The other day, I watched He Walked by Night (1948), the movie that inspired Jack Webb's Dragnet. Loosely based on the infamous Erwin Walker crime spree, it opened with the (inaccurate) claim that it was a true story with only the names changed to protect the innocent. Webb was in it as a soft-spoken, charming police lab tech, very unlike his later Joe Friday persona, but Webb was inspired to create Dragnet by a conversation with the film's police consultant.
What makes it relevant here is that, while I watched it for its Dragnet connection, I was pleasantly surprised to discover Whit Bissell in a major role, as the electronics dealer who'd been duped by the criminal (Richard Basehart) into working as his partner and got caught between him and the police in their attempts to draw the killer out. It's the earliest movie I've ever seen Bissell in, aside from his brief, uncredited cameo as a London bobby in Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon. Before this, the earliest credited Bissell role I'd seen was probably in Lost Continent on MST3K. ("Rock climbing, Joel. Rock climbing.")
What makes it relevant here is that, while I watched it for its Dragnet connection, I was pleasantly surprised to discover Whit Bissell in a major role, as the electronics dealer who'd been duped by the criminal (Richard Basehart) into working as his partner and got caught between him and the police in their attempts to draw the killer out. It's the earliest movie I've ever seen Bissell in, aside from his brief, uncredited cameo as a London bobby in Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon. Before this, the earliest credited Bissell role I'd seen was probably in Lost Continent on MST3K. ("Rock climbing, Joel. Rock climbing.")
and Brioni Farrell, who was Tula in Return of the Archons
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