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Harry Morgan and Jack Webb worked together onscreen almost two decades before Dragnet
Previously, the pair played crooks and shady characters.
Sgt. Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon. This is the city.
Friday and Gannon are probably one of the most well-known duos on classic TV. Every week, audiences tuned in to watch them chasing down criminals, interrogating suspects, and saying "Just the facts, ma'am."
It's hard to picture anyone else but Jack Webb and Harry Morgan as the crime-busting partners. However, Dragnet was far from the first time they'd shared a screen together. In fact, the first time came 17 years prior.
In 1967, when the new iteration of Dragnet was hitting the airwaves, Harry Morgan gave an interview to the El Paso Herald-Post where he laughed about people questioning if he and Jack Webb would make a good team. "But we're NOT a new team," Morgan said. "We've worked together before. Twice, in fact."
The newspaper noted that their first appearance was easy to miss since they appeared as "fleeting shadows" in a 1951 Alan Ladd movie.
"It's probably a good thing most people don't remember," Morgan said, "because we played a pair of crooks being chased by the police."
Around the same time, they appeared in Charlton Heston's Hollywood debut, Dark City. "Again," the newspaper said, "Jack played a heavy whose buddy was a punch-drunk fighter. Yup, Harry Morgan played the punchy."
Now he was uniting with Jack Webb once more, but on the other side of the badge.
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No, that film, "Appointment with Danger," was their SECOND appearance together: "Dark City," Charlton Heston's first film, was released seven months earlier, in October, 1950.
As for
"Friday and Gannon are probably one of the most well-known duos on classic TV. Every week, audiences tuned in to watch them chasing down criminals, interrogating suspects, and saying 'Just the facts, ma'am.'"
"Most well-known." Just say BEST-known. SIMPLIFY. STOP the gobbledygook.
Go back to a series titled "December Bride." You will discover a very young Harry Morgan playing the role of Pete Porter, an insurance salesman and the next door neighbor of Lily Ruskin (played by Spring Byington).
That series ran from 1954 to 1959.
