by John Buntin
“It makes every cop in the country laugh when they hear this nonsense on the radio,” Wynn told Webb. “Why doesn’t somebody show how detectives really break a crime?”
Wynn told Webb that he ought to do it right.
“I can arrange for you to have access to cases in the police files,” he told the actor. “Maybe you could do something with them.”
“I doubt it, Marty,” Webb responded, noting that “the fiction shows have such high ratings.” But the idea stuck with Webb. In fact, he had recently started sketching out another show about a lonely PI, tentatively titled Joe Friday, Room Five. What if Friday became a police officer instead? The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea. Several weeks later, Webb called Wynn and told him that he was thinking about starting a new kind of police drama, one that portrayed police work as it really was. Wynn was pleased and, true to his word, arranged for Webb to start spending some time with Wynn and his partner, Vance Brasher.
Webb’s hunger for details and verisimilitude was voracious. “How do you frisk a suspect?” “How do you kick in a door?” “How do you clean your gun?” Jack Webb was a question a minute. He was soon spending all his free time at police department headquarters in City Hall. He got permission to start taking classes at the police academy. He was learning what it meant to be a detective.
Now he needed a name. The Cop was quickly dismissed as disrespectful. The Sergeant was too military. One day during a brainstorming session, writer Herb Ellis and Webb were talking about an earlier radio program, Calling All Cars, when Ellis asked Webb, “What do they call it when cops go all out to catch a crook?”
“They put out a dragnet,” Webb responded.
That was it. “Dragnet.” Now Webb had to find a network that would broadcast his show.
His first choice, CBS, passed. No blondes, no Humphrey Bogart-style Sam Spade, no audience was the network’s prediction. Webb disagreed. Authenticity was what would make his show unique. Webb went to NBC. It was desperate for programming, having recently lost prized performers Bing Crosby, Jack Benny, and Amos ‘n’ Andy to CBS—so desperate it was willing to give a true-to-life police documentary a go. There was just one condition: Webb had to have access to LAPD case files.
This was not necessarily an easy sell. Pat Novak for Hire had presented policemen in an almost uniformly bad light. (Nearly every episode featured a dumb, brutal police officer who hinders, threatens, and sometimes beats Novak as he attempts to solve the case.) So it was with some uncertainty that Wynn and Brasher took Webb to meet their captain, Jack Donahoe. They were fortunate in their choice. The good-natured Donahoe agreed to provide case notes to help Webb work up a pilot program that he could present to then-Asst. Chief Joe Reed. Webb was delighted when Reed pronounced the pilot “good and accurate.” The show then went to Chief Horrall, who informed Webb “he was on the right track, reflecting the day-to-day drudgery of police work.” It wasn’t exactly the reaction Webb was hoping for, but it got Webb what he needed—a departmental blessing and access to its case notes. In June 1949, the first episode of radio Dragnet went on the air, Friday evening at 10:00 p.m.
From the start, Webb was fanatical about getting the details right. Five soundmen were employed to create a range of more than three hundred special effects. Wherever possible, the program used actual recordings from the department. Soundmen staked out the City Hall garage to capture the roar of police cruisers speeding away; they also recorded the everyday background noise of City Hall. When a script called for a long-distance phone call from Los Angeles to Fountain Green, Utah, sound engineers placed a real call, and recorded the relay clicks and point-to-point operator comments. Terminology was precise and correct. A suggestion to replace “attention all units” with the more dramatic “calling all cars” was brushed aside. Understatement rather than the exaggerated accents, over-the-top sound effects, and histrionic acting that characterized most crime radio programs was the order of the day. The most important part of the new program, though, was its central character, played by Jack Webb himself, Sgt. Joe Friday.
In those days, your typical homicide detective had a very distinctive look. “His suits are not cheap, though they don’t always look well pressed,” wrote newspaperwoman Agnes Underwood, “and while not loud, would hardly be called dark, conservative business numbers.” Their ties, however, “shout like a movie homicide detective.”
