Jack Webb
 

If you scratched your head when you heard William Shatner singing "Rocket Man" or expressed incredulity at Leonard Nimoy's rendition of "Proud Mary", you should listen to Jack Webb's version of "Try A Little Tenderness".

In all cases you want to tell all three men, "For crying out loud! Go out and ACT!"

Which is what John Randolph Webb did. But like many actors of his generation Jack started out in radio. His first job was in California which was the right place at the right time. After a few years Jack hit iconic status when he landed the role as Detective Joe Friday of the Los Angeles Police Department. The show, of course, was Dragnet.

Jack didn't really land the role. He created it. With his early work giving him the contacts he needed to pitch ideas to the network bigwigs, he suggested the idea of a radio program about the way police officers really work.

Dragnet premiered on NBC Radio in 1949 and was a hit. Cultural historians tell us this was the beginning of the police procedural show. The show ran until 1957 and for over 300 episodes.

Although there was commercial television at that early date, few families owned a set. It wasn't until the 1950's that came the now forgotten ritual where the whole family gathered together for the evening to watch their favorite TV shows. Times were different. You actually had to plan your evening if you wanted to see a particular show. You couldn't record it if you were doing something else, and for prime time programs, you had to wait a week to see the next installment.

Within two years, in 1951, Dragnet had made the leap to television with its first episode, "The Human Bomb". After that and up until 1959, the rest of the episodes had "The Big [Fill in the Blank"] as the title. At that time a show lasting seven years was quite an extended run. The radio show continued to be broadcast as well.

Early on Jack realized that if Dragnet was to be what he wanted, then he also had to be producer, director, and writer. So he set up his own - and one of the first - independent production companies. This was Mark VII and it had one of the more memorable logos where a sweaty muscular pair of hands stamped the words "Mark VII" onto a stone or masonry wall.

In the early programs Joe Friday was more emotional and (we must admit it) used more force against the bad guys than in later years. He was ready to use his gun and didn't hesitate to grab the crook by the collar to make his point.

But most of the time there was little violence. Instead Joe and his partner - be it Ben Romero (Barton Yarborough), Ed Jacobs (Barney Phillips), Bill Lockwood (Martin Milner), Frank Smith (Ben Alexander and Herb Ellis), or Bill Gannon (Harry Morgan) - spent the show interviewing witnesses and questioning suspects. At that time there was no such thing as a "person of interest" which even today has no legal meaning.

In most shows Joe and his partner never pulled their guns. This was one of the most realistic facets of the show. Only about 25 % of officers use their weapons during their career. During the Q&A of a lecture, a long-time veteran of the FBI agent said he had never fired his gun in the line of duty and had only pulled it once.

The first television episodes had the film noir look that was fairly common for crime films of the time. But what really defined the show was Jack's manner of speaking. He delivered his lines in a staccato monotone with which he interspersed his questions. The interview scenes were sometimes played for laughs as the witness rambled off into other areas. Joe would have to pull them back on topic. He just wanted the facts.

But just as Humphrey Bogart never said "Play it again, Sam", Joe Friday never said "Just the facts, ma'am". He did, though, give us a number of less truncated variants like "All we want are the facts, ma'am".

It wasn't just Jack's speaking manner, but also the show's format that made it ripe for parody. You had the Dom-Da-Dom-Dom them song, the sombre voiced announcer (first voiced by Groucho Marx's long suffering sidekick, George Fenneman), and then Joe Friday picks up the narration. Then at the end where you learn of the dispensation of the case.

The earliest (and still the best) satire was Stan Freberg's 1953 recording, "St. George and the Dragonet". At one point when St. George was talking to the Knave (Daws Butler), he said, "We just want to get the facts, sir". Stan released other Dragnet parodies as well, which, by the way, Jack enjoyed.

