"Jack" Webb (April 2, 1920 – December 22, 1982)

John Randolph "Jack" Webb (April 2, 1920 – December 22, 1982), also known by the pen names John Randolph and Preston Wood, was an American actor, television producer, director, and screenwriter, who is most famous for his role as Sergeant Joe Friday in the radio and television series Dragnet. He was also the founder of his own production company, Mark VII Limited. more from Wikipedia

DRAGNET "Baby Jesus" episode on RADIOthen.network

Joe Friday investigates the theft of a statue of the baby Jesus from a church's nativity scene on Christmas Eve. The figure itself has little monetary value. Father Xavier Rojas explains this Jesus statue has been at the church for decades and has great sentimental value to the parishioners. The detectives pursue a lead but come up empty. As they return to Father Rojas, a small boy is pulling a wagon with the statue in it. The boy had prayed for a new wagon and promised the baby Jesus the first ride if he received it. This is the episode of "The Big Little Baby Jesus" from the original radio series. Hear it now with other episodes of the radio series on 'RADIOthen' via LIVE365.com's DRAGNET.  [photo from TV episode]

Newly added episodes of DRAGNET from 1949 and 1950 to RADIOthen

This series was broadcast from June 3, 1949 to February 26, 1957 on NBC at various times and days. Dragnet starred Jack Webb as Detective Sergeant Joe Friday. Various partners throughout the show's run were Sergeant Ben Romero (Barton Yarborough), Ed Jacobs (Barney Phillips), and Officer Frank Smith (Ben Alexander). Webb was the creator/Director of the series and wanted everything to be as authentic as possible, down to the last sound effect. The stories were based on actual police files and "the names were changed to protect the innocent". Dragnet broke a few radio taboos as well, such as dramatizing sex crimes. Children also were killed on occasion as in the episode "Twenty-Two Rifle For Christmas". The series eventually went to television and ran there for many years. The familiar DUM DE DUM DUM, the first four notes of the opening theme composed by Walter Schumann, became a pop culture legend and was forever associated with Dragnet. Several new episodes of DRAGNET have been added to our playlist at RADIOthen.

RADIOthen.network is now playing NBC Radio episodes of DRAGNET

www.RADIOthen.network is currently playing this popular crime drama series from the late 1940's to the early 1950's. Episodes of Dragnet... the radio crime drama about the cases of a dedicated Los Angeles police detective, Sergeant Joe Friday, and his partners. The show takes its name from an actual police term, a "dragnet", meaning a system of coordinated measures for apprehending criminals or suspects. Wikipedia information Creator and star Jack Webb insisted on realism in every aspect of the show. The dialogue was clipped, understated and sparse, influenced by the hardboiled school of crime fiction. Scripts were fast moving but didn’t seem rushed. Every aspect of police work was chronicled, step by step: From patrols and paperwork, to crime scene investigation, lab work and questioning witnesses or suspects. The detectives’ personal lives were mentioned but rarely took center stage. (Friday was a bachelor who lived with his mother; Romero, a Mexican-American from Texas, was an ever fretful husband and father.) "Underplaying is still acting", Webb told Time. "We try to make it as real as a guy pouring a cup of coffee.” (Dunning, 209) Los Angeles police chiefs C.B. Horrall, William A. Worton, and (later) William H. Parker were credited as consultants, and many police officers were fans. Most of the episodes now playing on REMEMBERadio were entitled "The Big _____", where the key word denoted a person or thing in the plot. In numerous episodes, this would the principal suspect, victim, or physical target of the crime, but in others was often a seemingly inconsequential detail eventually revealed to be key evidence in solving the crime. For example, in "The Big Streetcar" the background noise of a passing streetcar helps to establish the location of a phone booth used by the suspect.

February 13th in Radio history...

On this day in 1947, "Family Theater of the Air" was heard for the first time on Mutual radio. Jim Ameche and Loretta Young starred in the program's first episode, "Flight from Home". The series was directed at Roman Catholic families. MORE

On this day in 1949, after a successful West Coast-only run "Pat Novak For Hire," Jack Webb's first radio crime drama, went national on the ABC Radio Network. New Westminster's Raymond Burr played police inspector Hellman.

Wikipedia | SHOP at OTRCAT | More |

Jack Webb

John Randolph "Jack" Webb ( April 2 of 1920 - December 23 of 1982 ) was an American actor nominated for an Emmy as well as radio and television producer, film director and author, best known for his portrayal of Sergeant Joe Friday in the radio and television series Dragnet. He founded his own production company, Mark VII Limited. Following his discharge, he moved to San Francisco to star in his own radio show on ABC's KGO Radio. The Jack Webb Show was a half-hour comedy that had a limited run on ABC radio in 1946. By 1949 he had abandoned comedy for drama, and starred in Pat Novak for Hire, a radio show about a man who worked as an unlicensed private detective. The program co-starred Raymond Burr. Pat Novak was notable for writing that imitated, almost to parody, the hard-boiled style of such writers as Raymond Chandler, with lines such as: "She drifted into the room like 98 pounds of warm smoke. Her voice was hot and sticky--like a furnace full of marshmallows." Webb's radio shows included Johnny Modero, Pier 23; Jeff Regan, Investigator; Murder and Mr. Malone and One Out of Seven. Webb did all of the voices on One Out of Seven, often vigorously attacking racial prejudice.

Wikipedia | Search Amazon.com for Jack" Webb