If they are foppish about their ties, they are vainer in their searches to turn up the snazziest bands for their wrist watches…. The bands are dreams of matinee idols’ jewelers: gold stretch, mesh, hand-tooled leather, or carved silver. If one of these lads keeps looking at his watch, he’s not worried about the time, he’s trying to display his newest bracelet to his associates, even if he has to roll back his shirt cuff to guarantee they’ll see it.
There was “nothing sissy about the bracelet competitions,” Underwood continued, “for the bands bind brawny wrists, backing up tremendous fists, made more lethal by heavy rings on the third finger of the left hand. That’s one reason they don’t get beaten up like movie detectives; they know how to use those fists.”
Joe Friday (as played by Jack Webb) was different. He was young, tall, and almost painfully slim. (Despite being six feet tall, he weighed a mere 165 pounds, just five pounds over the LAPD’s minimum weight.) He dressed casually, in sports coats and a tie, but his demeanor was anything but casual. Friday was an organization man, professional through and through, courteous in his interactions with others, but determined to resolve the case before him. Contrary to the image that later emerged, Friday was not an emotionless automaton. In fact, his most famous phrase, “Just the facts, ma’am,” is one he never uttered. Nor was the original Joe Friday the painfully square detective of the 1960 series who battled “killer reefer.” Dragnet was vérité, like reality TV. At the same time, Joe Friday was the perfect noir hero, a jaded idealist, strangely single, who walked the mean streets of Los Angeles but who himself was “neither tarnished nor afraid.”
The radio program’s success was modest. It had enough listeners to keep it on the air (it eventually settled in on Thursdays, at 10:30 p.m.) but not enough to make it a true hit. Nonetheless, its unorthodox depiction of orthodox police work attracted avid fans. Police officers were delighted; single women were enthralled. (Many seemed to view the unattached Friday as a desirable catch; Webb was deluged with proposals.) Dragnet soon picked up a sponsor, the cigarette company Liggett & Myers, thus ensuring the program’s survival. It also attracted the attention of the nation’s self-styled number one lawman, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.
In Dragnet, the bureau saw a new opportunity to burnish its image. So the FBI spoke to Liggett & Myers. Just a month after it had picked up the radio program, the cigarette company presented Webb and NBC with an unexpected demand: Henceforth every program would end with a tribute to a graduate of the FBI’s National Academy.
Webb, NBC, and the LAPD responded by raising hell. Neither Webb nor NBC liked the idea of a sponsor dictating creative decisions. Moreover, the FBI’s demand missed the point of the show. Dragnet was all about the day-to-day work of an ordinary police sergeant. The FBI’s National Academy was for high-ranking officers. Honoring only them would offend ordinary patrolmen. Moreover, everyone knew that the FBI already had its own radio program (This Is Your F.B.I.). Rather than provoking a fight with the bureau, Webb and NBC decided to drop the tribute entirely.
Soon after the tribute disappeared, two agents appeared at NBC’s L.A. studio and demanded to know what had happened to the idea of honoring an FBI Academy graduate. NBC blamed the LAPD. This was reported directly to Hoover. Worse, the memo to the director stated that the LAPD was talking trash about the bureau, telling the network that the FBI was “in bad repute with police departments across the country.” The memo claimed that the LAPD had even threatened to cease cooperating with the program if the FBI was honored. Hoover was upset. He retaliated by ending FBI participation in LAPD training a
nd refusing to admit LAPD officers to the bureau’s prestigious National Academy. Although the alleged slight to the bureau had occurred before Parker became chief, the freeze extended to Chief Parker’s tenure, for reasons that are unclear. When Parker took office, he did not receive the customary letter of congratulations from the director.
Whether Parker knew about his department’s transgressions or picked up on the terrible snub he had received from Hoover is also unclear. Passing through Washington, D.C., in the fall of 1951, Parker was granted a personal meeting with Hoover. Later, according to the FBI’s L.A. special agent in charge (whose responsibilities included relaying all gossip regarding the bureau to FBI headquarters in Washington), the new chief “was very flattering in his expressions toward the Director and for the leadership he provides in law enforcement.” But Parker’s deference was short lived. He and the LAPD were on the verge of a series of steps that would transform the director’s frigidity into outright hostility.
