Trivia: Following World War II, California native Jack Webb planned to renew the art studies that he'd abandoned for the military. Instead, he turned to acting, appearing on various San Francisco-based radio programs. He briefly hosted his own satirical comedy series before finding his true metier in detective melodramas. In collaboration with future Oscar-winning screenwriter Richard L. Breen (who remained a Webb associate until his death in 1967), Webb concocted a hard-boiled private eye show entitled Pat Novak for Hire. The popularity he gained from this effort enabled Webb to secure small film roles -- one of these was as a police lab technician in the 1948 film noir He Walked by Night (1948). Intrigued by the police procedure he'd learned while preparing for the role, Webb immersed himself in the subject until he felt ready to launch what many observers still consider the first realistic radio cop show: Dragnet, which premiered June 3, 1949. Webb carried over his terse characterization of L.A. police sergeant Joe Friday into the Dragnet TV series (which he also directed) beginning in 1952. Armed with a bottomless reserve of police terminology and a colorful repertoire of catchphrases, the laconic, ferret-faced Webb became one of the most successful -- and most widely imitated -- TV personalities of the 1950s; almost always in the Top Ten, Dragnet, produced by Webb's own Mark VII Productions, ran until 1959. Webb's newfound industry clout permitted him to direct for the big screen as well -- his 1950s movie credits (outside of such pre-star efforts as The Men, Sunset Boulevard, and Halls of Montezuma) include the 1954 feature version of Dragnet, 1955's Pete Kelly's Blues (based on another of Webb's radio series), 1957's The D.I., and 1959's 30. In addition, Webb's Mark VII produced such TV series as Noah's Ark, The D.A.'s Man, and the video version of Pete Kelly's Blues. Webb kicked off the 1960s with a rare attempt at directing comedy, The Last Time I Saw Archie (1961). From 1962 through 1964, he was in charge of Warner Bros.' television division, an assignment which came to an end as a result of several failed TV ventures. A 1966 TV-movie version of Dragnet kicked off Webb's second career. He went on to star in a successful weekly Dragnet revival, which ran from 1967 through 1970, while his Mark VII outfit was responsible for a score of TV series, the most successful of which were Emergency and Adam 12. Regarded as something of a relic by the "hipper" viewers, Jack Webb nonetheless remained profitably active in television until the late '70s; he might have continued into the 1980s had not his drinking and smoking habits accelerated his death at the age of 62. Married three times, Jack Webb's first wife was singing star Julie London, whom he'd first met when he was 21 and she was 15.

Trivia: Fans of the 1950s TV series Dragnet were usually taken aback to discover that Jack Webb's co-star, the rumpled, balding Ben Alexander, had once been a golden-haired child actor. Born in Nevada and raised in California, Alexander made his screen debut at age 5 in Every Pearl a Tear. He went on to portray Lillian Gish's young brother in D.W. Griffith's World War I epic Hearts of the World. It was in another WW I classic, the early-talkie All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), that Alexander made his first positive impression as an adult actor in the role of Kemmerick, the tragic amputation victim. Closing out his movie career in 1940, Alexander became a busy radio actor and announcer, returning to on-camera work with his six-year (1953-1959) stint on TV's Dragnet. As Officer Frank Smith, Alexander helped popularized Jack Webb's laconic "Just the facts, ma'am" style. Occasionally permitted to improvise his dialogue, Alexander once sent the usually stone-faced Webb into convulsions by beginning a conversation with "Joe? Joe? My hair hurts, Joe." Following the cancellation of Dragnet, Alexander briefly emceed the daytime TV game show About Faces. In 1966, Ben Alexander returned to police work as Sergeant Dan Briggs on the weekly ABC cop series Felony Squad.

Trivia: A bad heart and bad luck cost character actor Barton Yarborough a shot at pop-culture immortality on television, after two decades in radio. He also led an early life colorful enough to have been made into a movie. Born in the small central Texas town of Goldthwaite, Yarborough was bitten by the performing bug as a young teenager and ran away from home to pursue work in vaudeville. With the advent of radio in the 1920s, he turned his efforts to the new medium, and in 1932 debuted in the role of Cliff Barbour on the series One Man's Family -- a series on which he continued working right up to his death nearly two decades later. He became a fixture on radio in a multitude of roles, one the advantages of that medium being that a truly versatile actor could handle all the work for which they could physically get to the studio. In 1938, he debuted as Doc Long, the physician partner to the hero in the series I Love A Mystery. Two years later, he made his big-screen debut in the "Dr. Christian" film series entry They Meet Again (1941), in a cast that included Jean Hersholt and Neil Hamilton, playing the central role of accused bank embezzler Bob Webster. That same year he showed up in the Universal "B" comedy Let's Go Collegiate, starring Frankie Darro, Mantan Moreland, and Gale Storm, and a year after that was back at Universal in The Ghost of Frankenstein as Dr. Kettering, the kindly physician whose death at the hands of the Frankenstein monster sets in motion the plot. He shows up as an FBI man in Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942), and then left pictures for the next three years. In 1945, Yarborough returned to movies when I Love A Mystery made the leap to the big-screen, in the part of Doc Long in I Love A Mystery, teamed with Jim Bannon. He did two more films in the series, in between other roles, and continued in radio, where he also began appearing on Dragnet in the role of Sgt. Ben Romero, the partner to Jack Webb's Sgt. Joe Friday. Webb, who created, produced, and directed the series, kept Yarborough as his on-air partner when the series made the jump to television in late 1951. Alas, Yarborough became ill during the shooting of the second episode, and died less than a week later of a heart attack. His character was written out of the show with the same cause of death. The year after he passed away, Yarborough was seen in his final film role, a small, uncredited part as a secretary in Richard Brooks' Deadline -- USA (1952), starring Humphrey Bogart and Ethel Barrymore.