page_title: Jack Webb
section_title: 1970s and 1980s
hierarchical_section_title: Jack Webb / 1970s and 1980s
caption_attribution_description: Jack Webb and Julie London (Julie Web) with Stacey and Lisa, 1953
context_page_description: John Randolph Webb was an American actor, television producer, director, and screenwriter, who is most famous for his role as Sgt. Joe Friday in the Dragnet franchise. He was the founder of his own production company, Mark VII Limited.
context_section_description: In 1970, Webb decided to bring an end to Dragnet and cease acting to focus on expanding Mark VII Limited's production profile. In 1971, Webb entered the world of district attorneys and federal government work with two series. The first, The D.A., starred Robert Conrad and Harry Morgan as a pair of Los Angeles County ADAs, with Conrad playing a junior ADA and Morgan his superior. The second, O'Hara, United States Treasury, was a co-production of Webb and David Janssen, the former star of The Fugitive and future star of Harry O, for CBS (a rare non-NBC Mark VII effort) and featured Janssen as a Nebraska county sheriff-turned-United States Treasury Department agent. Neither series lasted very long, as The D.A., Webb's last 30-minute series, was cancelled after 15 episodes and O'Hara ended after 22.
  Later in the 1971–72 season, Webb and Cinader launched Emergency!, a spin-off of Adam-12, which focused on the fictional Station 51 Rescue Squad of L.A. County Fire Department, which also featured one of the first paramedic units, and its work in conjunction with the emergency department staff of the fictional Rampart General Hospital. Webb cast his ex-wife, Julie London, as well as her second husband and Dragnet ensemble player Bobby Troup, as head nurse Dixie McCall and Dr. Joe Early, respectively, with Randolph Mantooth and Kevin Tighe playing paramedics John Gage and Roy DeSoto and Robert Fuller playing Dr. Kelly Brackett, Rampart's Chief of Emergency Medicine.
  Emergency! ran as part of NBC's Saturday-night lineup for six entire seasons, and it was a popular series, sometimes winning its time slot against CBS's popular Saturday-night comedy block, which included All in the Family. The series came to an end in 1977, but it spawned a series of telefilms that ran until 1979. Webb's company and Universal also contracted with animator Fred Calvert to produce a spin-off Saturday-morning cartoon show for NBC titled Emergency +4, which ran for three seasons (the last in reruns) and featured the paramedics Gage and DeSoto assisted by four youngsters and their three pets.
  Emergency! was Webb's last sustained success. Of the remaining series his company produced, the only two that lasted longer than one season were Hec Ramsey, a two-season component of the NBC Mystery Movie wheel series that featured former Have Gun – Will Travel star Richard Boone as a pioneering forensic scientist in the Old West, and Project UFO, an anthology based on the investigations into UFOs as compiled by Project Bluebook that also ran for two seasons beginning in 1978.
  In 1987, Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks starred in a movie parody (and homage) to Webb, titled Dragnet, along with Harry Morgan, who reprised his role from the television series as Bill Gannon, who had by now become a captain of detectives. The comedy film was written and directed by Tom Mankiewicz, in his directorial debut. Aykroyd played the role of Joe Friday, described as the namesake nephew of the original series lead, while Hanks co-starred as Detective Officer Pep Streebeck, Friday's new smart-alecky and streetwise partner.
caption: Jack Webb with first wife Julie London and daughters Stacey and Lisa, 1953
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