Word: webbe
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...That's What I Mean." On the set of He Walked by Night, Webb met the technical adviser, a rotund, cheerful Los Angeles detective sergeant named Marty Wynn. "It rankles every damn cop in the country when they hear those farfetched stories about crime," Wynn said to Webb. "Why don't you do a real story about policemen?" Wynn forgot the conversation in an hour. But three weeks later Webb arrived with Radio Producer Bill Rousseau at the Los Angeles police academy, where Wynn was taking a refresher course in criminal law and rules of evidence. Webb asked...
Night after night, Webb sat in the back seat of the police Chevrolet, listening to the radio's unemotional reports of crime and human weakness, watching every move of the two detectives. After hours, he asked for coaching. How did they frisk a suspect? How did they kick in a door? Once he told Wynn: "Talk like a cop." The detective bristled. "We don't talk any different than you do." "Well," said Webb, "what would you do if you had a suspect?" Said Wynn: "Why, I'd go down to R & I [Records and Identification...
...Friday. At 8 p.m. on June 3, 1949, a red-lighted sign in NBC's Los Angeles studio H flashed "On the Air." Dragnet, in its first radio form, was born. CBS had turned it down because it "wasn't enough like Sam Spade." The show, which Webb says he created "because I was starving and I had to keep the wolf from the door," was on the air only as a summer replacement. Webb's weekly take was only $150. But week by week he labored for improvement; week by week his rating rose. In little...
Even before that, Webb had feverishly begun planning for the big jump to television. NBC, fearful of film, insisted that the show be done live and in New York. Webb refused. Finally, the Liggett & Myers Tobacco Co. stepped in, pressured the network into agreement. NBC shelled out $38,000 for a pilot film, The Human Bomb, a real-life thriller about a madman who threatened to blow up the Los Angeles city hall to get his brother out of jail...
...Webb had no sets, no camera crew, and could only hope he would be able to cast, direct and edit a motion picture. He briskly talked the police force into letting him shoot his scenes in their offices. Early on the morning of Columbus Day, 1951, while a rented Mitchell camera followed him (low side shot from a high hat) and off-duty cops held back spectators, Webb hurried across Los Angeles' Spring Street and up the steps of the city hall. Halfway to the top he hesitated, turned toward the camera, flipped away a cigarette, looked...