Dragnet

Dragnet 1967 (1967–1970)
TV Series - 30 min - Crime | Drama | Mystery
8.0 Your rating: -/10 Ratings: 8.0/10 from 884 users
Reviews: 26 user | 14 critic
Police Detective Sgt. Joe Friday and his partners investigate crimes in Los Angeles.

Creator: Jack Webb
Stars: Jack Webb, Harry Morgan, Don Ross

I always love how Jack Webb series had the same dozen or so guest stars. Despite that, there were some very interesting guest stars:

- OJ Simpson
- GD Spradlin
- Jan-Michael Vincent
- Howard Hesseman
- Felton Perry
- Barry Williams
- Georg Stanford Brown
- Scatman Crothers

I loved Jack Webb's speech on drugs. Classic!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Twre6ItGEI

Little known tidbit -- there was a Dragnet movie released in 1954, which was the first movie based on a TV series.

The plot is a bit corny, and civil rights be damned (this is a good decade before Miranda v. Arizona), but it's worth a look just to see a pre-Paladin Richard Boone and very young, very clean-cut Dennis Weaver.

Of course, the film has a lot of the regular cast from the later Dragnet/Adam-12/Emergency! universe -- Stacy Harris, William Boyett, Art Gilmore, Virginia Gregg, Vic Perrin, just to name a few.

I think he was still at USC when he was on there. Webb also used old Burt Mustin whenever he had a chance, and a whole cast of lesser knowns:

http://www.badge714.org/dragsspx.htm#ban

When Del Moore was on, it was always going to end up somewhere crazy:

That's the nice thing about MP's posts. He gives you Just the facts, Ma'am.

See what I did there?

LOL you're right here is OJ beign recruited for the LAPD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdmfF5l_gv8

In a deleted scene, he quit the police academy because they wore Bruno Magli shoes.

I thought it was because Joe Friday frowned upon him having a White wife. Joe was just a bit of a conservative, you know.

Some unintentional comedy here.

http://youtu.be/mUoG5Lw9vhM

Dragnet is now on Netflix. I am watching the first episode and it's about LSD. It's hilarious, the actors playing stoned out on Acid roles are laughable. Gtrat show back inhe day.

Ha ha ha! I can imagine. None of the actors were that good on that show. It was so deadpan but became successful because of it.

Does anyone remember Johnny Carson's skit on Dragnet? I think with Jack Webb. Hilarious!


TIS

Yes TIS the Clappers...... This is for you. Hilarious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjquGpmgwOo

Is that the original or the revival with Colonel Potter?

Because LSD would have been a pretty progressive topic for the fifties.

But the color episodes from the sixties WERE hysterical. And the funniest part was, they weren't meant to be funny.

Ha ha ha!!! I love it! I remember seeing it when it first aired and it's just as funny now.



TIS

It's the original in color and you're right it was made not to be funny but it is hysterical.

Here is Dragnets very first episode the one on LSD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eBPWwxOKwQ

That's a riot. Oddly enough, watching that show with my Mom back in the late '60s is one of my first television memories.

Now here's the opening from the original 1951 pilot episode:

"And now...here he is...Buddy Young Jr.--Mr. Saturday Night."

I LOVE that movie, TB.

It's funny because Billy Crystal was on such a roll there and that movie flopped and put a stop it. But that's only because it was a dramedy that most moviegoers weren't expecting from him.

I thought it was a quality film all the way around. Ron Silver was great, and David Paymer should have won an Oscar. If there was one weak link it was Helen Hunt, which is weird because she's a dynamite actress.

Want to see a good movie with Jack Webb see "The Men" staring Marlon Brando.

About paraplegics wounded in War they are both in a ward with others. Pretty good movie as I remember it any way.

Wow, i only watched Dragnet in the laste 60's. I was not even aware they had an earlier series in the 50's or I would have watched that too.

See that? As old as I am, I can still teach the REALLY old guys a thing or two .

But all kidding aside, the original black and white show is not only superior, it's not an inadvertent comedy like the version with Colonel Potter (and for the record, I realize that his name was Harry Morgan ).

When you can find them, the 1951-59 run is better watching, because it's much more crime drama and investigation. If you're into history, the opening scenes are fascinating because it shows a post-WWII Los Angeles before much of the core was redeveloped. It's a lot of low-rise sprawl because a lot of earthquake-proofing building techniques were not developed yet, and Los Angeles at the time had an ordinance preventing any building from having more than 13 stories. Here's an article about that, along with a comparison of mid-1960s downtown versus 1980s downtown.

http://www.kcet.org/updaily/socal_focus/...-of-angels.html

The 1967-70 revival had a much different tone. You see it about midway through the second season (1968 or so) -- there's a definite shift away from solving crimes and more focus on the other community-related functions of the LAPD (e.g. press relations, training, community relations, etc.). It coincides with the tremendous social change at the time.

The 2003-04 remake with Ed O'Neill is on Hulu streaming. The first season is good, but Dick Wolf destroyed that series in the second season by making it into a de facto Law and Order: Dragnet.