Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1969’s Dragnet 1966! It can be viewed on YouTube!
“This is the city….”
So begins Dragnet, a television movie version of the classic cop show that was the Law & Order of it’s day. Dragnet began as a radio program in 1949 before making it’s way over to television in 1951. Each episode starred (and the majority were directed by) Jack Webb, who played a no-nonsense cop named Joe Friday. Friday narrated every episode, dropping trivia about the history of Los Angeles while also showing viewers how the cops went about catching criminals. Despite what is commonly believed, Joe Friday never said, “Just the facts, ma’m,” but he did investigate each case with the cool determination of a professional who kept his emotions under control. The majority of Dragnet’s episodes were based on actual cases that were worked by the LAPD, hence the opening declaration of, “The story you are about to see is true.”
On television, Dragnet originally ran from 1951 to 1959, during which time Dragnet also became the first television series to be adapted into a feature film. Jack Webb decided to relaunch Dragnet in 1966 and he produced a made-for-television movie that followed Friday and his latest partner, the far more talkative Bill Gannon (Harry Morgan), as they worked multiple cases over the course of one long weekend. The pilot movie did lead to a new show, one that lasted from 1967 to 1970 and which is today fondly remembered for scenes of Friday and Gannon debating the merits of the legal system with hippies. However, for whatever reason, the 1966 pilot movie was not actually aired until 1969.
The made-for-TV movie features Friday and Gannon searching not for LSD dealers and draft dodgers but instead for a crazed photographer (Vic Perrin) who hires women to pose for him and then ties them up and takes their picture right before her murders them. The photographer is based on real-life serial killer Harvey Glatman and Perrin is perfectly creepy in the role. Though Friday never loses his composure, his disgust at the photographer and his crimes is palpable and it adds an extra charge to the scene where, in the middle of a drenching rain storm, Friday tries to sneak up on the trailer where he believes the photographer is holding his latest victim. It’s actually a pretty exciting scene and definitely one that will take by surprise anyone who thinks of the 60s Dragnet as just being a campy exercise in establishment resentment.
Of course, catching a serial killer is not all that Friday and Gannon deal with. It’s a long weekend so Friday and Gannon end up investigating the murder of a French tourist and Friday helps a younger, black detective deal with a racist criminal. (The scene where Friday stands up to the racist was obviously meant to answer those who claimed the LAPD was a racist organization.) At the start of the film, Joe almost gets collared into working security for a visiting Russian diplomat and the Russian’s paranoid security team is contrasted to the level-headed and capable men of the LAPD. Some of these scenes are better than others. The French tourist subplot features some truly risible acting and the scene with the racist is well-intentioned but still feels a bit condescending in its portrayal of the black detective needing Friday to help him deal with the suspect. That said, I did enjoy listening to Bill Gannon talking about his plans for retirement and how working for the LAPD was destroying his teeth. Harry Morgan’s folksy humor was always the perfect counterpart to Jack Webb’s perpetually rational Friday.
Finally, I appreciated that the movie featured a scene with Friday and Gannon went undercover at a lonely hearts club. If you’ve watched the 1960s version of Dragnet, you know that, for all the times that Friday and Gannon went undercover, they never really put much effort into it. I mean, they didn’t ever bother to take off their jackets!
Though I was disappointed by the lack of hippies, Dragnet 1966 was still not only a good police procedural but also a fun time capsule of its era.
Quarterback Cat Catlan (Charlton Heston) used to be one of the greats. For fifteen years, he has been a professional football player. He probably should have retired after he led the New Orleans Saints to their first championship but, instead, the stubborn Cat kept playing. Now, he is 40 years old and struggling to keep up with the younger players. His coach (John Randolph) says that Cat has another two or three years left in him but the team doctor (G.D. Spradlin who, ten years later, played a coach in North Dallas Forty) says that one more strong hit could not only end Cat’s career but possibly his life as well. Two of former Cat’s former teammates (Bruce Dern and Bobby Troup) offer to help Cat find a job off the field but Cat tells them the same thing that he tells his long-suffering wife (Jessica Walter). He just has to win one more championship.
Through the Shattered Lens 