"DRAGNET"―Crime Stories, New Style

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 769, 15 April 1954, Page 7

"DRAGNET"―Crime Stories, New Style

RAGNET, the Australianproduced version of America’s most popular crime programme — now being featured in the late-night programmes from the ZB stationsset a new style in crime stories when it was first broadcast in the United States. It was hew in that it was not a whodunit in the generally accepted meaning of the word. Both murder and the sound of gunfire are conspicuously absent from ‘its self-contained 30-min-ute episodes, but. that’ doesn’t mean that the show contains chicken-livered, milk-and-water stuff, nor, on the other hand, that it makes particularly good listening for children (it is heard from. the ZB stations at 10.30 p.m. on Mondays). Dragnet dramatises real cases from the Los Angeles police files, and it views its wayward human material with compassion rather than anger. Its dialogue may be ‘laconic, but it isn’t hard-boiled. ; The story of the origins and development of Dragnet was told in a recent issue of the American magazine Time. The article claimed that the. American public, which now tunes in on 16,332,000 television screens every week, had gained from Dragnet a new appreciation of "the underpaid, longsuffering ordinary policeman, and. in many cases its first rudimentary understanding of real-life law enforcement." This is a considerable tribute to a show which sets out merely to entertain, in such a highly competitive and commercialised industry as American radio and television. The secret seems

to lie in the fact that nothing after all is so successful as the documentary. or slice-of-life technique when it comes to showing the public their fictional selves. The programme’s power to convince must lie in the thought behind’ the minds of American listeners to its criminal goings-on that "This might be you or me." Dragnet’s success story, according to Time, is largely the story of Jack Webb, who is director, story editor, casting chief. and acting star in the American version, Eight years ago Webb was. an unknown news announcer in a San Francisco radio station. Today his face and fictional character are better known than almost any other corresponding character in the radio and television entertainment world. He has made Sergeant Joe Friday, of the Los Angeles police (with his. verbal trade-mark, "All we want are the facts, ma’am"), more famous in the States than Sherlock Holmes, His show. has become something of an institution in contemporary American life. Its theme-tune is almost as well known as the "Star Spangled Banner" (a parody pf it, played backward and titled Tengard, once made the hit parade). Gramophone companies have sold a million copies of records that mimic Dragnet’s dead-pan dialogue in such stories as "St. George and the Dragonet" and "Little Blue . Riding Hood." The first programme of. Dragnet, which appeared originally in the radio form which listeners in this country hear, was broadcast on June 3, 1949. In two years it was the most popular show in American radio. Webb spent many nights in the back of a police

4 patrol-car listening to the police radio’s matter-of-fact reports of crimes that were taking place about the city. He studied police methods and absorbed police jargon and slang. When he planned the move from radio to television he decided to film his dramas as much as possible on the city’s streets, The ‘first scene of the first television programme of Dragnet showed Webb, in. character as Sergeant Joe Friday walking across Spring Street in Los Angeles -and up the steps of the city hall. Just out of camera range off-duty _policemen were holding back

the. curious spectators. When interior sets were needed, he built an exact replica of the Los Angeles police department "headquarters. Telephones bore the correct extension numbers, even door-knobs and calendars were duplicated. Realism has become one of Dragnet’s trade-marks, in its use of actors as well as in script, plot, and stage props. In making his television films, Webb forbids make-up, disregards rehearsal-time, and relies largely on radio actors who have the knack of acting with their voices. The faces of the actors, and every possible other aspect of the particular story he is telling, are shot in close-up-and this has become another of the show’s trade-marks.

But although Dragnet is said to play down the dramatics in its crime programmes, it cannot help emphasising by its very nature the sordid side of life. To quote again from Time’s article: "The priests, con men, whining housewives, burglars, waitresses, children and bewildered ordinary citizens who people Dragnet seem as sorrowfully genuine as old pistols in a hockshop window... in the most low-keyed of his stories Webb still lures the viewer by making the television screen a sort of peephole into a grim new world." It is a world which always has, and always will, exert a strong fastination for those of us who merely sit and listen beside our comfortable winter fires in the role of spectator,