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John Randolph "Jack" Webb (April 2, 1920 –
December 23, 1982) was an United States|American
actor, television producer film director|director,
and writer who is most famous for his role as
Detective Joe Friday in the television series
Dragnet (drama)|Dragnet.

Born in Santa Monica, California, Webb grew up
poor in the Bunker Hill section of Los Angeles,
California|Los Angeles to a mixed-religion couple,
although he was raised Catholic.  He was a sickly
child and studied art as a young man. One of the
tenants in the rooming house run by his mother was
an ex-jazzman who imbued Webb with a lifelong
interest in jazz when he gave him a recording of
Bix Beiderbecke's "At the Jazz Band Ball." 

After serving as a crewmember of a B-26 Marauder
in World War II he starred in a radio show about a
private detective, Pat Novak for Hire.  Other
radio shows include Johnny Modero—Pier 23,
Jeff Regan—Investigator, Murder and Mr.
Malone, and One Out of Seven.

Webb had a role in the 1948 film He Walked by
Night about the murder of a California Highway
Patrolman. The film was made in docudrama style
with technical advisors Capt. Harry Didion and
Detective Marty Wynn of the Los Angeles Police
Department. It was this film that gave Webb the
idea for Dragnet. After getting assistance from,
and riding along with, Los Angeles police
personnel, Webb produced Dragnet which premiered
in 1949 on the NBC radio network.  Sponsored by
Fatima cigarettes, Dragnet starred Webb as Joe
Friday and Barton Yarborough as Ben Romero. They
played detective sergeants working various
divisions.  Walter Schumann did the theme song for
the show. Webb narrated the show in first person
as the character Joe Friday and maintained almost
fanatical attention to detail and realism.  This
and his management style alienated many actors.  

In 1950, Webb appeared alongside future Dragnet TV
partner Harry Morgan in the film noir Dark City
(1950 movie)|Dark City.

The year 1951 saw Dragnet become a successful
television show.  Unfortunately Barton Yarborough
died suddenly, and Barney Phillips (Ed Jacobs) and
Herbert Ellis (Frank Smith) supplanted his
partner.  In 1952, Ben Alexander would step in as
the jovial, burly Frank Smith. Alexander proved to
be a popular addition to the show as Webb's
detective partner and remained with it until its
cancellation in 1959.

Dragnet began with "The story you are about to see
is true.  Only the names have been changed to
protect the innocent."  At the end of each show,
the results of the trial of the suspect and
severity of sentence were announced by George
Fenneman.  The television series continued until
1959. He frequently re-created entire floors of
buildings on soundstages, such as police
headquarters at Los Angeles City Hall for Dragnet
and a floor of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner
Building for the 1959 film -30-.

During the early days of Dragnet, he continued to
appear in other movies, notably the 1950 Billy
Wilder film Sunset Boulevard.

Webb's personal life was better defined by his
love of jazz than his interest in police work. His
life-long interest in the cornet and racially
tolerant attitude allowed him to move easily in
the jazz culture, where Webb met singer and
actress Julie London. They married in 1947 and
raised two children.  They later divorced and Webb
married three more times.

In 1951, Webb introduced a short-lived radio
series, Pete Kelly's Blues (radio series)|Pete
Kelly's Blues, in an attempt to bring the music he
loved to a broader audience.  That radio series
became the basis for a 1955 Pete Kelly's Blues
(movie)|movie of the same name.  However, neither
the radio series nor the movie resonated with the
audiences of the time.  Webb also tried his hand
in several other movies that did not gain major
status at the box office, such as The DI, a 1957
film about a US Marine Corps drill instructor.


In 1967 Webb produced and starred in a color
version of Dragnet for TV.  This costarred Harry
Morgan as Officer Bill Gannon.  The show's pilot
was to air earlier, but was shelved until 1969;
the series itself ran through 1970.

Beginning in 1968, in concert with Robert A.
Cinader, Webb produced Adam-12 about a rookie and
his older partner who patrolled the streets of Los
Angeles as uniformed officers Pete Malloy (Martin
Milner) and rookie Jim Reed (Kent McCord).  The
show ran until 1975.

Webb produced The DA with Robert Conrad and
O'Hara: US Treasury with David Janssen.  These
were short-lived, but another show, Emergency!,
proved to be a major success, running from 1972 to
1977, and its ratings occasionally even topped its
timeslot compettitor, All in the Family.  Webb
cast his ex-wife, Julie London, and her second
husband, Bobby Troup, as nurse Dixie McCall and
Dr. Joe Early.

Project UFO was another Webb production and
depicted Project Blue Book, a US Air Force
investigation into unidentified flying objects. 
This was the last major product of his Mark VII
production company.  

He considered resurrecting Dragnet in 1983 with
Kent McCord as his partner before he died of a
myocardial infarction|heart attack in 1982 at the
age of 62. He was interred in the Forest Lawn,
Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles.  Webb was
given a funeral with full police honors (including
the chief of police announcing that the badge
number 714 that Webb used in Dragnet would be
retired) although he had never actually served on
the force. 

Not only did the LAPD use Dragnet episodes as
training films for a time, they also named a
police academy auditorium after him.

==Books==
*The Big Sin Rinehart, (hardback, 1952)
*The Naked Angel Rinehart (hardback, 1953)
*The Damned Lovely Rinehart (hardback, 1954)
*The Broken Doll Rinehart, (hardback, 1955)
*The Bad Blonde Rinehart, (hardback, 1956)
*The Brass Halo Rinehart, (hardback, 1957)
*The Badge Prentice-Hall, (hardback, 1958)
*The Deadly Sex Rinehart, (hardback, 1959)
*The Delicate Darling Rinehart (hardback, 1959)
*One for My Dame Holt, Rinehart & Winston
(hardback, 1961)
*Make My Bed Soon Holt, Rinehart & Winston
(hardback, 1963)

Webb also wrote the following books under the
pseudonym John Farr:

*Don't Feed the Animals Abelard-Schuman (hardback,
1955) (Reissued as Naked Fear)
*She Shark Ace Books (paperback, 1956)
*The Lady and the Snake Ace Books, (paperback,
1957)
*Murder Isn't Funny/The Deadly Combo Ace Books,
(paperback, 1958). This is a double book, with
author J. Harvey Bond.

==References==
*Michael J. Hayde:  My Name's Friday: The
Unauthorized but True Story of Dragnet and the
Films of Jack Webb; Cumberland House
Publishing; ISBN  1581821905 (paperback, 2001)

*Jack Webb:  The Badge: The Inside Story of
One of America's Great Police Departments ;
Prentice-Hall; (hardback, 1958)

*Maurice Zolotow:  The True Story of Jack
Webb The American Weekly, Sept. 12, 19, 26,
Oct. 3, 1954.

==External links==
* imdb name|id=0916131|name=Jack Webb
* http://www.badge714.com/ Badge 714 (Dragnet and
Webb fan site)
* http://www.otrcat.com/jackwebb.htm Badge 714
(Jack Webb radio appearances)