Even Jack would indulge in a bit of self-mockery. He appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in the now famous "Copper Clapper Caper" skit. Joe Friday was interviewing a victim of a burglary who had his copper clappers copped. The victim (Johnny) informed Joe that cleaning woman Clara Clifford discovered his clean copper clappers kept in a closet were copped by Claude Cooper the kleptomaniac from Cleveland. Both Jack and Johnny had trouble to keep from cracking up.

It's quite impressive to watch Jack and Johnny deliver the tongue-twisting banter. But one thing that certainly helped - and the reader can experiment with this - was the use of the then little known but useful device that now is seen everywhere people deliver lines. That's the teleprompter.

The teleprompter - as opposed to simple idiot cards - has been around since the late 1940's. Originally it was made from a roll of butcher paper set up in a shell made from half of a suitcase. A small motor with a system of belts and pulleys turned the roll so the lines would come into view as the actor spoke.

As a producer and director Jack understood the necessity of getting the shots done as quickly as possible. He knew that if he used the teleprompter he would not only cut down the number of flubbed lines but could eschew rehearsals altogether.

The cast members, though, had mixed feelings. One young actor who was just starting out found that not having to memorize the lines set him at ease. But others felt that having to read the lines made it difficult to give their best performance. Of course on the radio, Joe and the other actors would just read from the script.

As with any new technology, there are pitfalls. With the prompter available, true, there's no real need to memorize the lines. But because the lines are rolling past (and disappearing), it's easy to get lost with no opportunity to recover.

For instance, a nationally known television presenter was hired to emcee a scientific awards ceremony. As he came to the end of the show, he was citing the words of a number of great scientists:

... and finally as the great Albert Einstein once said ....

At this point, he paused just a wee bit too long and lost the lines. But he continued as best he could.

Well, let me assure you that what Einstein was going to say was really profound.

Politicians have also had some embarrassing moments particularly when supplementary directions are included on the teleprompter:

Today we must stand up for the principles of both our party and ... look upward dramatically and raise right hand ... our country!

Jack managed to get a third version of the program launched in 1967. In all four seasons veteran character actor Harry Morgan played Joe's partner, Bill Gannon. Harry added the occasional comic relief and contributed to the show's popularity.

According to reliable accounts, the decision to end the show was more or less a joint agreement between Jack and the network. Ratings had begun to fall, and besides Jack's and his production company was producing another successful police show Adam-12.

In Dragnet Detective Joe Friday is unmarried and in the early shows he was living with his mother. Joe's domestic situation was perhaps an indirect tribute to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Edgar also never married and lived with his mother.

Each Dragnet episode began with the Dom-Da-Dom-Dom theme song and the voice over "The following story is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent."

But as an Italian politician once asked, "What is truth?" And the extent that the plots of Dragnet were indeed drawn from true cases is a legitimate question.

That liberties were sometimes taken with "just the facts" is evident. The wife of a member of the LAPD once said "We used to sit and laugh at some of those 'Dragnet' episodes."

Of course nothing on television or in film can reproduce exactly what happens in the real world. You can't cram hours or days into a half hour show without some truncation and editing. But the point of the show was to represent police officers realistically if not necessarily exactly.

Being based on real cases, the episodes sometimes illustrated aspects of police investigations that are well known to law enforcement professionals but seem strange and contradictory to the public. For instance, in the real world multiple yet honest eyewitness accounts will differ (at times considerably) and too much consistency raises the suspicions of savvy investigators. Once Joe and his partner had interviewed a bunch of witnesses to a crime. All the witnesses agreed.

But they agreed too well. So Joe thought the witnesses were colluding and covering up. And they were.

A particular surprise to crime buffs was what they saw in the episode called "The Big False Make". A young gardener named Tom admitted holding up a store. The victim also identified Tom as the culprit.

So everything is solved, right?

Weeeeelllllllll, not quite. The story Tom told didn't quite gibe with what the victim said. After further questioning Joe decided the confession was bogus. Tom finally admitted it was.

