Geeze, I loved this movie (as I do the series), but when Friday goes to the hospital to pick up Stacy Harris' gambling kingpin character (Max Troy), he smiles...almost GURNS...with glee upon being informed that Max is dead. It was disturbing. Quite unsettling. Very different times, before the Warren Court.... which DRAGENT '67 constantly reminds us of.
"Why do people always laugh in the wrong places?"
--Barbara Quine
Friday almost "gurns"? What is gurn?
"We're fighting for this woman's honor, which is more than she ever did."
Maybe it's a reference to Max Troy's body being whirled around on a "gurney". Joe F. had a mischievous sense of humor.
shareFriday almost "gurns"? What is gurn?It actually makes sense when you realize that it is dialectical and a variation of girn
Could he have been laughing at the futility of all the departments efforts? All that work...and Max leaves the jurisdiction.
shareYeah, I don't think it's correct to say Friday was "gleeful" at hearing the news of Max Troy's death. He was tough and hated crooks but wasn't ghoulish. I agree, he was smiling ruefully at the irony that after all the LAPD's work, just as they're ready to nab Max, he checks out of Planet Hollywood.
Although, Joe doesn't evince any regret, or really show any thought, about the fact that Max's death proved that he hadn't been exaggerating his constant stomach difficulties, which were much more serious than he or certainly Friday realized. Joe certainly showed not the slightest compassion for his condition throughout the movie (maybe he shouldn't have), almost as if he assumed he was faking, or at least making a big deal out of nothing.
But a couple of packs of Chesterfields a day certainly boosted Max's stamina! Not to mention Joe's lung power.
What gives the Friday-Troy relationship even more resonance is knowing that in real life, Webb and Stacy Harris were great friends and Webb named one of his daughters after Harris. Harris also appears in the first DRAGNET TV episode.
"May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?"
Resonance? I don't know. In the movie Friday was pretty sadistic to poor old Max!
I didn't know Webb had named a daughter after the guy (presumably he called her Stacy, not Harris), but Jack had this stock company of reliable players he always used, over and over and over again, through the decades -- he often had the same performer playing two entirely separate parts on two successive shows! In the case of a guy like Stacy Harris (who I always liked and found a good actor), you hardly ever saw him in anything other than a Webb production!
JW had many other faves he repeatedly used in both the Dragnet TV series as well as in his other shows and films, like Vic Perrin, but I think the queen of Webbdom had to have been Virginia Gregg, a ubiquitous presence in practically everything Jack Webb ever did, including this film -- on one leg yet!
Harris was best known as a radio actor. He starred for several years in a program called "This Is Your F.B.I."which used real-life cases similar to the "Dragnet" formula. And he made many non-Mark VII television appearances. And yes, the older daughter of Jack Webb and Julie London was named Stacy.
"May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?"
I'm guessing Webb knew Harris from their work on radio. Of course I've seen Stacy Harris on non-Webb programs but let's face it, his association with Jack Webb was easily the most prominent part of his career. But they clearly had to be really close for Jack to name his daughter after him. (Much as Humphrey Bogart named his daughter Leslie after Leslie Howard, whose insistence that Bogie reprise his role as Duke Mantee in the film version of The Petrified Forest, in which he'd appeared with Howard on Broadway, made Bogart's career.) But in this case it must have been out of pure friendship and respect, as Webb was the more successful performer.
I can recall only a couple of sympathetic characters Webb had Harris play. Usually he stuck him with roles as crooks or supercilious types. But bad guys are always more fun and memorable.
I only saw one--a doctor in the "Fat Donna" baby episode. He was always a bad guy in the other episodes he appeared in.