Dragnet - "Benny Trounsel" (08-04-49)

Benny Trounsel  (Aired August 4, 1949)

"Dragnet" is also the hottest thing that radio and TV have ever seen.  In a business where the supercolossal is barely good enough to get by on, "Dragnet" is looked upon with awe.  It is—or was, until it went off the air a few weeks ago for the summer—the top show on radio, and the top show on TV, with nothing but "I Love Lucy," a slick situation comedy, coming any place close to it in ratings. Last summer, its doom-laden theme was turned into a popular song which was high on the hit parade until a series of hilarious parodies ("St. George and the Dragonet,"etc.) displaced it.  Webb has contracted for series of full-length "Dragnet" movies, and comic strip takes "Dragnet" into whatever parts of the land are still without TV. The success of "Dragnet" is all the more remarkable because it has been accomplished against the steady and determined resistance of all the throttlebottoms in the business.  In a field ruled by formula, it violates every formula in the book. Any producer can give you the recipe for a successful crime show.  You've got to have a murder in a hurry to grab and hold the audience.  Then, as the police fall all over their big flat feet, your wisecracking private eye, as hard as a landlady's heart, proceeds, to the accompaniment of bludgeonings, gunplay and fisticuffs and as much sex as the producer thinks he can get away with, to put the collar on the culprit or, better still, to liquidate him in a final crescendo of roaring guns. Show Notes From The Digital Deli.

THIS EPISODE:

August 04, 1949. Program #9. NBC network. Sustaining. A small-time narcotics user named "Benny Trounsel AKA: Narcotics" has been beaten to death shortly after tipping the cops to a new narcotics ring in town. Jack Webb, Barton Yarborough, Raymond Burr. 29:18. Episode Notes Radio Gold Index. Cat #2636.