This episode dealt with two factors that can bedevil real investigations. First, mistaken identity is not something that happens just in Alfred Hitchcock movies. And second, voluntary yet false confessions are in fact fairly common.

In Tom's case he just wanted to get attention since he thought being a gardener was a low-life job (actually good gardeners require considerable expertise and take pride in the work). It was pure happenstance that he looked a lot like the real criminal who - we are assured - was eventually caught.

At the end of each show the viewers learned the outcome of the case. The camera cut to the bad guys standing before the camera. They usually looked nervous and unhappy. The narrator would then intone the verdict of the trial and the sentence, if any. For his part Tom was declared "mentally incompetent" and confined to a state mental hospital.

This episode also illustrates a difference between the times back then and the times right now. In the 1950's it was more common for a miscreant to get committed to a mental hospital. Such confinement was often an effective - and sometimes permanent - substitute for incarceration.

In another episode there was an ex-con named Vern was trying to get his brother, Elwood, sprung from prison (yes, the crooks were named Vern and Elwood). To persuade the authorities to accede to his request, Vern made a bomb and took it into city hall. Of course, Joe and his partner subdued the bomber who we learn was ruled "incompetent". He, like Tom, was confined to the state hospital.

Today, though, the bomber would most likely would have been tried and convicted. Starting in the 1980's state and federal laws were revised to make acquittal by means of insanity nigh on impossible, and some states have abolished the insanity defense entirely. In most jurisdictions as long as the perpetrator knows his actions are illegal, he will not be ruled insane. So today Vern would almost certainly get sent up the river.

Yet another big surprise for the modern viewer is that the sentences dealt out on Dragnet were often quite lenient. For instance an accessory to murder might get only a minimum of one and a maximum of five. This was, after all, before mandatory sentences got to be the norm.

But lest the reader bewail how the old system was - quote - "soft on criminals - unquote - the Dragnet judges dealt out capital punishment most liberally. The viewers were often told how the really bad criminals met their end at San Quentin.

Of course, between catching the crooks and sending them to jail, in a democracy there are those pesky inconveniences called fair and impartial trials. Naturally Joe couldn't do everything himself. So Dragnet began a television tradition that persists to this day. A cop wants to conclusively prove your case? Simple, just call in the experts.

Of course, everyone knows you can find - quote - "experts" - unquote - to testify on either side of an issue. Once a real life judge laughed (with the jury absent) after one of the lawyers said he had an expert witness. "Yes," the judge said, "and then we'll have another expert witness to say that your expert witness doesn't know what he's talking about." But in Dragnet, the expert witnesses never went astray.

But sometimes the jury did. On one episode an expert was testifying for what Joe thought was an iron-clad case.

The witness was a statistics specialist. He listed a bunch of individual characteristics that would implicate the defendant in the crime. He then said each individual probability was "conservatively" 1 out of 100. So he multiplied the individual probabilities together and said the odds of the person being innocent was one out of a trillion.

But the jury still acquitted the defendant! Joe was stunned. The decision also raised the dander of the judge who both denounced the verdict and insulted the jurors in a manner that was impolite at best and unprofessional at worst.

Today, though, it's well-known that calculating statistics using hypothetical probabilities can make perfectly common happenstances look like near impossibilities. And these circumstances occur all the time.

For instance, some statisticians mention that if you see an event that has a 1 in a million chance of happening, it is considered "miraculous". So the next time you see a blonde man (2 % of the world population) with a mustache (36 %) of age 25 to 30 years (10 %) wearing eyeglasses who weighs 150 to 170 pounds (10 %) over 6 feet tall (15 %) wearing a business suit (10%) with a tie (6 %) and having a drink at lunch (20 %), that would be calculated as

Probability	=	100 × (0.02 × 0.36 × 0.1 × 0.75 × 0.1 × 0.15 × 0.1 × 0.06 × 0.2)
	=	0.00000097%

So it's a miracle!

And yes, there have been cases where such calculations have sent innocent people to jail. So when you get down to it, if on Dragnet all the DA had was the "statistics", then the jury made the right decision.

