"My Name's Friday. I'm a cop."
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Who's Holmes? In the 116 weeks since the first 26-minute 25-second Dragnet film (The Human Bomb) was flashed on the nation's television screens, Jack Webb has made Joe Friday one of the most famous fictional detectives of all time. Sherlock Holmes himself never captured the instantaneous interest of so many millions of people, and in comparison, such latter-day sleuths as Philo
Vance and Sam Spade are only shadowy figures in the public mind. Dragnet's most recent Nielsen rating (60.6) indicates that 16,332,000 of the more than 27 million U.S. television set owners are tuned to NBC every Thursday night by the time Webb speaks his terse introductory line: "My name's Friday."
Of all U.S. television shows, only 7 Love Lucy can challenge Dragnet's popularity. Last week, as they have for months, the two programs were in a seesaw battle in which first one, then the other, was temporarily ahead. Old Dragnet shows, which are rerun as Badge 714 on 126 television stations, pull more viewers (their ARE ratings run from a low of 8 in San Diego to a high of 54.6 in Norfolk, Va.) than many a first-run show, and Dragnet is still a radio attraction on Tuesday night.
The show's top rating, however, is an inadequate gauge of the spell which Webb has cast over the U.S. people, both young and old. There is hardly a child above the age of four who does not know and constantly voice the brassy notes (dum du dum dum) of Dragnet's theme music. Phonograph records (St. George & the Dragonet, Little Blue Riding Hood, Christmas Dragnet) which parody Dragnet's terse, low-keyed dialogue have sold 1,326,000 copies, and Sergeant Friday's calm "All we want are the facts, ma'am" has become a conversation staple. But millions who laugh at Dragnet jokes are spirited back weekly into a mood of serious intentness by the program itself.
The flood of Dragnet fan mail suggests that the U.S. completely forgets that it is a nation of incipient cop haters when its eyes are glued on Webb's show; that it has gained a new appreciation of the underpaid, long-suffering ordinary policeman, and in many cases its first rudimentary understanding of real-life law enforcement. As Sergeant Friday—a decent, harassed, hard-working fellow—Jack Webb is such a convincingly realistic detective that many a cop has written in to ask if he is not a genuine member of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Slice of Life. Dragnet's realism is simply a byproduct of Webb's lust to entertain. As director, story editor, casting chief and star of the show, he purposely refrains from dramatic artifice, and thus achieves a different kind of dramatic effect. Seldom has the slice-of-life technique of storytelling been so successfully transmitted to film. Dragnet is not a whodunit at all, and both murder and the sound of gunfire are rare on its shows. Webb sometimes produces truly frightening effects (as in The Big Jump, a film in which he struggles with a madman on a high building ledge), but in the most low-keyed of his stories he still lures the viewer by making the television screen a sort of peephole into a grim new world.