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

A Promo Christmas

The commercialization of Christmas is not new; and certainly not a novelty in the record business. I have heard promotional holiday records that date back into the 1920s, and I would be surprised if there aren't older items out there.

Today we will sample several types of promotional disks, and even one that could be considered an anti-promotion.

The first type of promotion is a record intended to benefit a charity. This collection has three examples of the genre, all of them official "Christmas Seal songs" of their respective seasons. Christmas Seals were originally a tuberculosis charity, later broadened to include all lung diseases. I haven't been able to discover the first official "Christmas Seal song" in the U.S., but I know the tradition dates back to at least "Happy Christmas, Little Friend," which was written by Rodgers and Hammerstein at the behest of Life Magazine in 1952, and then was chosen as the Christmas Seal song the next year, in the Rosemary Clooney recording.

The Christmas Seal song for 1954 was "The Spirit of Christmas," a fine Matt Dennis-Tom Adair tune that Kitty Kallen recorded, with a Jack Pleis backing.

For the official 1956 song, Rosemary Clooney returned with her young sister Gail and "He'll Be Comin' Down the Chimney," with music lifted from "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain" and its antecedents. (I wonder if the listed "composers" donated their publishing royalties?)

Finally, the 1965 Christmas Seal song was Robert Goulet's "This Christmas I Spend with You," the title tune from his 1963 Christmas LP. This transfer is from the promotional 45, which includes opening and closing messages from Goulet as well as his rendition of "White Christmas."

Dinah Shore was renowned for her vocal skill, warmth and charm, which made her an ideal commercial spokesperson, and she was employed both by her record company and her television sponsor for promotional purposes during the holiday season.

1957 Billboard ad with Dinah Shore

In 1957, Dinah was the face of RCA Victor's extensive Christmas releases, appearing on point-of-sale materials and in trade ads. Oddly, Dinah herself did not merit a Christmas LP release, only an EP titled "You Meet the Nicest People at Christmas." No arranger is listed, although it may have been Harry Zimmerman, who was working with Shore both at RCA and on her TV show.

1961 Chevy promo

In 1961, her sponsor, Chevrolet, called upon her for another EP, which I believe was a giveaway at dealerships. By that time, Dinah had moved on to Capitol, but had not moved on from "You Meet the Nicest People," which appears here in a different, peppier version. This EP, with backing by Jack Marshall, is just as good as the RCA effort.

Another type of promotional item is a demo record. Today's collection includes what I believe was a demo sent by the publishers Patore Music to record companies on behalf of its composer, Henry Tobias and two of his Christmas ditties, "Take Off Those Whiskers Daddy" and "The Holiday Hop." The artist is Bernie Knee, a talented vocalist who was one of the best known demo singers. His backing is by Irving Fields, whose popular 1959 LP, "Bagels and Bongos," can still be found in many thrift shops.

Based on copyright records, I believe the Tobias-Knee-Fields 45 is from 1966. Several years later, Knee and Tobias combined to record the Richard Nixon tribute, "Hang In There, Mr. President," during the waning days of Nixon's term, replacing Irving Fields with Frankie Yankovic. (Sadly, only a snippet of this gem is available online.)

We conclude with an anti-promotional record of sorts, Stan Freberg's "Green Chri$tma$" from 1958, which is the satirist's complaint against Madison Avenue's appropriation of Christmas for its own purposes. It's a funny bit if you remember the ads he skewers. It's also a little ironic because Freberg was making some green himself from this Christmas record.

Wikipedia, perhaps reflecting Freberg's own views, would have you believe that Capitol did not want to release the record and did so with "no promotion or publicity," which isn't true. The company issued it with a picture sleeve containing Freberg's essay of self-praise on the back. My own copy of the 45 is a white-label Capitol promo. The record itself was a moderate hit and appeared on Billboard's charts.