Related to expert testimony is forensic evidence, and during the course of an investigation Joe would routinely call on, Ray Pinker, the head of the LAPD crime lab. Ray would then tell Joe what the evidence meant. Ray Pinker, by the way, was the name of the real forensic specialist of the Los Angeles Police Department. So this was one name that was not changed.

Forensics can not only help convict the guilty but also free the innocent. In "The Big Casing" Joe was called to an apartment where a man (played by the frequent guest actor Harry Bartell) claimed that his wife had committed suicide. Joe was convinced it was murder since the bullet casing was found in another room. But a dent on the bullet casing proved that as the woman fell the casing went flying into the other room. The husband was freed.

So Dragnet viewers saw how the precision and accuracy of scientific crime scene investigation provided nearly infallible rigor to police procedure. That the police were using solid science was certainly reassuring for the honest and law abiding citizens.

Alas, it would be nice if we could share their enthusiasm. But the truth is that the reliability of forensic methods has come into serious question. Far from being rigorous quantitative science, some tests boil down to matters of opinion.

As the ability to test the reliability of scientific analyses has improved, laboratories began to evaluate the forensic methods. Things did not come out as expected, and in 2009 the National Academy of Sciences issued a report which - to put it politely - blasted almost all forensic procedures. The report concluded that with the exception of DNA analysis, "no forensic method has been rigorously shown to have the capacity to consistently, and with a high degree of certainty, demonstrate a connection between evidence and a specific individual or source."

Even fingerprint analysis - often believed to be 100% reliable - often boils down to a matter of interpretation. Although it is true that well-defined prints can be matched with high reliability, at a crime scene you rarely get all ten fingers displayed on a nice white acid free archival card. Instead, you'll find smudged and partial prints with distortions that confound the analysis. Making the required 10-point confirmation (or is it five?) is by no means a simple matter.

And if finger printing isn't as reliable as once believed, what can we say about other, less certain tests like hair and fiber matching, bullet identification, and footprint comparison?

Well, recently decades of evidence from a major crime laboratory were called into question because experts had been overstating the reliability of a particular test. This does not mean that the forensic witnesses were deliberately lying. On the other hand, a brief perusal of news stories will uncover reports of how a small number of "rogue" forensic scientists - including lab directors - have deliberately faked test results, forged paperwork, switched samples, and incorrectly testified that the analyses supported the prosecution. And yes, even DNA evidence can be faked.

For their own part, most honest and reputable forensic scientists laugh at the television shows where the lab people run nigh on instantaneous analyses all the while eating snacks while the cops stand around and crack jokes. And no, after a DNA analysis you don't get big flashing numbers announcing a match followed up by a picture of the crook's driver's license. For one thing few citizens have their DNA in a computer data base and that includes crooks. DNA analysis takes hours at best, and no, the crime scene specialists don't go out with the cops and help them nab the miscreants.

If forensic science is less than perfect, we must, alas, say this is also true of Dragnet. Recently the show has come under criticism and has prompted discussions that at times regress into spittle-flinging diatribes.

One of Jack's purposes in creating Dragnet was to counter the negative image of cops that became de rigueur in crime fiction. Starting in the 19th century, crime fiction inevitably depicted the police force was made up of a bunch of blundering dunderheads that couldn't solve a crime if the criminal's name was projected from the lens of their bulls-eye lanterns. No, the people who really solve the crimes are news reporters (who are sometimes strange visitors from another planet), rich socialites (who wear cowls and dress in leotards), crime scene photographers, teenagers, younger kids, or even dogs who somehow speak a dialect of incomprehensible English.

Let's admit it. Crimes are really solved by police officers going about doing their job without the help of private investigators or enthusiastic amateurs. That's what Jack wanted to show, and in this regard he succeeded.

But if Jack was showing the truth, what, you ask querulously, is the problem?