BY 1951, both Webb and NBC were eager to expand the radio program into a new medium—television. That meant winning the support of Bill Parker. At first, Parker was hesitant. Truth be told, he didn’t much like Hollywood. The new chief blamed movies like The Keystone Cops for propagating an image of policemen as nincompoops. In letters to his wife, Helen, during the Second World War, he complained about having to pay to watch Hollywood films abroad. However, he did appreciate how effective moving pictures could be. During his days at the traffic division, he’d been involved in making informational films intended to educate drivers about how to use the freeways that were beginning to crisscross the basin. He understood the power of the moving picture. But the experience that really brought home to Parker just how powerful an advertisement Dragnet had become for the department came when he attended the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Miami in the fall of 1951. Everywhere he went, people addressed him as “Friday.”
Still, Parker hesitated. A radio program was one thing. A television show was another. It was hard to imagine one that would live up to his own high vision for the department. But Webb was ardent in making his case—and explicit in his promises. The department would review every script. Essentially, Parker would serve as a senior producer for the show. Total commitment to the highest ideals of police professionalism would be the program’s goal. Eventually Parker relented and gave Webb permission to shoot the pilot in City Hall. The episode was pulled from one of the most dramatic radio programs, “The Case of the Human Bomb.” Webb was not allowed to use the LAPD’s modern badge, the Series 6, though. Instead, he was restricted to the old Eagle badge—in case things went wrong.
The episode aired on Sunday, December 16, 1951. First came the famous music: dum-da-dum-dum. Pause. Dum-da-dum-dum-DUM. Then, as a picture of an LAPD sergeant’s badge filled the screen, the voice-over: “Ladies and gentlemen, the story you are about to see is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.” Several bars of music followed, then an aerial image of Los Angeles filled the screen—and the voice of Sgt. Joe Friday filled the air. “This is the city…Two million people. In my job, you get a chance to meet them all. I’m a cop.” (How Webb managed to use the word “cop,” which Parker strongly objected to, is unclear.) Parker was pleased by the dramatic story, in which Webb disarmed a bomber bent on toppling City Hall. The critics were impressed too. The New York Times praised the show’s “terseness and understatement.” Other critics hailed “the leisurely camera work, the restrained acting, and the crisp, sparing dialogue.” Said the Hollywood Reporter, “Just about everything good that can be said about a TV film show can be said about Dragnet. This series is going to do more to raise the rest of the country’s opinion of Los Angeles than any other show of any kind.” Webb was given permission to start using the department’s modern badge.
On January 3, 1952, Dragnet began appearing every other Thursday night on NBC. The radio drama continued as well, growing in popularity as the television show got established. To help review Webb’s various and growing productions for accuracy, Parker reached down to one of the officers in his public relations bureau, Gene Roddenberry, who was paid $25 per script. Roddenberry was soon writing freelance scripts of his own for shows like Mr. District Attorney while also helping Chief Parker with his speeches. Then, just as Dragnet’s first run of fourteen episodes was coming to an end, the Bloody Christmas scandal broke. The people of Los Angeles were about to experience a serious case of cognitive dissonance. Which was the truer face of the LAPD: the carefully controlled professionalism of Sgt. Joe Friday, or the brutal realities of the Lincoln Heights Jail on a drunken Christmas Eve night?
Parker’s initial response to the crisis—attack the department’s critics and claim that the police department was the real victim—had been clumsy. One of the reasons for Parker’s ambivalent response may well have been his own sense of personal responsibility. The commanding officer at Central Division whom investigators would later fault for the violence was Lt. Harry Fremont. Deputy Chief Harold Sullivan, who at the time headed the LAPD’s patrol bureau, had resisted putting Fremont into Central Division, warning that he “was a good detective but a drunk.” Sullivan even went so far as to put his reservations in writing. Parker ignored the warning. Yet in the aftermath of the beating, it was Sullivan who got transferred. Fortunately for Parker, Sullivan never breathed a word of what had happened.
