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Chihiro Ogino has declared Joe Friday (Original) is to be renamed to Joe Friday (original) for the following reason(s): original is lowercase. Please discuss it on the talk page for this article. "I want you to know my real name. It's Chihiro." |
| “ | This is the city. Los Angeles, California. I work here, I'm a cop. | „ |
| ~ Friday's opening line. |
Joseph "Joe" Friday was the primary protagonist of the Dragnet radio dramas, television series, and movies from June 1949 up through 1970. Throughout this time he was portrayed by Jack Webb.
Biography[]
Growing up in the LA area, he graduated from Belmont High School. Friday joined the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) prior to World War II but left to serve in the US Army during the war. After being discharged following the war, Friday returned to the LAPD where he became a detective. He was issued badge number 714. During his time he was partnered with several men listed below.
Very businesslike and with a straightforward manner, Friday largely kept a low profile outside of work and had few hobbies to speak of. His partners tried to include Friday in their off-duty activities and tried to set Friday up however Friday remained single as he was married to the job. Due to his detective skills and high success rate Friday and his partners were rotated amongst the many different departments of the LAPD to help with difficult cases.
During the course of his career as an LAPD officer, Friday was forced to shoot someone twice. The first time it was in front of a number of his partner and other witnesses who quickly confirmed his story. Then late one night in the late 1960s, Friday went to a 24 hour laundromat to buy some cigarettes and found one Arthur Ashton trying to break into a change machine. When Friday announced his presence as a police officer, Ashton tried to shoot him. Friday returned fire, wounding Ashton in the process. With help from his girlfriend, Ashton escaped. Refusing to seek medical treatment Ashton later died. Finding the bullet from a gun recovered nearby embedded in the wall, the review board cleared Friday and returned him to duty. The coroner subsequently ruled Ashton's death was justifiable homicide.
Friday was a heavy smoker. He found Ashton committing a crime because he was out of cigarettes and wanted to buy some more from a place he knew he could get them at a time when every other store was closed. (The automatic cigarette machine turned out to be out of order anyways). Some of his fellow LAPD officers ribbed him over his chain smoking, with one of the officers who responded to the Ashton shooting giving him a pack of cigarettes, and later the SID officers who investigated the shooting giving him a whole carton of cigarettes to keep Friday out of further trouble.
By the 1987 Friday had passed away. His legacy of service to the LAPD was continued by his nephew and namesake Joe Friday. In 2003 another Joe Friday was working with the LAPD, however any family relationship between the two men was never made clear during the course of the series.
Chronological Listing of Partners[]
- Sgt. Ben Romero (Barton Yarborough)
- Sgt. Ed Jacobs (Barney Phillips)
- Officer Bill Lockwood (Martin Milner)
- Officer Frank Smith
- Officer Bill Gannon (Harry Morgan)
Trivia[]
- A common misconception was that Friday frequently said "Just the facts, ma'am" to female witnesses. However at no point during any of his appearances did the original Friday use that exact phrase.
- Friday and his partners frequently moved from one department to another during the course of the various series, far more often that what would've happened in real life. For example, one week he and his partner might be working homicide one week they might be working internal affairs the following week, followed by intelligence the next week. While Webb was aware of this and normally wanted Dragnet to be as realistic as possible, he made an exception here as he wanted to show the public watching Dragnet as many different aspects of police work as possible.
- Being "married to the job" Friday never married nor had children of his own. This is in contrast to Jack Webb, who was married four times and had two children before his death in 1982.
- Webb toyed with the idea of bringing Dragnet back to television in the mid 1970s, however by then Bill Gannon actor Harry Morgan was busy playing Sherman Potter on M*A*S*H and Webb would have had to find someone else to play Friday's partner. Webb ultimately decided against bringing the series back at that time.
- When Webb died in 1982, he was given a funeral with full police honors - which was unusual given that he was never an officer with the LAPD - and the department retired Badge 714. Webb was buried with a replica 714 Sargent's badge