Radio Recap: The Jack Webb Show

In 1946, Jack Webb was just starting out in radio but very quickly his voice was all over ABC. ABC was a new network then and were probably desperate for some original programming. Webb appeared in a number of shows that followed each other in quick succession, all produced in San Francisco. His first big series, One Out of Seven, I'll have to address in a future blog post. Today I'm going to talk about Jack Webb's comedy-music program, the Jack Webb Show.

The Jack Webb Show aired March-August, 1946 on ABC. We have only two episodes that are still known to exist. Webb started his private eye series Pat Novak, for Hire in 1946 but wouldn't reach the role he'd be best-known for - Joe Friday of Dragnet - until 1949. The Jack Webb of 1946 was young, hungry and... yes, funny!

To the baby boomer generation, Webb's stoic performance as Joe Friday became iconic. Even though he remained busy in other works outside of Dragnet (such as Pete Kelly's Blues), nothing he touched reached as far or lasted as long as Dragnet. Webb's stoic, deadpan delivery was so famous that, to cite one example from late in his career, when he appeared on the 1974 Jack Benny's Second Farewell Special in a comedy sketch alongside his Dragnet co-star Harry Morgan and Jack Benny, Webb remained entirely in-character as Joe Friday - whereas Harry Morgan was permitted to break character for the sake of a few laughs. In the sketch, Friday's seeming inability to possess a sense of humour was in itself a kind of joke.

But that was Webb in the last decade of his life. He hadn't built a reputation as a straight man in 1946. He hadn't built any reputation. Thus, like yesterday's post on the Orson Welles Radio Almanac we have a radio series whose star is not best-known as a comedic performer. The difference is that Welles had built his reputation in dramatic radio for 6-7 years prior to that program, while Webb was just starting out.

Comparing the two shows, Webb comes off extremely well. Believe it or not, the Jack Webb Show was a zany comedy program, similar to another show that followed it on ABC - the Henry Morgan Show. Webb had to disappear into a number of different parts for the comedy sketches and he was extremely capable at it. It's a fast-paced show and Webb's patter is so good, I guarantee you'll forget he's best-rembered as a dramatic peformer.

The two shows each have one lengthy comedy sketch; in the first, it's "The Razor in the Case of the Confused Keyhole" in which Webb satirizes radio private detective programs (he even calls out Dick Powell by name!). In the second, it's "Slim Slade, Western Bandleader" in which he plays a band leader whose band seems to play the exact same song every time they perform, despite the leader's insistence that he's crafted a variety of different tunes.

You can hear the 2 surviving episodes of the Jack Webb Show on the Internet Archive.