L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City

The radio program’s success was modest. It had enough listeners to keep it on the air (it eventually settled in on Thursdays, at 10:30 p.m.) but not enough to make it a true hit. Nonetheless, its unorthodox depiction of orthodox police work attracted avid fans. Police officers were delighted; single women were enthralled. (Many seemed to view the unattached Friday as a desirable catch; Webb was deluged with proposals.) Dragnet soon picked up a sponsor, the cigarette company Liggett & Myers, thus ensuring the program’s survival. It also attracted the attention of the nation’s self-styled number one lawman, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

In Dragnet, the bureau saw a new opportunity to burnish its image. So the FBI spoke to Liggett & Myers. Just a month after it had picked up the radio program, the cigarette company presented Webb and NBC with an unexpected demand: Henceforth every program would end with a tribute to a graduate of the FBI’s National Academy.

Webb, NBC, and the LAPD responded by raising hell. Neither Webb nor NBC liked the idea of a sponsor dictating creative decisions. Moreover, the FBI’s demand missed the point of the show. Dragnet was all about the day-to-day work of an ordinary police sergeant. The FBI’s National Academy was for high-ranking officers. Honoring only them would offend ordinary patrolmen. Moreover, everyone knew that the FBI already had its own radio program (This Is Your F.B.I.). Rather than provoking a fight with the bureau, Webb and NBC decided to drop the tribute entirely.

Soon after the tribute disappeared, two agents appeared at NBC’s L.A. studio and demanded to know what had happened to the idea of honoring an FBI Academy graduate. NBC blamed the LAPD. This was reported directly to Hoover. Worse, the memo to the director stated that the LAPD was talking trash about the bureau, telling the network that the FBI was “in bad repute with police departments across the country.” The memo claimed that the LAPD had even threatened to cease cooperating with the program if the FBI was honored. Hoover was upset. He retaliated by ending FBI participation in LAPD training and refusing to admit LAPD officers to the bureau’s prestigious National Academy. Although the alleged slight to the bureau had occurred before Parker became chief, the freeze extended to Chief Parker’s tenure, for reasons that are unclear. When Parker took office, he did not receive the customary letter of congratulations from the director.

Whether Parker knew about his department’s transgressions or picked up on the terrible snub he had received from Hoover is also unclear. Passing through Washington, D.C., in the fall of 1951, Parker was granted a personal meeting with Hoover. Later, according to the FBI’s L.A. special agent in charge (whose responsibilities included relaying all gossip regarding the bureau to FBI headquarters in Washington), the new chief “was very flattering in his expressions toward the Director and for the leadership he provides in law enforcement.” But Parker’s deference was short lived. He and the LAPD were on the verge of a series of steps that would transform the director’s frigidity into outright hostility.

      BY 1951, both Webb and NBC were eager to expand the radio program into a new medium—television. That meant winning the support of Bill Parker. At first, Parker was hesitant. Truth be told, he didn’t much like Hollywood. The new chief blamed movies like The Keystone Cops for propagating an image of policemen as nincompoops. In letters to his wife, Helen, during the Second World War, he complained about having to pay to watch Hollywood films abroad. However, he did appreciate how effective moving pictures could be. During his days at the traffic division, he’d been involved in making informational films intended to educate drivers about how to use the freeways that were beginning to crisscross the basin. He understood the power of the moving picture. But the experience that really brought home to Parker just how powerful an advertisement Dragnet had become for the department came when he attended the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Miami in the fall of 1951. Everywhere he went, people addressed him as “Friday.”