Dragnet **** (1954, Jack Webb, Ben Alexander, Richard Boone, Stacy Harris, Dennis Weaver) – Classic Movie Review 8514

In director Jack Webb’s excellent little 1954 film noir-style crime thriller Dragnet, the admirable Webb makes his mark as star actor in a naturalistic performance as the smug, cocky cop Sergeant Joe Friday, and the film perfectly captures the flavour of the period and the limited TV techniques of the time.

In the screenplay by Richard L Breen and Stanley Myer, homicide detectives Sgt Joe Friday (Webb) and Officer Frank Smith (Ben Alexander) trawl through seedy LA on the case of the brutal shotgun killer of a former crime syndicate jailbird, in this expert early cinema TV spin-off from the long-running eight-season Fifties hit series (1951–1959) with 276 episodes. A trail strewn with clues like gun castings and a foot impression in plaster leads Joe Friday and Smith to the Red Spot Gang.

Also in the cast are Richard Boone as Captain James E. Hamilton, Stacy Harris as Max Troy, Ann Robinson as Officer Grace Downey, Virginia Gregg as Ethel Starkie, Dennis Weaver as Police Captain R.A. Lohrman, Victor Perrin, Georgia Ellis, James Griffith as Jesse Quinn, Dick Cathcart, Malcolm Atterbury, Willard Sage, Olan Soule, James Anderson, Monte Masters, Herb Vigran, Virginia Christine, Guy Hamilton, Ramsey Williams, Henry Bartell, Herb Ellis, Harlan Warde and Cliff Arquette.

Popular men’s magazine model and pinup girl Meg Myles has an uncredited role as the singer at the talent agency.

Someone has coined the word ‘copaganda’ for this kind of movie, propaganda for the police force. You see what they mean, but still Dragnet is very well done of its American Fifties realist kind.

A TV movie Dragnet (1969) with Jack Webb and a spoof Dragnet (1987) with Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks followed.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8514

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