38 Facts About Jack Webb

1.

John Randolph Webb was an American actor, television producer, director, and screenwriter, most famous for his role as Joe Friday in the Dragnet franchise, which he created.

2.

Jack Webb was the founder of his own production company, Mark VII Limited.

3.

Jack Webb continued to make television series, and although many of them were less successful and short-lived, he wished to rekindle his prior successes, and had plans to return to acting in a Dragnet revival before he died.

4.

Jack Webb grew up in the Bunker Hill section of Los Angeles.

5.

Jack Webb's father left home before Webb was born, and Webb never knew him.

6.

Jack Webb then attended Belmont High School, near downtown Los Angeles.

7.

Jack Webb was elected student body president of his high school.

8.

Jack Webb later received a hardship discharge because he was the primary financial support for both his mother and grandmother.

9.

The Jack Webb Show was a half-hour comedy that had a limited run on ABC radio in 1946.

10.

Jack Webb provided all of the voices on One Out of Seven, often vigorously attacking racial prejudice.

11.

In 1950, Jack Webb appeared in three films that would become cult classics.

12.

Jack Webb played a war veteran in Marlon Brando's first feature, The Men.

13.

Jack Webb was approached to play the role of Vernon Wormer, Dean of Faber College, in National Lampoon's Animal House, but he refused it, saying "the movie didn't make any damn sense"; John Vernon ultimately played the role.

14.

Jack Webb had a featured role as a crime-lab technician in the 1948 film He Walked by Night, based on the real-life murder of a California Highway Patrolman by Erwin Walker.

15.

Jack Webb Walked By Night's thinly veiled fictionalized recounting of the 1946 Walker crime spree gave Webb the idea for Dragnet: a recurring series based on real cases from LAPD police files, featuring authentic depictions of the modern police detective, including methods, mannerisms, and technical language.

16.

Jack Webb believed viewers wanted "realism" and tried to give it to them.

17.

Jack Webb often said, in interviews, that he was angry about the "ridiculous amount" of abuse to which police were subjected by the press and the public.

18.

Jack Webb was impressed by the long hours, the low pay, and the high injury rate among police investigators of the day, particularly in the LAPD, which had by then acquired a notorious reputation for jettisoning officers who had become ill or injured in the line of duty; in Jack Webb's book, The Badge, one of Erwin Walker's victims, LAPD detective Lt.

19.

Jack Webb then set the plot by describing a typical day and then led into the story.

20.

Jack Webb frequently recreated entire floors of buildings on sound stages, such as the police headquarters at Los Angeles City Hall and a floor of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner.

21.

In "Dark City," Jack Webb played a vicious card sharp and Harry Morgan a punch-drunk ex-fighter, in contrast to the pair's straight-arrow image in the later Dragnet.

22.

Also in 1950, Jack Webb appeared in The Men, Marlon Brando's debut film.

23.

In 1951, Jack Webb introduced a short-lived radio series, Pete Kelly's Blues, in an attempt to bring the music he loved to a broader audience.

24.

From September 1962 through May 1963, Jack Webb was the executive producer of GE True, an anthology series that ran for 33 episodes, each of which Jack Webb acted as host-narrator for while directing and acting in some episodes.

25.

In February 1963, Webb succeeded William T Orr as executive in charge of Warner Bros.

26.

The result was a disaster, and critics accused Jack Webb of being out of touch with the younger generation of viewers.

27.

Jack Webb had tried to get Ben Alexander to reprise his role as Frank Smith, but Alexander would not leave the ABC series Felony Squad.

28.

In 1970, Jack Webb decided to bring an end to Dragnet and cease acting to focus on expanding Mark VII Limited's production profile.

29.

In 1971, Jack Webb entered the world of district attorneys and federal government work with two series.

30.

Jack Webb cast his ex-wife, Julie London, as well as her second husband and Dragnet ensemble player Bobby Troup, as head nurse Dixie McCall and Dr Joe Early, respectively, with Randolph Mantooth and Kevin Tighe playing paramedics John Gage and Roy DeSoto and Robert Fuller playing Dr Kelly Brackett, Rampart's Chief of Emergency Medicine.

31.

In 1987, Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks starred in a movie parody to Jack Webb, titled Dragnet, along with Harry Morgan, who reprised his role from the television series as Bill Gannon, who had by now become a captain of detectives.

32.

Jack Webb had a collection of more than 6,000 jazz recordings.

33.

Jack Webb was married three more times after that, to Dorothy Towne for two years beginning in 1955, to former Miss USA Jackie Loughery for six years beginning in 1958, and to his longtime associate, Opal Wright, for the last two years of his life.

34.

Jack Webb died of an apparent heart attack in the early morning hours of December 23,1982, at age 62.

35.

Jack Webb is interred at Sheltering Hills Plot 1999, Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, and was given a funeral with full Los Angeles police honors.

36.

Jack Webb has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for radio and the other for television.

37.

In 1992, Jack Webb was posthumously inducted into the Television Hall of Fame.

38.

Jack Webb starred in the GE True two-part episode "Code Name: Christopher".