Well, Jack had the program focus on the activity of two honest stand-up detectives. So it dealt with the officers as individuals and rarely addressed any problems that arise from group dynamics. In this way, the critics say Jack could claim that his show was telling the truth, all the while avoiding telling the whole truth.

Now it is true that almost all works of fiction use stereotypes of one kind or another. But Dragnet sometimes went over the top and not really in a positive way.

Certainly those who have elected to live outside mainstream American culture were rarely depicted in a favorable light. Instead and particularly in the later shows, if a character wasn't a middle class suburban citizen, they ended up as cartoonish stereotypical buffoons and אידיוטים.

For negative stereotypes you can't beat "Public Affairs - DR-07". Here Joe and Bill were invited to appear on a talk show called "Speak Your Mind" where the topic was "The Fuzz: Who Needs Them?" Certainly one of the most dated and unintentionally hilarious shows, it's hard to believe a writer could pack so many stereotypes into half an hour.

You name it, the show had it. There was an anti-cop black radical, Mondo Mbamba (played by Dick Williams), the "beatnik" newspaper editor, Jesse Chapman, (Howard Hesseman, of WKRP in Cincinnati fame), and the (ptui) "liberal" college professor, Tom Higgins (played by Jack's good friend, Stacy Harris). Anthony Eisely had the role of the show's moderator, Chuck Bligh, who was a Timothy Leary styled guru. Then you had members of the overwhelmingly hostile audience come up and toss their vitriol-filled barbs at Joe and Bill.

Of course, throughout the show Joe remained completely unflustered and bested everyone's arguments. But from this show we can understand why a lot of people who watch the re-runs do so mainly for laughs.

Not that the episode is a total loss. You can't disagree with Joe's advice when a kid from the audience complained about alcohol being legal and "mind-expanding" drugs being banned. Joe had a ready answer:

I've heard an awful lot of propaganda about the way the right kind of sugar cube^* can expand your mind. Son, if you want to expand your mind pay a visit to your public library ... You'll discover the place is full of magical cubes. They call them books.

Careful viewers will note that the tone and topics of the shows changed over the years. That's because the selection of Dragnet scripts were influenced by whoever happened to be the current Police Chief of Los Angeles.

For instance, on one show Joe had to detain a young black man who had been resisting arrest because he believed all the bad stories about the way the LA cops treated minorities. Naturally Joe convinces him he's wrong and promises him he'll be out on bail in five minutes. Then at the end of the show the real chief of police of Los Angeles gave a brief talk about increasing racial tolerance.

Shortly afterwards came a change in administration and with it a change in philosophy. The next LAPD chief gave his own advice on how to get along with your neighbors in Los Angeles. "Bar your doors, buy a police dog, call us when we're available, and pray". Another (alleged) quote of a later police chief was so offensive we will not repeat it.

The criticism of Dragnet often boils down to not what it said but what it didn't say. For instance, there are some true police episodes that the writers could have adapted for Joe Friday to handle.

For instance, you never saw an episode where certain members of a police force were systematically making traffic stops simply to harass minorities or people with non-mainstream political beliefs.

But hold on! How can you say a police force was deliberately stopping minorities? Can you prove that outrageous claim?

Well, yes, In the 1970's there was a study at a near-by California university - not necessarily in Los Angeles, we should add. Students were selected who had no record of any kind - not even traffic violations. They then signed sworn statements that they would obey all traffic laws for the next month.

Then they put a "Black Panthers" sticker on their cars.

Within a week all students had been stopped and ticketed for various traffic offenses. One black student who sported a large "afro" hairstyle had been stopped and ticketed three times in one hour.

This wasn't made into a Dragnet episode.

There was also a case where a county officer did not particularly care for the coiffures that young men had begun sporting. The styles were too - to quote a favorite song - "long and shaggy" for his pleasure. So he kept stopping and ticketing any young men so adorned and telling them of his objections at their tonsorial embellishments.

This wasn't on Dragnet either.

