The famed Dragnet, starring Jack Webb as Police Sergeant Joe Friday, premiered as a radio series in 1949. Raymond Burr played Chief of Detectives Ed Backstrand in the early episodes of the radio series, which ran from 1949 to 1957.
Burr portrayed Joe Friday’s superior officer during the show’s first year, appearing in episodes from 1949 to around mid-1950 (roughly episodes 1–28, initially shared with Charles McGraw). Burr later transitioned to film and television work, including playing a different police chief, Thad Brown, in the Dragnet TV pilot episode “The Human Bomb.”
The television version of Dragnet premiered on NBC on December 14, 1951. A total of 276 episodes aired between December 14, 1951, and August 23, 1959. Dragnet ran simultaneously on both radio and television from December 1951 through February 1957. When the first Dragnet movie was released in September 1954, the franchise was available on radio, television, and in theaters at the same time.
Jack Webb directed every episode of the TV series. James E. Moser, John Robinson, and Frank Burt wrote the majority of the scripts during the show’s eight-season run. Webb also wrote several episodes, as did co-star Ben Alexander.
Dragnet returned to television in a new series from 1967 to 1970, this time in color. Once again, Jack Webb starred as Sergeant Joe Friday, now partnered with Officer Jack Gannon, played by Harry Morgan.
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