JOSEPH WAMBAUGH: R.I. P.

Joseph Wambaugh, the master storyteller of police dramas, whose books, films and television tales powerfully caught the hard psychic realities of lonely street cops and flawed detectives trapped in a seedy world of greed and senseless brutality, died on Friday at his home in Rancho Mirage, Calif. He was 88.

Joseph Wambaugh won 3 Edgar awards, as well as the MWA Grand Master Award. 

In 1971, eleven years after joining the LAPD, Wambaugh saw his first novel, The New Centurions, published by Little, Brown and Co. The story of rookie LAPD cops in the early 1960s became his first bestseller and, the following year, the first movie based on his work. The film adaptation starred George C. Scott and Stacy Keach.

In The Glitter Dome, Officers Gibson Hand and Buckmore Phipps consider it a joy “to kill people and do other good police work.” In The Black Marble, Sgt. Natalie Zimmerman and Sgt. A.M. Valnikov are in love, but it can’t last. In The Onion Field, his first work of nonfiction, Mr. Wambaugh wrote of what happened to Officer Karl Hettinger when his partner was slain by thugs: He suffered impotence, nightmares and suicidal thoughts, and his body shrunk.

Wambaugh was blunt about the hidden costs of the job: broken marriages, nervous breakdowns, suicides.
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efore Mr. Wambaugh’s era as a writer, which began in 1971, police dramas like the television series “Dragnet” were implausible stories about clean-cut heroes doing good

Read more in the NYT Here. 

Harry Morgan: R.I.P.

"Joe Friday's" loyal partner, Emmy award winning character actor Harry Morgan, passed away today at the age of 96. He also portrayed Col. Potter on television's "M-A-S-H". His career included nine other TV series, 50 films and the Broadway stage.

Some of his television shows included his being the co-star on "December Bride," its spin-off "Pete and Gladys," "The Richard Boone Show,"  and "Kentucky Jones."

For me, I'll always remember him on M-A-S-H and Dragnet.

Dragnet: Christmas Crime Redux

From Inner Toob, a blog exploring and celebrating the 'reality' of an alternate universe in which everything that ever happened on TV actually takes place, comes this Twice-Told Dragnet Christmas Story.  This is a great blend of two episodes from Dragnet that basically tell the same story, but in different eras of the show.  The first episode was in the 1960s, the second in the 1990s. Same Joe Friday, same Father Rojas. "The more you watch, the more you've seen!"

Dragnet Christmas Crime



Hat Tip: Bill Crider