In a similar vein there was the time when a young man was driving down a turnpike in what may justifiably be called a rather picturesque locale. As he paid his fare (there was no automatic toll stations) the ticket attendant looked at the young man's non-mainstream appearance and said, "I'd get out of here if I was you, boy. We got smokies [highway patrol officers] around here who just wait for your type to drive through.

Again, not something we saw on Dragnet.

And we have to mention the youth who was driving a Volkswagen Beetle - popular in the counter culture of the time - through a region known for its rich and rural folk culture. As he drove through, he was stopped by one of the local constabulary. He was, well, requested to step out of the car.

The young man was then handcuffed and frisked. Then with a smile that those of a suspicious nature might think sarcastic, the detaining officer said that the young man bore "some resemblance" to a reported miscreant. Of course, they had to check things out.

The officer then pretty much turned the car inside out without, we must add, bothering to obtain a search warrant. Finding nothing which would merit further action, he released the young man and wished him Godspeed.

We must have missed that episode, too.

But of course when circumstances become trying, a resourceful officer can always find a solution to any problem, even lack of evidence. There was a time where a sheriff in a Quaint County of the American Southwest - whom we'll call Big Bubba - had found some secondary school students enjoying a bit of camaraderie at a local lakeside in a manner he found objectionable. After admonishing the kids to live a more wholesome life he let them depart. Then Sheriff Big Bubba showed the local news reporter some syringes he claimed he had found in the kids' cars. "We're gonna keep fightin' until we drive these drugs from the state," he was quoted.

Later one of the sheriff's deputies provided supplemental information to the reporter. "Hell," he laughed, "Big Bubba had them things in his car all the time."

Who knows? Perhaps we'll catch those episodes if we get a new Dragnet.

But we just want the facts.

References

My Name's Friday: The Unauthorized But True Story of Dragnet and the Films of Jack Webb, Michael Hayde, Forward by Harry Morgan, Cumberland House, 2001.

"Jack Webb", Internet Movie Data Base.

"Dragnet", Internet Movie Data Base.

"The Big False Make", Air Date: May 27, 1954.

"Public Affairs - DR07", Air Date: September 19, 1968.

"Dragnet 'Just the Facts'", David Mikkelson, Snopes, January 11, 2010.

"A Brief History of the Teleprompter", Joseph Stromberg, Smithsonian, October 22, 2012.

"The Real-Life Sleuth Who Inspired 'Dragnet' Character", The Los Angeles Times, 2003.

CSI Myths: The Shaky Science Behind Forensics, Brad Reagan, Popular Mechanics, 2009.

"Pseudoscience in the Witness Box: The FBI Faked an Entire Field of Forensic Science", Dahlia Lithwick, Slate, 2015.

"FBI Admits Flaws in Hair Analysis Over Decades", Spencer Hsu, The Washington Post, April 18, 2015.

"DNA Test Hailed Innocent Man for Murder, By Hannah Barnes BBC Radio 4, August 31, 2012.

"Real Forensic Scientists Shake Their Heads At TV 'CSI' Counterparts", Pat Reavy, Deseret News, November 30, 2011.

"The Reality of Fingerprinting Not Like TV Crime Labs", Lamont Wood, Science Live, February 24, 2008.

"Quota-Based Policing Lingers", Joel Rose, National Public Radio, April 4, 2015

Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences, 2009.

The Dragnet Effect: How TV Has Obscured Police Brutality, Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic, June 12, 2015.

"How Systemic Racism Entangles All Police Officers", German Lopez, Vox, August 15, 2016.

Mathematics, Philosophy, and the Real World, Judith Grabiner (Lecturer), The Great Courses, The Teaching Company.

Miscellaneous References, Various Sources. Some of the stories here are from old references where the actual copy is not available (and so can't be explicit referenced), from first hand accounts, or from personal experience. If such sources seem a bit too wishy-washy for many scholars, as an American President once said, "Trust Me".