This article is about the actor, producer and writer. For the mystery writer, see John Alfred "Jack" Webb.
John Randolph "Jack" Webb (April 2 1920 –
December 23 1982) was an American actor, television
producer, director and writer who is most famous for his role as Sergeant Joe Friday in the radio and television series Dragnet. He was also the founder of his own production company, Mark VII Productions.
Biography
Early life and career
Born in Santa Monica, California, Webb grew up poor in the Bunker Hill slum section of Los Angeles to a Jewish father and a Roman Catholic mother; he was raised Roman Catholic. He was a sickly child and studied art as a
young man. One of the tenants in the rooming house run by his mother was an ex-jazzman who imbued
Webb with a lifelong interest in jazz when he gave him a recording of Bix Beiderbecke's
"At the Jazz Band Ball." He was a graduate of Belmont High School in Los
Angeles.
Acting career
After serving as a crewmember of a B-26 Marauder in World War II, he starred in a radio show about a waterfront character who operated as an unlicensed
private detective, Pat Novak for
Hire. Webb's other radio shows included The Jack Webb Show, a comedy-musical sketch program (based in San
Francisco), Johnny Modero, Pier 23, Jeff Regan, Investigator,
Murder and Mr. Malone and One Out of Seven. Notable in this period were 'One out of Seven' in which Webb did all
the voices, usually vigorously attacking race prejudice. 'Pat Novak' is also notable for writing which imitates, almost to
parody, the hard-boiled style of such writers as Raymond Chandler. viz. "She drifted
into the room like 98 pounds of warm smoke. Her voice was hot and sticky - like a furnace full of marshmallows." Probably his
most famous motion picture role was as the combat-hardened drill instructor on Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island in the film The D.I. Webb's characterization in this role would color most of his later acting.
Dragnet and stardom
Webb had a featured role as a crime lab technician in the 1948 film He Walked by
Night based on the real-life murder of a California Highway
Patrolman. The film was made in semidocumentary style with technical
advice/assistance provided by Detective Sergeant Marty Wynn of
the Los Angeles Police Department. It was this film that gave Webb the
idea for Dragnet.
After getting much assistance from Sgt. Wynn and legendary LAPD chief William H.
Parker, Dragnet hit radio airwaves in 1949 (running until 1954) and then television in 1951 on the NBC network. Webb starred as Sgt. Joe Friday, and Barton Yarborough
co-starred as Sgt. Ben Romero.
Webb was a stickler for attention to detail. He believed that viewers wanted "realism"
and strove to give it to them. Webb had tremendous respect for the people in law enforcement. He often mentioned in interviews
that he was angry about the "ridiculous" amount of abuse to which police were often subjected by the press and the public. He
said that he wanted to perform a service for the police by showing them as low-key working class heroes. In 'Dragnet' he moved
away from earlier portrayals of the police in shows such as 'Jeff Reagan' and 'Pat Novak', which often showed them as brutal and
even corrupt.
Despite his reputation for accuracy, he wasn't above bending the rules. According to one Dragnet technical advisor, he
(the advisor) pointed out that several circumstances in one episode were extremely unlikely in real life. "You know that, and now
I know that. But that little old lady in Kansas will never know the difference," Webb said in response.
In 1950, Webb appeared alongside future Dragnet partner Harry Morgan in the film
noir Dark City.
The year 1952 saw Dragnet become a successful television show.
Unfortunately, Barton Yarborough died suddenly of a heart attack, and Barney Phillips (Sgt. Ed Jacobs) and Herbert Ellis (Officer Frank Smith) temporarily stepped in as partners. In 1952, veteran radio and film actor
Ben Alexander debuted as the second incarnation of jovial, burly Officer Frank Smith.
Alexander proved to be a popular addition to the series as Webb's detective partner and remained a cast member until the
cancellation in 1959.
Dragnet began with the narration "The story you are about to see is true. Only the names have been changed to protect
the innocent." At the end of each show, the results of the trial of the suspect and severity of sentence were announced by
Hal Gibney. Webb frequently re-created entire floors of buildings on soundstages, such as the
police headquarters at Los Angeles City Hall for Dragnet and a floor of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner Building for the 1954 film.
