ABSTRACT
Like many other early television shows, Dragnet originated in another medium. Starting in mid-1949 on the radio, Jack Webb created the downto-earth detective sergeant Joe Friday, who, week after week, undertook ordinary police work with a stern sense of factual logic that may not have pleased the criminal cornered at the end of each episode, but nevertheless delighted the series’ numerous fans. After the show won several awards, NBC gave the green light to transfer it to the screen, setting the stage for one of early television’s most popular and enduring police dramas. Based on actual cases of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), the series aimed to profi le the work of an ordinary police detective who solves the daily confl icts arising in the big city. The success of the show in both media had much to do with a realism dedicated to carrying the viewer into the world of everyday police work. The accuracy in detail reportedly even prompted police instructors to play recordings to trainees at the Los Angeles police academy.1 At a time when the fi lm noir fashioned by the cinema screen had undermined the image and credibility of the police, depicting them as bureaucratic and corrupt to the point of obstructing courageous private detectives in their search for justice, Joe Friday’s pragmatic, down-to-earth manner was greeted as a welcome change. The new television hero was soon recognized by American audiences as one of the most celebrated detectives, alongside the likes of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. In 1954, Time wrote that of all television shows only I Love Lucy was able to challenge Dragnet’s popularity.2 Although the show’s top ratings may not have broken any records, the article’s author was convinced that there was hardly a child above the age of four in the country “who does not know and constantly voice the brassy notes (dum du dum dum) of Dragnet’s theme music.”3 When in 1967 the show returned for another three seasons, having been off the air since 1959, critics celebrated the return of the “hero of routine law enforcement (‘My name is Friday, I’m a cop’) and champion of terse dialogue (‘Just give us the facts, Ma’am’).”4 Retiring in 1970 after three additional seasons, the icon may have aged but had not vanished from the popular culture dictionary of cherished terms. Lampooned on shows like Saturday Night Live during the 1980s, parodied by Dan Aykroyd in a motion picture
(Dragnet (1987), directed by Tom Mankiewicz), the show was also revived in countless reruns, demonstrating the lasting impact of Jack Webb’s creation on American popular culture and hence on the nation’s visual literacy. The astonishing endurance of Dragnet and of America’s familiarity with its star-icon may be best illustrated with a passing note in one of television’s hit shows of the 1990s, Ally McBeal. In one episode its star, a thirty-year-old female lawyer, says of an attractive new colleague who is supposed to help the law fi rm in a murder case: “He looks like Jack Webb.” Some thirty years after the second run of Dragnet in the late sixties-at about the time when the fi ctional Ally McBeal would have been born-American audiences were still expected to recall the visual characteristics of the historical persona and to enjoy the nostalgic humor of the reference.
