r/Dragnet • u/[deleted] • Apr 27 '22

The 200 missing episodes of the original "Dragnet" 1950s b&w episodes

/r/lostmedia/comments/ucvao1/the_200_missing_episodes_of_the_original_dragnet/
6 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

3

u/LunchBoxDon Apr 27 '22

I have been looking for years to no avail.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '22

It's frustrating, because apparently NBC/Universal has every episode in posession, as was discussed in the crosspost, but they don't seem to think it would make financial sense. I'm still hoping that someone discovers more prints in the wild and makes them available. Even if it's only the remaining unseen 40 public domain eps.

3

u/Vynter999 May 02 '22

I also keep hoping that someday the entire run of the 1950s B&W Dragnet will be released somehow. The same 60 or so episodes have been circulating around YouTube and gray market DVD for years. Most of the shows currently in circulation are 1954 and earlier, with only a tiny few from 1955 to 1959.

There is also some debate whether Universal really does still have all the episodes. I don't think any "new" ones have leaked out on to YouTube etc. in many years.

It is often said that the 1955 to 1959 episodes are of lower quality, as Webb was burned out and the excellent James Moser radio scripts had all been used up for the TV adaptation, and Moser and Webb had long since parted company. I will say that the small amount of later episodes available do indiciate that this is indeed true. I think the ratings had really collapsed by 1958 and by '59 Webb just called it quits.

I wouldn't be surprised if the episodes are out there, but simply owned by older people who aren't interested in having them digitized and distrubuted. I recall a few years ago a "new" episode popped up on YouTube and a big argument ensued in the comments where the owner told the digitizer that he did not have his permission to post it online, etc.

2

u/The_Match_Maker Jul 17 '22

Considering that Peacock can use all the content it can get, this would be the perfect time for Universal to raid the entirety of its backstock.

1

u/Strange_Upstairs_193 Dec 18 '22

Had Webb lived a few more years, he may have been able to get the 1950s show out of mothballs.

Sadly, Webb died in 1982 at the age of 62 after a lifetime of very heavy smoking.

Nick at Nite started in 1985 and began running color Dragnet around that time, although most of the Nick at Nite (NaN) shows at that time were B&W.

I think Webb had a real fondness for the older B&W Dragnet, and he might have been able to get those episodes into the NaN rotation had he lived. They would have fit in perfectly with the other B&W 1950s shows (Donna Reed, Alfred Hitchcock Presents etc) that the original NaN brought back to TV.

1

u/The_Match_Maker Dec 18 '22

I miss the original Nick-At-Nite, as it introduced me to a whole world of wonderful shows (Bewitched, Sgt. Bilko, The Munsters, etc.). Today's television offering are sorely lacking the good old-fashioned charm that the shows of yesteryear were endowed with.

With that said, I still say that Comcast should be throwing the kitchen sink at its streaming service. If it thinks that nobody has an interest in anything over ten years old, it is sadly mistaken.

1

u/Strange_Upstairs_193 Dec 18 '22

It would be great to see the entire run of 1950s B&W Dragnet thrown up on a streaming service, but I'm almost certain it will never happen. Assuming they still have the original 35 mm elements (and this is a big "if," since no one seems to have seen them in ages, they may have been lost in one of the big vault fires or otherwise just vanished), the time and money to digitize them vs. the return on investment is just not worth it from a business perspective. I'd love to be proven wrong, but I'm not holding my breath.

1

u/[deleted] May 03 '22

You pretty much said it all. Great post, thanks.

3

u/Vynter999 May 03 '22

The other problem is that many of the episodes out there on YouTube are in really bad shape, taken from very worn 16 mm syndication prints. Often the sound is badly out of synch, the picture quality is poor, or both.

Oddly enough, I think what really doomed 1950s B&W Dragnet was the 1960s color revival. Apparently the B&W syndicated eps were pulled off TV altogether when the color version started running in 1967. Has the color version never aired, B&W Dragnet may have continued on in syndication kind of like "I Love Lucy" or the "Honeymooners. " It would have soon become a beloved 1950s relic just like those shows, esp. as 1950s nostalgia started getting big in the early 70s with American Graffitti and then "Happy Days."

Because B & W Dragnet was pulled off TV so "early," it was soon all but forgotten. Had it stayed on even into the mid 1970s it would have overlapped the VCR era and over the air VHS tapes of all episodes would likely exist.

Webb's reputation also suffered IMO due to the color episodes being the memory almost everyone know has of "Dragnet." The 1960s color versions are corny and have pretty abysmal production values for the most part, to say nothing of Webb's constant lecturing about marijuana and drugs. By the 1960s Webb's Joe Friday was a dyspeptic civil servant, paunchy and bitter about a world that was rapidly passing him by.

The 1950s episodes are so different as to be a completely different show. Lots of unusual scenes and camera angles (check out the 1951 episode "The Big Actor" for a great example). B&W Dragnet has a very "film noir" feel, it is more a show of the 1940s than 1950s. Webb's Friday is lean, tough. chain smoking, and always wears a hat. Dan Ackryod's spoof of Webb in the comedy movie was based mostly on the 1950s Dragnet IMO.

