Dragnet

[Frodoleader]

Occasionally I get to watch Dragnet on RTV. It, of course stars Jack Webb as Sgt. Joe Friday and Harry Morgan as his partner, Officer Bill Gannon. It is sort of a joke about the wooden acting, especially Webb's. But I have to tell you, the give and take between Webb and Morgan is hilarious! Their scenes together are great! Regardless, it's a lot of fun to watch this show.

[Sam]

Frodoleader,
Here is a funny back and forth between Carson and Webb.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4RIBhQIkII

[Styles Bitchley]

Frodoleader,
Here is a funny back and forth between Carson and Webb.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4RIBhQIkII

That's awesome

[J.J. Walters]

Dragnet is great fun.

My favorite scene has to be the Blue Boy-LSD scene from "The LSD Story".

Paul McWilliams gave a great rundown of it, excerpts:

In search of the boy, they visit an LSD party. It looks something like Laugh In's cocktail party, but much slower and without jokes. Friday calls some uniformed police. They arrive within thirty seconds. (Ah, the good old days.) Everyone at the party is arrested. Talk about a bad trip. The boy, unfortunately, is not there.

Fortunately, however, a pharmacy calls in: they have just sold 1,000 empty gelatin capsules to a young man fitting the description of the boy.

...after being shown mug shots, the pharmacist... gives Friday the address of where the capsules were delivered. (Which means the boy came in, ordered 1,000 empty gelatin capsules, which must weigh about five ounces, and then said, "Here, deliver these." Yes, this boy was clearly on drugs—or the scriptwriter was.)
The landlady happily provides Detective Friday with a passkey. Friday enters (apparently having no use for that seven-letter four-letter word: warrant) and finds a friend of the boy, who says of the boy, "He kept taking more and more pills. He kept wanting to go far out, far out, far out . . ." "He made it;" intones Friday, "he's dead."
...
After the commercial, we are told that a coroner's inquest found the boy died of an LSD overdose. (Barbiturates are mentioned somewhere in there, parenthetically.) Yes, ladies and gentlemen, for the first and only time in history, LSD kills.

Classic television!

[Frodoleader]

I think we are somewhat jaded from watching years of police procedural dramas (Law & Order, Hill Street Blues, even Cops among others), so we have an understanding of how police do their jobs. But then you watch Dragnet and I sometimes cringe when I see Friday and Gannon do things that will get their cases thrown out of court! It was certainly a different world back then.

[StarchedUndershirts]

The 1954 cinematic version of the show is available exclusively at Amazon.com:

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Site-N ... ries/13239

[Frodoleader]

Yesterday's episode of Dragnet 1969 was about recruiting "ethnics", or as we now call them, minorities. In a group of young men listening to their recruiting spiel was none other than OJ Simpson!!! He had one line of dialogue. I was thinking that this was probably during his senior year at USC.

[Steve]

Ah yes, nothing like those of us in our fifties that grew up watching the anti-drugs episodes. I recall one where a young couple was stoned (the man may have been Rob Reiner) and they find their baby had drowned in the tub. Kept me straight (well,mostly).............

[Stelth]

Occasionally I get to watch Dragnet on RTV. It, of course stars Jack Webb as Sgt. Joe Friday and Harry Morgan as his partner, Officer Bill Gannon. It is sort of a joke about the wooden acting, especially Webb's. But I have to tell you, the give and take between Webb and Morgan is hilarious! Their scenes together are great! Regardless, it's a lot of fun to watch this show.

I totally agree. Most people seem to cringe when you mention this show but I love it. It's kind of hokey but very entertaining. Jack Webb was a good guy and very loyal to his friends. If you watch a lot you'll notice he hired a lot of the same actors many times. He was supposed to do a Dragnet reboot in the 80s with Kent McCord as his partner but died before they ever started shooting. Too bad.

[MHTR]

This was a great show. I watched it all the time on Nick at Night in the late 80s / early 90s. There was great chemistry between Webb & Morgan. I thought the way they walked and talked was hilarious. It was available on Hulu a while ago, not sure if it still is.

[Luther's nephew Dobie]

This was a great show. I watched it all the time on Nick at Night in the late 80s / early 90s. There was great chemistry between Webb & Morgan. I thought the way they walked and talked was hilarious. It was available on Hulu a while ago, not sure if it still is.

It was indeed a great show and hokey or not, the legendary "Blue Boy" episode is damn entertaining on many levels though best viewed after at least 5 beers:
Blue Boy -" My hair's green and I'm a tree!"
Friday - "You're pretty high and far out. What kind of kick are you on, son?"

Believe it or not Webb was quite a ladies man and was the lead in several films. Webb was great in The DI. There was a priceless scene when one of the marine recruits on Parris Island kills a sand flea without permission, so his DI - Webb - has the entire platoon sifting thru sand dunes looking for the flea's body, in order to give it a funeral as a worthy foe and victim of the DI's beloved Corp.
One boot kills another flea on the sly and claims its the original flea.
Webb inspects the flea and declares its the wrong sex, so keep looking. I am not doing justice to this bit, you have to see it yourself, its worth sitting thru the whole flick just for that.
If I recall correctly, every role was filled by a active duty Marine except for Webb.
Through the early 1980's, the USMC noted that whenever local tv stations reran The DI or John Wayne's Sands of Iwo Jima, recuitment spiked in those areas.

[Stelth]

Webb is in one of my favorite movies: Sunset Blvd with William Holden.