My Favorite 1960s Dragnet #26: The Christmas Story
Christmas in June? It’d be tempting to artificially work things so that the Christmas episode ends up in the list around Christmas, but by Christmastime I’ll be done, so there’s no reason for facade.
This episode belongs where it is. It is quite an episode: a remarkable almost word for word reshooting of the 1953 version of the Story. The show was one of two entries in the 1960s show that had its basis in a 1950s episode.
The story is beautiful and surprising, a Christmas treasure that’s still memorable and heart-warming after all these years. It is a testament to the writing of Richard Breen. In his life, Breen won an Academy Award for Best Writing, Story, and Screenplay for the 1954 minor Classic, Titanic.
But as the years has faded, so has Breen from the public consciousness. However, this one episode of Dragnet he wrote in 1953 during the first year of the Eisenhower Administration could be retold with ease in the anger and rage of the late 1960s, when the whole world had changed. Two decades later, a version of the story would be used in an episode of Macgyver. And if you were to tell the same story today, you could use almost the same script that Breen did.
What makes the story so timeless? I think it’s that element of the unexpected. We begin the episode with a sense of dismay at the idea of someone robbing a church on Christmas Eve, particuarly of a religious statue, and we’er led to suspect a devout worshiper with a past of committing a crime. Yet, in the end, we found out things weren’t quite as they appeared.
What looks like a theft is not always a theft, and as Friday suggests, what looks like a poor person isn’t always a poor person. Through the tumult of the years, and the painful side of life that Dragnet portrays, this episode stands out for its hope. It was in the same vein as the famous Apollo 8 message that would come the next Christmas in providing hope and re-assurance to a troubled and turbulent world. More than 57 years after Breen produced the first version of this story, it still stands as a beacon that continues to connect with new generations.
Hi Adam! I’ve really been enjoying your broadcasts and your favorite Dragnet TV shows.
You probably already knew this, but I just heard it: Himan Brown, who created “Dick Tracy”, “CBS Radio Mystery Theater” and “Inner Sanctum”, died on June 6 at 99. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/arts/07brown.html
It’s so amazing that he was working in the early days of radio and was still alive until recently, and also that his radio career spanned over 50 years.