A Dragnet Christmas

Following up on Kukla, Fran and Ollie, here is a Christmas album from another well-remembered American television program, Jack Webb's Dragnet.

Like Kukla, Fran and Ollie - and many if not most TV shows of the time - Dragnet began as a radio drama. Starring Webb as Sgt. Joe Friday of the Los Angeles Police Department, the program went on the air in 1949. Webb's long-time sidekick Ben Alexander joined in 1951, remaining on the show for many years as Officer Frank Smith. The radio program lasted until 1957 - almost to the end of such programming on that medium.

Jack Webb and Ben Alexander show off their hat collections

The TV program, which began in 1951, was strongly influenced by the pseudo-documentary look of the 1948 film noir The Naked City, and more broadly by the noir genre and its conventions. Friday the character was the offspring of the noir detective - with the significant difference that he was a police figure rather than a private eye. Whereas the police in hard-boiled fiction were often brutal, incompetent and crooked, in Webb's world they are dedicated, selfless professionals. The series is credited with markedly improving the public image of the police.

I am not an expert on Dragnet, but in this episode Webb has no wife and seemingly no life outside of work, whereas Frank Smith does have a home life (and apparently views his wife as a combination cook, housekeeper and secretary). In this regard, Friday is something akin to the the standard hard-boiled detective's persona as a lonely crusader.

Today's post includes the Dragnet Christmas LP shown above (a 10-incher), the TV show itself, and four singles that played off on the popularity of the show.

Dragnet - The Christmas Story

Among the reasons for Dragnet's enduring popularity are the many memes it spawned. Although the program has a reputation for being "realistic," it actually was nearly as stylized as a kabuki drama. Webb is always the narrator, he always starts the program with the same introduction, he leads off each scene by giving its location and the time to the minute (he apparently had quite a memory), the conversations generally end with Friday one-upping the person he is interacting with (as happens in the first scene with both his partner and his boss), and so on.

Perhaps the most important of these stylistic trademarks was Walter Schumann's opening motto-theme: DUM - DE- DUM - DUM, etc. (Schumann apparently pinched this motif from Miklos Rosza's music for The Killers, which led to an eventual legal settlement.) The music was so catchy that it became the basis for a 1953 single by Ray Anthony and several other records, discussed in the next section.

Scene of the 'crime'

Following Anthony's success, Webb and RCA Victor decided that they should get in on the action, preparing this Christmas LP for the 1953 holiday season. "A Christmas Story" is taken from the soundtrack for Dragnet's 1952 Christmas program. The story works very well without any visual element, demonstrating that the series was essentially a filmed radio show, similar to most TV productions of the time.

"A Christmas Story" was a charming tale involving a statue of the infant Jesus stolen from a church's manger scene. Joe and Frank go to great pains to find the statue, only to have it conveniently reappear as they return to tell the good padre they hadn't been able to locate it.

Joe Carioca, Jr. as Paco Mendoza

For a big-city detective team, the two seemingly have little to do besides chasing after a plaster statue. When the program opens, Friday is in the office addressing Christmas cards and Smith is coming in from doing his Christmas shopping.

The performances are good, however, with Webb muttering in his usual monotone, familiar character actors like Herb Vigran turning up in bit roles, and the appealing non-professional Joe Carioca, Jr. as the juvenile "thief," Paco Mendoza.

The download includes both my transfer of the LP and a video of the program itself, courtesy of YouTube, plus the usual scans, photos, and Billboard articles. The bonus singles are detailed below.

Dragnet Singles and Parodies

Unsurprisingly, Webb liked records that promoted his show

The big Dragnet musical success was Ray Anthony's single, which hit number three on the charts in 1953 and sent musicians of all kinds to the studio in an attempt to replicate his success.

Two notable parodies came from the usual sources: Spike Jones and Stan Freberg.

Spike's Dragnet is the more literal, with Jones as Sgt. Jim Saturday parodying many of Dragnet's stylistic tics, while tossing off the usual one-liners and throwing in the usual sound effects. Silly, but enjoyable.

Freberg turns Dragnet into the legend of St. George and the Dragonet. Freberg introduces himself, "This is the countryside. My name is St. George. I am a knight." He interviews a maiden (June Foray) who somehow has acquired a thick Brooklyn accent. Then he talks to a knave (Daws Butler) who sounds like Arnold Stang. It's during this record that Freberg supposedly invented the famous line, "Just the facts, ma'am," even though he never says exactly that phrase - nor was it ever heard on Dragnet. Eventually Daws shows up as the dragon and is arrested for overacting.

Other musicians took up the Dragnet theme as the basis of novelty instrumentals. One such was Cleveland polka maestro Kenny Bass, who uses it as the basis of a lively number that sounds much like any other Slovenian polka you have ever heard, and none the worse for that. Bass intersperses siren-whistle effects and screams in an apparent homage to the TV show.

The 78s all are courtesy of Internet Archive, as remastered by me.

There's one mildly Dragnet-related item on my other blog: Jack Webb is said to have adopted the name Friday in honor of singer Pat Friday (originally Freiday), who had appeared with him on radio. You can find Pat's excellent records here.

Best holiday wishes to all from Jack, Ben, Ray, Spike, Stan, June, Daws, Kenny and Pat - and me, too!

Jack and Ben smoke the sponsor's cigarettes