MovieChat Forums > Dragnet 1967 (1967) Discussion > The Man Behind the Badge.

The Man Behind the Badge.


This probably isn't the place for a review but it ought to appear somewhere. On the boxed set of Season Two, there's a bonus feature. I guess this is as good a place as any to describe it.

This is a short film, about half an hour, and it's informative and entertaining if you are at all interested in Jack Webb, his development, and the very popular show "Dragnet." It began in the late 40s as a radio program and went on to be a smash hit in the early 50s and again in the late 60s, just in time for Joe Friday and Bill Gannon to take on the Hippies. Basically, four people, all veterans of the show, sit around a table and chat. The host asks banal questions like, "Tell us how you first met him and got interested in the show." But there's surprisingly little baloney in the anecdotes that follow. It doesn't at all resemble the usual extra features on DVDs -- "Oh, they were all great to work with, lots of fun, and they were all amazingly talented." Nothing like that, but no bitterness either. The anecdotes range over a number of subjects but they're all reportage. There are occasional cutaways to Jackie Loughery, Webb's first, wife, who looks like Hollywood personafied in her flowery living room, holding a tiny white poodle on her lap.

When I said it was "informative", I meant that you learn why the show took on the distinctive style that it did. Webb recruited for the cast people with little (and sometimes no) acting experience, many of them friends of his. "Virginia Gregg must be in eighty five of these things." He particulary avoided having Big Names on the show. It's not explained why, but I imagine that a Big Name costs more than some guy you met at a party. And imagine what would happen to the image of Friday and Gannon if the monumental Orson Welles boomed his way through a role/. You'll also learn why . There are so many closeups when character are engaged in dialog. First one face, then cut to another, then cut bac to the first. "Ping pong dialog," somebody calls it. The reason for it is that the television screens at the time were too small to encompass too many people on screen at the same time.


If you enjoyed the show, you'll enjoy this friendly chat among cast and crew now grown older and give the impression of never having hear each others' stories before.

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