A TV show I enjoyed a lot as a kid in the 60’s was Dragnet. When I was older I learned that Dragnet had not only been on TV in the 50’s, it had first been a radio show. The revived Dragnet returned with its old formula, and supporting cast members, intact. In the intervening years Sgt. Joe Friday had apparently been overlooked for promotion, despite his unbroken string of cracked cases and successful arrests.
In the Fifties, Dragnet dealt with some hard facts of life, such as drug addiction and sex crimes. When Jack Webb returned as Joe Friday ten years later, he used the show to crusade against the growing influence of the youth culture. There was an anti-Summer of Love attitude, and Hippies were depicted at best as misguided and confused kids, or as drug addicts hiding behind the trappings of Eastern religion. Parents were concerned about the rapid pace of change in Sixties, and many were struggling with rebellious teenage children. In 1968 the world seemed to be coming apart at the seams, and Webb offered a clear, unwavering view of right and wrong. It’s my opinion that the popularity of Dragnet helped to get Richard “Law and Order” Nixon elected in 1968.
Even the growing ranks of comic book collectors, empowered by the Batman TV show, weren’t spared Webb’s critical gaze, as seen in the infamous “Superfan” episode. I saw this when it first aired, and it starts off nicely enough, with a brief history of Hollywood, but towards the end it’s painful for an old fanboy to watch, because I have to admit there’s a lot of truth in what Stanley says.
Getting back to Dragnet in the Fifties, the link at the end of this sentence searches eBay for Dragnet OTR. “OTR” stands for “Old-Time Radio,” and as you can see there are plenty of sellers offering Dragnet radio shows. Anybody who buys one of these collections is wasting their money, because they’re available for free on Archive.org, from a wonderful organization of enthusiasts called the OTRR — the Old Time Radio Reseachers Group.
If you don’t feel like downloading and unzipping the files, you can listen to Dragnet on Tunein.com. I’ve been having a lot of fun doing that for the past few weeks. It’s interesting to compare the radio and TV versions of Dragnet. For example, here’s an episode from 1955 called The Big Deal.
[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2012/01/The+Big+Deal.mp3|titles=Dragnet “The Big Deal” 4/19/55]