read dialog from teleprompters to keep an even tempo free of the histrionics typical of crime shows in that era. 

The stories are always told from Friday’s point of view and each episode opens with his voiceover narrative, a pop culture touchstone if ever there was one: “This is the city, Los Angeles, California … “ he intones with gravitas as a montage of location shots within the sprawling metropolis unspool. Weekly repetition of Friday’s words, spoken in unhurried cadence, suggest a man bearing a great weight on his shoulders. Over the years his take on the city burned Los Angeles into our collective consciousness as a modern metropolis; a place of excitement and danger, a vast urban landscape serving as itself a character in each of the show’s half hour episodes.

Friday’s baritone delivery will forever be associated with “Dragnet” and it’s hard to imagine another actor playing the part. But if Webb had gotten his way Lloyd Nolan would have been television’s Friday. Webb’s reluctance to take the role was probably due to the brutal schedule he’d have to keep as star and director — as it turned out he helmed 96 episodes of the 1950s series. But the radio program was a hit and the network demanded that he keep playing the character. 

Jack Webb on the set of 'Dragnet'

Despite a rather limited dramatic range, Webb was able to carry off his role to great effect. Often parodied in pop culture for his stiff delivery, audiences likely looked beyond the surface and saw authenticity and sincerity in his performance. Friday was hardened by experience but not cynical and audiences seemed to connect with his dedication to the greater good. 

A lot has been written about the good public relations that “Dragnet” brought to the Los Angeles Police Department, whose checkered past necessitated all of the positive image building it could get. The program no doubt sanitized troublesome aspects of the department’s history, but was at least successful in conveying the weekly grind that is law enforcement’s onus to bear.

As Allen Glover observed in his book, “Noir TV,” “Week after week, like Sisyphus, Friday returns to roll yet another suspect up the steps of City Hall. The pervasive sense of futility, coupled with the obsessive endeavor to defy it, affirms “Dragnet” as dire a work of noir as any.” The show is taken from the files of the Los Angeles Police Department, many going back to the 1920s and ‘30s, the same Los Angeles that Raymond Chandler and Horace McCoy wrote about.

“The bums, priests, con men, whining housewives, burglars, waitresses, children and bewildered ordinary citizens who people “Dragnet” seem as sorrowfully genuine as old pistols in a hockshop window,” said Time magazine in a 1954 cover story. It’s an apt reflection of Webb’s own childhood, growing up fatherless on Los Angeles’s Bunker Hill, a neighborhood of “epic dereliction … the rot in the heart of the expanding metropolis,” as social historian Mike Davis described it.

In the end, it’s the dark universe that “Dragnet”inhabits that gives the program its noir credentials. We can rest easier when Friday brings the culprit to justice, but he and, through extension, us, are never allowed to relax our guard. Next week and the week after that will bring new pickpockets, bunco artists and killers who will upset our sense of wellbeing. Happy outcomes at the end of each half hour episode are for the most part an illusion. At best they are temporary moments of relief from the onslaught of wrongdoers. Despite Friday’s best efforts, rest assured that any sense of calm will sooner or later be shattered.