Tag Archives: Jack Webb

Classic TV: “Dragnet: The Christmas Story’

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dragnet the christmas story tree

Every TV series – well. most of them, anyway – does a Christmas episode. Sometimes they’re “very special” episodes. It’s too much for TV writers and producers to resist, really: Do a heartwarming episode for the holiday, usually adapting Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” As they said, in reference to another subject, on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” It is an opportunity to “hug and cry and learn and grow.”

But not Jack Webb, no ma’am. When the creator of “Dragnet” does a Christmas story, he does one that’s to the point and – even though it has some sentimental moments – full of sharp edges.

I just rewatched “The Christmas Story” episode of “Dragnet,” which also proved that when Webb had a story he liked, he stuck with it. Webb wrote the script originally for his “Dragnet” radio series and the version of TV’s “Dragnet” that aired in the 1950s.

I watched the version – called “The Big Little Jesus” originally but retitled “The Christmas Story” by this time –  that aired on NBC in December 1967. This was the color version of “Dragnet” and the one that co-starred Harry Morgan as Bill Gannon, the partner to Webb’s LAPD Detective Joe Friday.

“Dragnet” reveled in the everyday police cases that Webb believed made the Los Angeles Police Department the best law enforcement agency in the world. “The Christmas Story” was a perfect example of that.

A San Fernando Valley church reports  on Christmas Eve that its Baby Jesus statute is missing from its Nativity display. Friday and Gannon question the priest about who might have been able to get into the church to steal it. Friday seems surprised when the priest says the church is open 24 hours a day. “So any thief could get in?” Friday asks the priest, who replies that the church especially wanted thieves to make their way to the altar.

Friday and Gannon promise the priest they will try to have the Baby Jesus statue back before 6 a.m. Mass on Christmas morning.

The detectives pursue a couple of leads, including a visit to an offbeat seller and, apparently, re-buyer, of religious statues. They also talk to a couple of altar boys, including Barry Williams, who would within two years be playing Greg Brady on “The Brady Bunch.”

Ultimately the cops are pointed toward a down-on-his-luck parishioner who, it’s assumed, stole the statue. But it’s obvious he did not, and Webb makes Friday’s frustration at the dead end briefly palpable.

The mystery, such as it was, is solved without any participation, other than as observers, by the cops. As Friday and Gannon go back to the church to tell the priest they failed, a little boy comes in, pulling a red wagon. In it, of course, is the Baby Jesus statue. The boy, whose family attends the church, had told the infant that if he got a red wagon for Christmas he would give it the first ride. The boy got the wagon from local firemen, who fix up broken toys for poor children in the neighborhood, which explains why he had the wagon early enough to pinch Baby Jesus from the manger.

“The Christmas Story” was, after all, a very special episode of “Dragnet.”

Random observations:

The conversation between Friday and Gannon that opens the episode acknowledges, for the first time I remember really, that Friday has a girlfriend. I’m sure this was touched on at other times in the series, and it’s well-established that Gannon is married, But it’s a nice touch, and the ensuing conversation about proper presents for a wife or girlfriend adds a bit of personality to the characters.

I also love that the Christmas tree that Gannon brings to the office and plops down on the work table he shares with Friday looks like an even more pathetic version of Charlie Brown’s tree, as seen in the animated special two years earlier.

It’s a nice bit of business for Friday and Gannon to get more time to work on the theft by asking their captain – who had wanted them on another case – to call the priest himself and tell him they wouldn’t be returning the stolen Baby Jesus in time for Christmas.

And this, the choir from the hotel for down-on-their-luck men:

dragnet the christmas story choir

‘Dragnet’ – Joe Friday on the job

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dragnet the badge racket

I love “Dragnet.” Really.

The classic Jack Webb series – which ran in the 1950s and in the 1960s, although I’m really only familiar with the latter show – has long since become a touchstone for parody with Webb’s “just the facts, ma’am” writing, direction, casting and performances. But the show has a lot of virtues.

I’ve written about it as a LA travelogue before, for example.

Each half-hour episode quickly and concisely tells a story of crime and punishment in Los Angeles. Sure the show is ripe with silly hippie portrayals and overreaches in it’s messages. But Webb was master of the 30-minute (minus commercials) drama like no one since Rod Serling – and maybe no one since.

Still, it can be more than a little unintentionally funny.

I was watching an episode today – “The Badge Racket,” from September 1967 – in which Gannon (Harry Morgan) goes undercover at an LA hotel to catch a threesome blackmailing out-of-town businessmen. A bimbo barges into the businessman’s hotel room and then two guys, posing as cops, shake him down for money in lieu of telling the folks back home in Nebraska or Iowa or wherever.

As Gannon leaves the hotel with the crooks, Friday follows in a “loose” tail.

When they get to police headquarters – it’s all part of the crooks’ plan, so just go with it – Friday tightens that “loose” tail and is seen riding the elevator with them in a “don’t mind me, folks” moment.

dragnet the badge racket

The scene very nearly made me fall out of my chair laughing. I looked around online and was able to find a screen cap on the wonderful site dragnetstyle.blogspot.com.

Love it.

‘Dragnet’ as L.A. travelogue

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It’s been 20 years since the last time I was in Los Angeles. I was a pretty regular visitor for a while, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when my friend Brian had recently moved from Indiana to work in the movie business.

But by the time I visited L.A. the first time, I felt like I already knew it. Thanks to Jack Webb.

Webb, the decidedly non-flashy writer, director and actor best known for the police procedural radio and TV series “Dragnet,” made me feel like I knew the sprawling Southland.

“This is the city, Los Angeles, California,” Webb intoned at the opening of each episode of the late 1960s “Dragnet” revival. From watching “Dragnet” I knew not only that L.A. had three million residents — a number that boggled the mind of a kid living on a farm between Muncie and Cowan —  but I also picked up the names and some of the geography of the show.

During a typical episode, Webb would salt his narration and dialogue with the names of southern California communities like Reseda and streets like Wilshire and Olympic boulevards.

Webb, who strived for no-frills, matter-of-fact acting as well as straightforward directing, tantalized me with his look at Los Angeles. “Dragnet” — along with “Adam-12” and “Emergency” — portrayed a city where anything could happen, thanks to those three million people.

Webb gets some ribbing now for his at-times over-the-top endorsement of authority over non-comformity, but he filled out the cast of his shows with an offbeat repertory company of actors and actresses playing the equally offbeat denizens of the city.

With its sunny front yards, wide streets and hills on the horizon, Webb’s Los Angeles created a vision of the city in my mind that was comforting when I visited years later. From Olvera Street — the city’s oldest neighborhood — to the Farmer’s Market to the hills where the Hollywood sign looms, L.A. seemed like a second home to me.