Harry Morgan and Jack Webb worked together onscreen almost two decades before Dragnet

Previously, the pair played crooks and shady characters.

Everett Collection

Sgt. Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon. This is the city.

Friday and Gannon are probably one of the most well-known duos on classic TV. Every week, audiences tuned in to watch them chasing down criminals, interrogating suspects, and saying "Just the facts, ma'am."

It's hard to picture anyone else but Jack Webb and Harry Morgan as the crime-busting partners. However, Dragnet was far from the first time they'd shared a screen together. In fact, the first time came 17 years prior.

In 1967, when the new iteration of Dragnet was hitting the airwaves, Harry Morgan gave an interview to the El Paso Herald-Post where he laughed about people questioning if he and Jack Webb would make a good team. "But we're NOT a new team," Morgan said. "We've worked together before. Twice, in fact."

The newspaper noted that their first appearance was easy to miss since they appeared as "fleeting shadows" in a 1951 Alan Ladd movie.

"It's probably a good thing most people don't remember," Morgan said, "because we played a pair of crooks being chased by the police."

Around the same time, they appeared in Charlton Heston's Hollywood debut, Dark City. "Again," the newspaper said, "Jack played a heavy whose buddy was a punch-drunk fighter. Yup, Harry Morgan played the punchy."

Now he was uniting with Jack Webb once more, but on the other side of the badge. 

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24 Comments

harlow1313 1 day ago
I usually get a chuckle from Joe's monologues. His opponents are strawmen with dialog that's easy to knock down.
daDoctah harlow1313 1 day ago
Usually. He let Brother William get in a few legitimate points before eventually shutting him down with what was basically a "oh, yeah? well, I'm right and you're wrong so there!" Never was in any position to make an arrest (the epilogue showed him convicted of something unrelated and didn't say who made the case against him).
Avie 3 days ago
"[The El Paso Herald-Post] noted that their first appearance was easy to miss since they appeared as 'fleeting shadows' in a 1951 Alan Ladd movie."

No, that film, "Appointment with Danger," was their SECOND appearance together: "Dark City," Charlton Heston's first film, was released seven months earlier, in October, 1950.

As for

"Friday and Gannon are probably one of the most well-known duos on classic TV. Every week, audiences tuned in to watch them chasing down criminals, interrogating suspects, and saying 'Just the facts, ma'am.'"

"Most well-known." Just say BEST-known. SIMPLIFY. STOP the gobbledygook.
HeytoGomer Avie 2 days ago
"One of the most"? There can be only one "most". There can be more the one "many" but only one "most". Use "most in a sentence..."Most self-proclaimed 'writers' today cannot."
PINKYLEE 3 days ago
METV didn't go quite far enough back to feature Harry Morgan.

Go back to a series titled "December Bride." You will discover a very young Harry Morgan playing the role of Pete Porter, an insurance salesman and the next door neighbor of Lily Ruskin (played by Spring Byington).

That series ran from 1954 to 1959.
Avie PINKYLEE 3 days ago
Your point? Morgan's film career went back to "To the Shores of Tripoli" in 1942.
PINKYLEE Avie 3 days ago
Tripoli was a movie. December Bride was one of TV's earliest sitcoms.
GaryGoltz 3 days ago
There were 3 or 4 partners in the 50’s version of the show. But I agree Ben Alexander was the best of all of them! Herbert L. Strock who directed the Pilot for the TV show in 1951 also did the Pilot for ‘Highway Patrol’ in 1955.
justjeff 3 days ago
I kind of wish some pristine prints of the original 1950s series would show up with Jack Webb and Ben Alexander... I kind of liked that version better... more "police-y", less "preachy"...
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Mark MichaelGreene 1 day ago
Interestingly enough, Barney Phillips would later play Ben Alexander's boss, Captain Franks, during the second season of Felony Squad.
Mark daDoctah 1 day ago
Webb had his own explanation for the 'demotion' of Friday. He stated that the position of Lieutenant was more of a desk position and not a rank that would allow him to go out into the field like Sergeant would. He further stated that no one would remember or even care that Friday was promoted to Lieutenant.
justjeff daDoctah 1 day ago
That's as logical a story as any script writer could come up with...

For me, I thought it was because he never corraled and castigated Claude Cooper, the kleptomaniac from Cleveland who copped the clean copper clappers that cleaning woman Clara Clifford kept in the company closet... thereby causing the commission of a crime whose case went cold... do you concur?
daDoctah Mark 1 day ago
We can have both explanations, one "in-universe" and one "real-world". Like the explanation for "why is there a watermelon there?" in Buckaroo Banzai; was it because the Banzai Foundation was testing food for starving refugees that could be air-dropped from a helicopters, or because the filmmakers wanted to distract the money people by sticking in random things they could object to for no reason?

¿Por que no los dos? as the kid in the tortilla commercial says.
LoveMETV22 4 days ago
Glad the two of them reunited. They made a great duo.
Runeshaper 4 days ago
They did make a great pair and it's nice to read about their history. Thanks, MeTV!
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