During the early days of Dragnet, he continued to appear in other movies, notably as the best friend of the main
character in the 1950 Billy Wilder film Sunset
Boulevard.
Webb's personal life was better defined by his love of jazz than his interest in police work.
His life-long interest in the cornet and racially tolerant attitude allowed him to move easily in
the jazz culture, where Webb met singer and actress Julie London. They married in 1947 and
raised two children. They later divorced, and Webb married three more times.
In 1951, Webb introduced a short-lived radio series, Pete Kelly's
Blues, in an attempt to bring the music he loved to a broader audience. That radio series became the basis for a 1955
movie of the same name. However, neither the radio series nor the movie
resonated with the audiences of the time.
In early 1967 Webb produced and starred in a new color version of Dragnet for NBC. This version co-starred
Harry Morgan as Officer Bill Gannon. (Ben Alexander was unavailable, as he was co-starring
in Felony Squad on ABC.) The
show's pilot, originally produced as a made-for-TV movie in 1966, did not air until 1969. The series itself ran through 1970.
Beginning in 1968, in concert with Robert A. Cinader, Webb produced NBC's popular
Adam-12, which focused on LAPD uniform officers Pete Malloy (Martin Milner) and Jim Reed (Kent McCord), which ran until 1975.
In 1968 Webb performed, in Joe Friday character, the classic "Copper Clappers" sketch during an appearance on
The Tonight Show where a pokerfaced Webb echoed Johnny Carson's equally-deadpan robbery report where all the details started with "Cl" or least the letter
C.
In the early 1970s, Webb produced The DA with Robert Conrad and O'Hara: US
Treasury with David Janssen. These were short-lived, but another show,
Emergency!, proved to be a huge success, running from 1972 to 1977, with ratings
occasionally even topping its timeslot competitor, All in the Family. Webb cast
his ex-wife, Julie London, as well as her second husband and Dragnet ensemble player Bobby
Troup, as nurse Dixie McCall and Dr. Joe Early.
Late life
Project UFO was another Webb production and depicted Project Blue Book, a U.S. Air Force investigation
into unidentified flying objects. This was the last major product of his Mark
VII production company. The end credits for the Mark VII productions famously showed a man's hands using a sledge hammer to stamp "VII" into a metal plate. It was later revealed that the hands belonged to Webb
himself.
He was working on scripts for another revival of Dragnet in 1983 with Kent McCord
as his partner, when he died of a heart attack in 1982 at the age of 62.
He was interred in the Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills
Cemetery in Los Angeles. Webb was given a funeral with full police honors (including the chief of police announcing that
the badge number 714 that Webb used in Dragnet would be retired) although he had never actually served on the force.
Not only did the LAPD use Dragnet episodes as training films for a time, they also named a police academy auditorium
after Webb.
Universal has released several of Webb's series on DVD, including Dragnet 1967, Emergency! and Adam-12.
In addition a number of episodes of the 1950s Dragnet series are now in the public
domain and as such are widely available on non-Universal DVD releases. The Dragnet 1967 and Adam-12 theme
songs are available on iTunes for downloading to iPod.
Trivia
Filmography
Features:
Short subjects:
- Army Information Film No. 7: Code of Conduct - To Resist (1950)
- The Challenge of Ideas (1961) (narrator)
- A Force in Readiness (1961)
- The Commies are Coming, the Commies are Coming
(1962)
- Patrol Dogs of the United States Air Force (1968) (narrator)
- Star Spangled Salesman (1968)
Television work
Books
- The Badge, Prentice-Hall (hardback, 1958)
References
- Hugh W. Binyon: Reflections in a Pig's Eye Babcock Publishing; (paperback, 2002)
- Michael J. Hayde: My Name's Friday: The Unauthorized but True Story of Dragnet and the Films of Jack Webb;
Cumberland House Publishing; ISBN 1-58182-190-5 (paperback, 2001)
- Jack Webb: The Badge: The Inside Story of One of America's Great Police Departments ; Prentice-Hall; (hardback,
1958)
- Maurice Zolotow: The True Story of Jack Webb The American Weekly, Sept. 12, 19, 26, Oct. 3, 1954.
External links
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