Dragnet/Trivia

Radio Show

• In Episode 16 (September 17, 1949), Friday and Romero are in the interrogation room with the suspect and start stalling for time with a card game. The name of the game is never listed, but from the description (two packs of cards, like Rummy, red threes worth 100 points, black threes freeze the discard pile, jokers worth 50 points...) it can be determined that the game is Canasta.
• Episode 57 ("The Big Bomb") is a remake of Episode 7 ("Attempted City Hall Bombing") with minor edits to accommodate a different police chief and make room for the sponsor's advertisement.
• Jack Webb paid police officers for Real Life stories that could be adapted for the show. Gene Roddenberry got his start as a professional writer by writing his fellow officers' accounts into more polished treatments, in exchange for half the money paid to the officer. While his treatments weren't written in screenplay form, Roddenberry learned a lot about the process, and later embarked on a formal screenwriting career, later to culminate with his most successful creation, the Star Trek franchise.
• The Christmas episode with the 'theft' of the Child Jesus statue was redone twice-it originally aired on radio, then was a part of the original TV series and the color remake.
• Many people actually thought Friday was a real person and went to the LAPD to ask to see him. They got so many requests that they started saying it was Joe's day off.

TV Show

• According the episode of Dragnet 1968 in which Friday fatially wounds a robber in a laundramat, Friday only fired his gun on duty three times including this shot.
• The hands using the anvil and hammer to make the Mark VII logo at the end of each episode were Jack Webb's.
• Jack Webb and Harry Morgan had previously co-starred in the 1951 movie "Appointment with Danger" -- as BAD guys!

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