Jack Webb

Born

Jack Webb , Santa Monica, California, USA

Birthday

1920-04-02

Occupation

Actor, Director, Screenplay

Spouse(s)

Julie London (m. 1947–1953)
Dorothy Towne (m. 1955–1957)
Jackie Loughery (m. 1958–1964)
Opal Wright (m. 1980–1982)

Years Active

1954–1978

John Randolph "Jack" Webb (April 2, 1920 – December 23, 1982), also known by the pen name John Randolph,was an American actor, television producer, director, and screenwriter, who is most famous for his role as Sgt. Joe Friday in the Dragnet franchise (which he also created). He was also the founder of his own production company, Mark VII Limited.
Webb was born in Santa Monica, California, son of Samuel Chester Webb and Margaret Smith. He grew up in the Bunker Hill section of Los Angeles. His father left home before Webb was born, and Webb never knew him. He was raised a Roman Catholic by his Irish and Native American mother. One of the tenants in his mother's boarding house was an ex-jazzman and began Webb's lifelong interest in jazz by giving him a recording of Bix Beiderbecke's "At the Jazz Band Ball".
Following his discharge, he moved to San Francisco, where a wartime shortage of announcers led to a temporary appointment to his own radio show on ABC's KGO Radio. The Jack Webb Show was a half-hour comedy that had a limited run on ABC radio in 1946. Prior to that, he had a one-man program, One Out of Seven, on KGO in which he dramatized a news story from the previous week. By 1949, he had abandoned comedy for drama, and starred in Pat Novak for Hire, a radio show originating from KFRC about a man who worked as an unlicensed private detective. The program co-starred Raymond Burr. Pat Novak was notable for writing that imitated the hard-boiled style of such writers as Raymond Chandler, with lines such as: "She drifted into the room like 98 pounds of warm smoke. Her voice was hot and sticky—like a furnace full of marshmallows.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Webb lived in the parish of Our Lady of Loretto Church and attended Our Lady of Loretto Elementary School in Echo Park, where he served as an altar boy. He then attended Belmont High School, near downtown Los Angeles and later, St. John's University, Minnesota, where he studied art. In high school, Webb was a student body president. He wrote to the student body in the yearbook, "You who showed me the magnificent warmth of friendship which I know, and you know, I will carry with me forever." During World War II, Webb enlisted in the United States Army Air Force, but he "washed out" of flight training. He later received a hardship discharge, since he was the primary financial support for both his mother and grandmother.

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