Saturday, February 9, 2013

"The Masked Bandits" or "The age-inappropriate marriage story"

This is the city.


All right, you got me. It's a close up of town hall that zooms out.




Not a bad sequence, really.


Joe goes on to tell us about shopping in LA.


Is Olvera Street still a thing?


Yeah, actually! You can still go there. It was even designated a historic landmark in 1953.


(Image from Bing Maps bird's eye view.)

Too many people are looking toward the camera for this to have been shot on a backlot:




Dragnet's impostor Joan Holloway hands out some papers...



(Just not the same.)

Anyway, Hi Joe, Bill.



HOLD THE PHONE SKIPPER



Off we go.


Hey red-haired guy. See you in season two.


"I dig Mustangs. They're really boss," says the guy in white. 
That's what he says! That is his real line! 


I love how they shot this. 

Say Hi to Angie. An alternate name for this blog was going to be "All the waitresses are named Angie".


The film rolls behind the characters in the foreground, making the illusion of being on a location.


The film stock seems to have improved since we were first at Georgia Street on behalf of Blue Boy.



A pretty red Caddy convertible and the exterior of another set house.

It will be recycled, of course. See it again in S1e9, The Fur Burglary.



KNOCK KNOCK


TRICK OR TREAT.

I'm dressed as Friday. I'm dressed as Gannon.


Just kidding. It's really us.


No candy? Just a stolen gun? We'll arrest you.


He's seventeen and married to her:


"I'm only 29. That's not so old."
(That is her real line, too!)


The guys think it's hinky.


(I'll feature that lamp in my forthcoming "table lamps of season one" retrospective.)



Back on our tour of LA's plentiful liquor stores.





Ok, now we are in Burbank. 
The drive took twenty minutes.



The office has a neat photo on the sound stage behind the windows.


I am pretty sure that boss shows up as a bad guy later on in the series.





Dang. I just missed the Cutty Sark billboard in the left edge of the above frame.



HELLO GUYS WELCOME BACK TO THE POLICE ADMINISTRATION BUILDING


R & I has this really cool card filer:


Life in a pre-computer world. Or, at least, as partially computerized one.



I still wish they had taken these establishing shots when there had been landscaping in front of the sign.

Parker Center opened in 1955 and was used until 2009.




This looks like backlot:


It's too clean to be a real street.





See how all of the windows back there are lit the same?




No trash in the street, at all.




Hey, hon, you ready to get busted in the soundstage lobby of Royal Palms?


Well, crap on a cracker.


Hold this box, Bill.





You'll remember the night shot of the Police Parking kiosk from when we were trapped in a room with Kent McCord:





Bill's going to eat his sandwich, finally.


It's a relative of "the dagwood" - a sandwich with everything on it.


"Corned beef, imported swiss, lettuce, russian dressing, coleslaw, kosher pickle, slice of tomato..."


More for you, Bill.



Donald Ralph Jones,
Frank Martin
and
James Wilson
Now serving sentences in the State Penitentiary, San Quentin, California.



Larry Hubbert

Now undergoing training at the Preston School of Industry, Ione, California.


Starred
Jack Webb as Sergeant Joe Friday
Harry Morgan as Officer Bill Gannon
Ron Russell as Larry Hubbert
Virginia Vincent as Edna Hubbert
S. John Launer as Stanley Auerbach
Robert Brubaker as Al Tucker
Art Gilmore as Captain Mert Howe
Tom Baker as Donald Jones
Dirk Rambo as Fred Tillar
Karen Jensen as Jeannie
Dave Carlile as Officer Jack Edwards, the red-haired guy
Sam Edwards as Bernard Ashton
Tani Seitz as Angie, the car hop waitress.

Art Direction - Russell Kimball
Set Decor - John McCarthy & Ralph Sylos

Written by David H. Vowell

Aired 16 February 1967

Check back on Saturday for S1e6, "The Bank Examiner Swindle".

8 comments:

  1. The guy who played the kid who digs Mustangs was killed in a car accident 9 days before this show aired. His name was Dirk Rambo, and he was the brother of Dack Rambo who I remember from Another World. Also, according the Virginia Vincent's IMBD page, she was born in 1918, which would make her, what, 49 in this episode?? Another birthdate I found for her was 1924, still putting her in her forties.
    Anyway, nice blog you have here. I have a weakness for Dragnet and Adam-12 and Emergency and the like, so it is fun for me to poke through here. I just received the Dragnet board game. The instructions will probably take me a week to read, they are so long. I think Joe Friday would have approved.

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  2. The guy who played the kid who digs Mustangs died in a car accident 9 days before this episode aired. He was Dirk Rambo, twin brother of Dack Rambo, who I remember from Another World. Also, according to her IMBD page, Virginia Vincent was born in 1918, which makes her 49 in this episode?! Another site places her birthdate in 1924, which would still put her in her forties.
    I just found your blog and am enjoying it tremendously. I have an unnatural fondness for Dragnet, Adam-12, Emergency and the like. I'm not sure why, since I was too young (or not yet born) to have watched them when they first came out. I recently purchased the Dragnet board game on Ebay and the instructions are pretty long winded, which seems only fitting given Joe's propensity for verbosity.

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  3. Thanks for the great site Suzy!! Genuflecting on this series and the cultural aspects(decor, cars, and of course the lamps.I'm noticing them even more now when I catch an episode after seeing your comments/photos....There is a marbled/tiled lamp in "The Starlet" in Eva Graham's living room that really jumps out at you....Yes, I know.I need to get a life) Definitely has brought back a lot of memories from 1967 (11 years old, but still remember seeing them when my parents let me stay up late)

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    Replies
    1. Sonoran,

      Thank you for the note! I'm so glad you enjoy the blog and appreciate the series.

      Happy Dragnet memories & see you again soon,
      Suzy Dragnet

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  4. DRAT! I wish they had taken some good street shots in Burbank... I run a web site all about the place. It's my hometown. http://wesclark.com/burbank/

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  5. Kristen, my partner and I were working the day watch at juvie division, the boss was Virginia Vincent, born in 1918, and that would make her 39 in 1967. I used an abacus confiscated during a raid in LA's Chinatown to figure this out.

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  6. Sorry, you dumb LA cop, I work as a file clerk in Parker Center, and I still know more math than you. If Virginia Vincent was born in 1918 she'd be 49 when this Dragnet episode aired. She looks younger than 49 but she ain't 29 by any stretch of the imagination.

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  7. The "tympani soundtrack" sounds like it's been replaced with a tambourine/industrial/guitar thing this time out. I'm not sure it's much of an improvement.

    Joe: "Because of the outbound commuter traffic, it took us 20 minutes to get to Burbank," and we're gonna show you every second of it.

    Sam Edwards playing the role this week of the "cheerfully helpful businessman". They should lock him and Bert Holland in a room together and see which one comes out more jovial. It's like these guys entire lives were spent desperately hoping that they might one day be helpful to a police investigation, and now that their dreams have finally come true, they can hardly restrain themselves.

    Is the grey box the robbers kept their guns in the same one Dorothy Miller will use as her overnight case for her trip to Arizona in "The Big Hammer"?

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