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Jack Webb

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Born: April 01 1920

Died: 2222 12 19821982

Jack Webb's tight-lipped portrayal of Sgt. Joe Friday on the radio and television series "Dragnet" set the tone for a generation of police dramas.

Over the years Webb had achieved considerable success as the producer of such television shows as "Emergency" and "Adam 12," and as the star of such motion pictures as "Pete Kelly's Blues" and "The D.I."

But he remained best known to the public as the stone-faced Los Angeles Police detective of the 1950s and 1960s who greeted audiences each week with a terse: "My name is Friday... I'm a cop."

During the shows Friday and a succession of partners labored through investigative interviews frequently cut short by the request, "Just the facts, ma'am."

The immensly popular shows, which strove more for authenticity than melodrama, followed real police cases with attention to detail. Calendars shown on television matched those in Los Angeles Police stations and telephones cacrried the same numbers as extensions on real officers' desks.

Webb patterned Friday after actual officers as he saw them — calm, ordinary human beings working long and hard at often unglamorous jobs, engaging in violence only as a last, and unwelcome, resort.

— Eric Malnic in the Los Angeles Times Dec. 24, 1982

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Jack Webb

Jack Webb

Books from Jack Webb

Murders on the Half-Skull

Menti criminali

The Big Sin (Prologue Books)

Golden Dreams: Songs from Distant Gardens (annual Border Voices poetry antology Book 22)

Border Voices 13

Springtime in Paradise: How 83 Kids Became Their Own Heroes (Some Older Folks, too) (Border Voices Poetry Project Anthology)

Fierce Tea

Great Cop Movies (A Real American Hero / He Walked By Night / Borderline)

Hopeful Christian

True North in Alaska: Memories of Indians, Eskimos, Bush Pilots and Us

The Badge

DOCTOR GOBLINS!: The Power of Cobalus

Prime Time TV from the Early Days: Gangbusters and Dragnet

Fantastic Universe, October 1957

Dragnet: The Complete Collection

In Lovely Blue: The Harp of Heaven: 25th Annual Border Voices Anthology

Three Great Short Stories of the Firebreathing Kittens: Rabid Sands, Hurricane Zombie, and Devil's Cruller (Firebreathing Kittens Podcast Adventure)

Cowtsiders: The Stage Play: A Comedy Fantasy in Two Acts (Firebreathing Kittens Podcast Adventure Book 2)

In Lovely Blue: The Harp of Heaven: 25th Annual Border Voices Anthology

The Badge: True and Terrifying Crime Stories That Could Not Be Presented on TV, from the Creator and Star of Dragnet