Soon after his ill-received first appearance before the county grand jury, Parker changed tack. By the end of March, the newspapers were reporting that Internal Affairs was assisting the grand jury in its probe. Parker was also hinting broadly that the department might discipline officers even before the grand jury completed its investigation. Although he continued to speak out powerfully—even provocatively—in defense of the force, Parker now had a new goal: to show that no one could investigate the police department as thoroughly as the police department itself. In short, Sergeant Friday was on the job. He delivered on these promises. In the spring of 1952, the grand jury indicted eight officers on charges of “assault with force likely to do great bodily harm.” Ultimately four officers were given prison sentences, a fifth officer was fined, and three officers were acquitted.
Parker went further. He ordered the transfer of fifty-four police officers with connections to Bloody Christmas, including two deputy chiefs, two inspectors, four captains, five lieutenants, and six sergeants. Another thirty-three officers were suspended, many based on evidence inadmissible in court. As it became clear that the police department was conducting a massive purge, what pressure there was to oust Parker and reform Section 202 abated. The chief still handled criticism poorly. When in their final report the grand jury faulted Parker for conditions in the jail, he couldn’t resist issuing a furious retort, prompting columnist Florabel Muir and the editorial board of the Examiner to chide the chief for failing to acknowledge the department’s foot-dragging in the matter. But the criticism now seemed a minor one. The opportunity to remove the chief from office for malfeasance, in accordance with civil service protections, was closing. Parker was determined that it would never open again.
DRAGNET wasn’t the only television program that went on the air in 1952 and profoundly influenced the Los Angeles Police Department’s self-image. In April 1952, just months after the first airing of Dragnet, another show appeared that was arguably equally influential—even though it aired on KNBH, the local NBC station, for only a few months—The Thin Blue Line. The title referred to a famous incident during the 1854 Crimean War when the British Army’s 93rd Highland tegiment—drawn up only two lines deep rather than the customary four—routed a Russian cavalry force of 2,500 men. The producer—and star—was none other than Chief William H. Parker.
The purpose of The Thin Blue Line was unabashedly propagandistic—to counter “current attempts to undermine public confidence in the Police Department” and “instill greater confidence in the police service.” Although Parker recognized the need “to bring to the aud
ience the type of information in which they are interested,” the show he had in mind was no Dragnet. Rather, The Thin Blue Line featured a panel of experts (almost always including Chief Parker himself) and a moderator, supplied by the studio. Even in 1952, this seemed a bit dull. After only five months, KNBH (which had always seen the program as public service programming, not compelling entertainment) pulled the plug on the broadcast. Nonetheless, The Thin Blue Line was enormously important—not as a television show, but as a metaphor. The notion that the police was all that stood between society and the void, between order and chaos, between “Americanism” and communism, was thrilling—but also treacherous. In this worldview, civilians were corrupt, weak. (“The American people are like children as far as gambling is concerned—they must be kept away from this temptation,” Parker told the Herald-Express in October, when asked to comment on a ballot initiative that would bring Nevada-style legalized gambling to California.) Organized crime furthered this corruption and, by doing so, threatened the nation’s very survival.
“Soviet Russia believes that the United States contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction, to wit: avarice, greed, and corruption,” declared Parker in one often-quoted speech. “Russia believes we are rewriting the history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, another nation that became great and collapsed from its internal weakness.”
Parker believed that a great conflict had commenced with Soviet Russia. War was already under way in Korea. To prevail in this conflict, the United States would need the virtues of Sparta, not the indulgences of the Sunset Strip. In short, Mickey Cohen and his ilk weren’t just criminals. They were the unwitting agents of international communism. Police officers were thus on the front lines of protecting civilization itself.
In this vital role, Parker wanted only the very best. The 4,100-officer department was, virtually everyone agreed, terribly short staffed. Both the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the International City Managers Association believed that a ratio of three officers per thousand residents was the absolute minimum for a force capable of securing an urban area. The city of Los Angeles and its two million residents had just two police officers per thousand residents. To meet IACP standards, Los Angeles would need a minimum of two thousand new police officers. Yet the department couldn’t even fill existing vacancies.