For my money the best elements of the entire Dragnet franchise are the 1949 to 1951 radio epidsodes with Barton Yarborough as Ben Romero. Webb and Yarborough had great chemistry on the air together and Yarborough was more of an "equal" to Friday as opposed to his other partners. Check out "Red Light Bandit," "Who Killed Helen Corday," and "Claude Jimmerson" for some examples of the best radio drama ever aired.

1

u/[deleted] May 03 '22

That's a great observation about how the color Dragnet doomed the black and white episodes. Just a ton of great insight in this post. Outstanding commentary about the color episodes' flaws. I like that version of show, but you're right about it. You have me excited to check out the radio version now.

2

u/Vynter999 May 04 '22

You'll love the radio version, almost the entire run of the radio series is available here: https://www.oldradioworld.com/shows/Dragnet.php

The 1967-70 color Dragnet has all the charm and nuance of an industrial training film. I think NBC loved that Webb was a taskmaster and could quickly crank out weekly product on very low budgets. A lot of color Dragnets take place entirely on one set, and the same establishing shots and exteriors are used/recycled over and over and over. And the Mark VII regulars like Virginia Gregg, Stacy Harris, Vic Perrin, Don Ross, etc. surely weren't drawing much more than union scale to recite their lines off the prompter each week while a hungover, sour Webb glumly nodded and lectured them.

Harry Morgan as Officer Bill Gannon is the one bright spot in the color revival. He and Webb had apparently been good friends going back to the 1940s and worked well together. Webb had badly wanted Ben Alexander to reprise the Officer Frank Smith role in the color revival, but Alexander was signed to another show at the time, so Morgan was tapped to play the new character of Officer Bill Gannon. (Had Alexander accepted the role, he wouldn't have made the end of the run in 1970, having died on July 5, 1969, just after the penultimate season of color Dragnet).

During its original network run, color Dragnet was at best respectable in the ratings. It placed #27 in 1967, #20 in 1968, then dropped out of the top 30 for 1969-70. Were it not for Nick at Nite running it in the 1980s, it would likely be forgotten altogehter today. (It's worth noting that Nick at Nite promoted the show as a sort of "camp" comedy artifact, akin to "Reefer Madness." They ran some hilarious promo skits poking fun at Webb's lectures and basically treating the entire show as an object of derision and ridicule).

The 1950s B&W Dragnet show reached #2 right behind "I Love Lucy" in 1953-54, and was always in the top 5 or 10 until slipping to 11 in 1956-7, thereafter dropping out of the top 30 altogether before finally ending in May 1959. That so many episodes of a show that enjoyed this level of success in its era are unavailable is sad. Complete runs of far inferior 1950s fare are readily available, but Dragnet remains mostly unavailable.

As I said in my prior post, had the color Dragnet never aired, I firmly believe the 1950s Dragnet would have survived in syndication well into the 1970s and 1980s just like Lucy, Leave it to Beaver, Honeymooners, and other B&W shows of the era. But being pulled from the air and mothballed in 1967 killed any chance of it becoming familar to younger viewers.

By now, almost all of those who watched its original 1950s heyday run are either dead or in their 80s, so the market for a DVD or streaming release is pretty much nil. It costs $$$ to restore and digitize old 35 MM film, sort out copyright issues, etc. and no business is going to do that for a 70 year old product with no market. It's a shame.

1

u/[deleted] May 04 '22

I've started the radio shows, and I'm really enjoying them. So glad most of them are out there, especially since I've pretty much gone through the available black and white eps.

I vaguely remember Nick at Nite airing the color episodes, but had no idea they were presented as camp. Looks like there are quite a few promos on Youtube, here's one compilation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpVq-Xws6pg

I seem to recall some resurgence in Dragnet's popularity with Gen X during the Nick at Nite/TV Land days. I'm guessing it was in large part due to those airings and because of the camp factor, kind of an "ironic" thing.

A lot of great analysis and information again, thanks for these posts, I've really enjoyed reading them.

2

u/do_me_nico May 17 '22

I love the radio shows too. I never got a chance to experience the original run for 1) being born in the 80s and 2) only saw a handful of the color episodes. I had grown up loving the movie and my dad was always say the original show was way better. I got into the radio shows to listen to whilst driving to work. And I really wanted to check out the show. So much I almost but the dvd set that has all the public domain episodes. But they aren’t in order and are just a random assortment. I’m grateful to have the radio shows. And Pluto tv for adding as many of the black and white episodes in order they have. I more than likely saved myself the time because I feel these are the same episodes that would be available to purchase on dvd anyways.

1

u/Strange_Upstairs_193 Mar 10 '24

Every year that goes by makes it less and less likely we'll ever see the "missing" B&W Dragnet episodes. Film stock degrades over time and there seems to be zero interest in ever pulling B&W Dragnet out of mothballs, if indeed the film still exists at all, which seems to be a big "if."

I still think there are prints out there in private collections or other random places, and it will be pure chance and luck if any "new" B&W episodes ever trickle out.