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Jack Webb
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Jack Webb's career was a series of reversals. In the late Forties, he wrote, directed and starred in a San Francisco radio show, Pier 51, later renamed Pat Novak For Hire, in which his baroque Chandleresque voiceover ("Her hair was the color of a brush fire just barely under control," "The neon motel sign looked like icing on a cheap wedding cake") became so clotted they buried the plots. Most stories involved a husky-voiced, come-hither "nightclub thrush," a sex fantasy Jack later made real by marrying songstress Julie London. By the early Fifties, Webb was a young actor portraying both punks and killers (Dark City and Appointment With Danger), as well as vaguely left-leaning intellectuals and H'wood bohos (The Men and Sunset Boulevard). But it was
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Best known as the creator of Dragnet, Jack Webb was at a creative peak at the close of the 1950s when he recorded two albums for the then-just-launching Warner Bros. Records. Both of these are now available on a single disc titled Just The Tracks, Ma'am: The Warner Bros. Recordings.
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The most successful of producer Jack Webb's non-Dragnet TV projects, the weekly, half-hour Adam-12 was a realistic, unadorned look at the "working cop." Each episode dealt with a typical day in the lives of two uniformed policeman, assigned to a patrol car in the teeming streets of Los Angeles. Martin Milner was cast as Officer Pete Malloy, a seasoned veteran who in the first episode was teamed with probationary rookie cop Officer Jim Reed, played by Kent McCord. A few very rocky moments notwithstanding, the relationship between Malloy and Reed was never "superior/inferior" but always on an equal basis, with young Jim benefiting mightily from Pete's casual expertise, and Pete in turn being "humanized" by eager-beaver Jim. It was clearly established that the partners were not supermen or paragons. They were both capable of making serious mistakes and errors of judgment, and both could be emotionally affected by their work despite the hard shell they'd had to build around themselves when dealing with a variety of unpleasant "perps."
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Jack Webb executive-produced this NBC drama based on unexplained cases in the U.S. Air Force's UFO files, known as Project Blue Book. Done in Webb's patented documentary-influenced style, the main characters used to go around the US interviewing people who claimed to have seen UFO's. The show featured recreations of the sightings. Webb spent eight months researching the Project Blue Book files for the show. It was produced by Colonel William T. Coleman, who led the actual Air Force project. Considering the success of The X Files, this show was certainly ahead of its time.
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Jack Webb will always be remembered as the poker-faced detective Joe Friday on Dragnet. He was ... the show's creator, director, and producer. This biography chronicles the life and career of one of radio and television's brightest lights. He used his vision and iron will to bring Dragnet to the screen. He also was the creator of other popular shows, including Adam-12 and Emergency! Archival clips show some of Webb's best work.
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May 1953 — Jack Webb was tired. He did not look like the composed, cool, Sergeant Friday of Dragnet, but rather like a weary young man who needed rest. He had been working steadily for three days, getting the San Francisco Cerebral Palsy telethon set up, working with the Cerebral Palsy board, arranging ‘publicity, checking the station facilities, and setting up the performers.
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Jack Webb