REAL-LIFE CASES


The stories are true...but the names have been changed...

Have any of the real-life cases or people become known?

For example, who was the smut peddling film producer?
Who was the boy who kidnapped Jesus for Christmas?


"If you don't know the answer -change the question."

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A lot of these were morality stories and false advertising. "The Big Badge" immediately comes to mind. It was a variation off of the old "Man with the Hook" Urban Legend that was making the rounds at that time to discourage young people from making out in parked vehicles. Quite a few of them had "marijuana addicts" that acted like they were on PCP and started acting like superstrong juggernauts. However, we know that marijuana does exactly the opposite.

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"At least the black box survived"-Joel
"Why can't they make THE PLANE out of the black box?!"-Crow

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I will -and do- allow for a certain amount of "creative embellishment" for the purposes of making otherwise dull reality more interesting; and I would also expect that a 1950's TV audience, already traumatized by the 'soul-destroying' horrors of pot as depicted in Reefer Madness and Marijuana, Weed With Roots in Hell would be somewhat let down if a reefer addict on TV behaved otherwise.

However, having listened to the original radio versions, as well as similar reality based police dramas of the period -UNIT 99 comes highly recommended- I still believe that Jack Webb used real cases (albeit at least ten years outdated by the time the got to TV)

"If you don't know the answer -change the question."

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Is it just me or does the Red Spot look suspiciously like a stolen Japanese flag?

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This was a blatent con. Very few stories were based on actual cases. Jack Webb would say, "Well, something like this could have happened somewhere sometime." The scripts were fiction.

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Dunno, I recognised some cases - is there any research into script sourcing we could look at?

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Jack Webb wrote a book (whose title I don't at this time recall) around 1958 that detailed the actual case histories upon which many Dragnet incidents were based. I never heard of Webb saying the cases were faked (as opposed to severely altered). On the contrary, in interviews he always said they got lots of suggestions from real cops and other law enforcement sources, as well as civilians, and used these as the bases for their shows. I don't know whether at this stage one can prove that any stories were either wholly fictional or had at least some basis in fact.

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The book you're making reference to is "The Badge". I picked up a copy on eBay and read it out of curiosity. On the subject of "were the cases really real?", I also recently read a book called "The San Quentin Story" that was penned by Clinton Duffy, the warden of the prison from 1940-52, and I recognized a few of the real life stories he told as early Dragnet plotlines.

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That's right, "The Badge". I think all Dragnets were supposed to have some basis in fact, though I doubt most of them were as neatly solved or resolved as depicted on the show or in the film.

I'd like to know if the type of harassment used against Max Troy was "true" in any regard. I suspect it certainly was.

Warden Duffy himself was of course the subject of another 1954 film, Duffy of San Quentin.

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The famous "Christmas Story" episode is based on a real life incident that took place in 1930 in San Francisco at the Our Lady of Victory church which Richard Breen attended, and it was his knowledge of the incident that inspired him to write the beloved episode (I admit to being partial to the 67 remake).

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