Jack Webb and the Vagaries of Right-Wing TV Entertainment

Any reflection on the reactionary ideology of television entertainment during the Cold War years and after must consider Jack Webb. One of the industry's auteurs, Webb created the iconic cop show Dragnet, a program that today seems little more than propaganda for the Los Angeles Police Department. Dragnet was conceived at a time when the institution was fast losing legitimacy with the urban poor and even sectors of the middle class, but the show is more than a defense of the police. It wants to define "American values" and to separate the righteous not just from criminals but from all the mis-fits, oddities, and malcontents who pollute the American landscape.

Webb began as a supporting actor in Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950) and decent films noirs such as Dark City (William Dieterle, 1950); Appointment with Danger (Lewis Allen, 1951); and most crucially for Webb's authorial vision, He Walked by Night (Alfred L. Werker, 1948), which would become Dragnet's stylistic template, from its semidocumentary quality down to its opening title card that read, "The names have been changed—to protect the innocent."¹ After originating Dragnet on radio in 1949, Webb directed the series in its 1950s TV run (NBC, 1951-1959) and later directed and produced the show when it was resurrected for the 1960s (NBC, 1967-1970).² His temperament was embodied in Dragnet as completely as that of any celebrated film director in his or her most identifiable work. In Joe Friday, whom he always portrayed, he created a character who would be the mouthpiece for his social-political outlook. Webb the bullying director was Webb the angry, sometimes hysterical Sergeant Joe Friday. From its authoritarian voice-over to the two sweaty male fists that bang out the metal quasi-fascist Mark VII logo (symbol of Webb's production company) at each episode's conclusion, Dragnet and Webb seem synonymous with the right-wing worldview.

Webb's show served specific institutional needs. NBC, the sponsoring network, was obviously one institution invested in the program; the other was the LAPD. The latter provided Webb with an encumbrance he insisted on, not only to aid the show's verisimilitude but also to permit him to be an advocate for the LAPD and its controversial chief William H. Parker. In later manifestations of the show, Webb paid homage to whoever was at the particular moment in charge of the LAPD. Webb also used the names of actual LAPD officers for his walk-on cops, including DeWayne Wolfer, a forensics investigator whom some researchers have viewed as a central figure in covering up information pertaining to the Robert F. Kennedy assassination.³

Jack Webb's Sergeant Joe Friday is the television incarnation of the paranoid style in American politics. The "other" is omnipresent, especially in the 1960s series. Webb's lengthy establishing shots of the smog-laden LA cityscape show us not the generic "naked city" shielding criminals but, rather, an image of a normal world that can be easily capsized by those who don't belong—which in Webb's vision includes much of the population. Webb is a man possessed, focusing on the details of daily life as a way of holding off the storm. He is Wilhelm Reich's "little man," obsessed with minutiae, noting at the start of each Dragnet episode not only the day of the month but also the weather and the hour to the minute.

Dragnet is known for its sparse style, clipped delivery, and mise-en-scène shorn of fancy aesthetics. This lean aesthetic could be read as a rejection of feminine; indeed, the repression of the feminine is a preoccupation of the show. Dragnet has some very recognizable—one might say trademark—stylistic tics, including its four-chord opening theme, a dour, strident deformation of Miklos Rozsa's opening for The Killers (Robert Siodmak, 1946). That, and Walter Schumann's "Dragnet March," aka "Danger Ahead," conveyed the show's essentially martial character. The show sticks to a strict shot-countershot formula, beginning with shots of Joe Friday and his partner at police...