User Reviews

DRAGNET - The Big Gap - 1955

This is the 131st episode of the 283 episode run, Police Detective series, DRAGNET. This series ran from 1951 to 59.

Sgt Joe Friday (Jack Webb) and Detective Frank Smith (Ben Alexander) are working the day watch out of Bunco Division. A local pawn shop owner, Mel Ford, comes in with some information for the boys.

A man, James Stone, had been in his shop early the night before seeking the value on an emerald ring. Ford had looked at the ring and told Stone it was a simple cut glass job, not an emerald. Stone had become rather loud and had called Ford more than a few names. Once Stone had calmed down, he tried to buy a pistol. Ford said no and sent him on his name.

Ford had called on Webb and Alexander because he figures that Stone wanted to kill himself, or whoever sold him the bum ring. Ford had taken done the man's license number. A quick check (for 1955 that is) is done of the license division and an address and name pop up. Webb and Alexander grab a prowl car and pay the address a visit.

What they find is a very worried woman, Lillian Powell. Powell's husband, Stone had not come home the night before and she was concerned. The Police showing up at the door, does not ease her worries. Webb asks some routine questions and tells Powell they will find her husband. Sure enough, some uniform boys find Stone just sitting in his car.

The Detectives have the man brought to the station. Stone tells the Detectives he was taken for all his saving by some con men. He had been bait and switched out of $1500 bucks. He thought he was buying a $7000 ring. The mug books are brought out and two men quickly identified. The two, Don Barry and Jay Lawrence are soon rounded up and thrown in a cell.

Webb and Alexander lay on a heavy dose of the old face to face third degree, but get nothing. It turns out there was a third man involved in the swindle and an all points goes out. This however leads to a body found at a car wreck on the LA freeway.

The pair, Barry and Lawrence, are soon taken in front of a judge. The judge tosses the case for lack of evidence. Oh well, you can't win them all. But then again, maybe, Barry and Lawrence are pinched 4 months later pulling the same scam. This time they get time in jail. (b/w)

"The Big Gap" is a very good episode of "Dragnet"--solid and well done. However, the ending is very peculiar--so much different than you'd ever see in the later "Dragnet" series! The show begins with a pawnbroker calling the police. It's unusual in that he's not sure that a crime has even been committed but he's concerned about a man he recently had come into his shop. According to this guy, someone came in to have a ring appraised and when he learned it was essentially junk, he became enraged. Soon, instead of questioning the value of the jewelry, he insists now he wants to buy a gun! But the owner of the shop isn't about to sell an angry guy a weapon.

The pawn broker and police think that the angry guy was angry because he'd just bought the ring and was told it was very valuable...and paid accordingly. However, it takes the police a while to find Garfield Hunt--and even Hunt's wife is worried because he never came home. Fortunately, it turns out the man just needed time to cool down and it neither dead nor a murderer. Unfortunately, although the police KNOW the crooks who sold the ring to Hunt, they cannot prove it. Here s the odd twist--the show ends this way--with no arrest or conviction. However, and this is odder yet, in the epilogue, it indicates that later, different officers WERE able to get a conviction! Odd in style, that's for sure but also well done and worth your time.

Review - The Big Gap Aired 10-7-55 Friday, Smith are working the day watch out of Bunco Fugitive Division. A pawn-shop-owner they know comes to them informing of a man not-typical customer thinking he has a valuable ring but it is only cut glass. He doesn't take the news well, inquiring about a gun sale afterward, which the owner refused to sell to him. The victim realizes he had been swindled by the guys pretending to be next-door businessmen, and that he could not go home to his wife, embarrassed by the swindle taking all their savings. He was able to identify the two men posing as the jewelers next-door. There was a third-party working with the two crooks, but could not be identified through records, and later died in a car crash, identified at the morgue as the ring salesman, i.e. swindler.

Friday, Smith check with a bartender where the two suspects hung out, who offers the woman in the nearby booth as a source to locate the suspects. Friday, Smith bring the suspects in for questioning, cannot break them, they are released only to be caught months later, this time booked, tried, convicted and sentenced to San Quentin. Not a bad episode with familiar guest actors playing their roles to a T. Four episodes in the original Dragnet TV series and eight episodes in the '60's Dragnet series from Peggy Webber with over 100 radio credits of the same series. Frank Gerstle played in eight episodes of the '50's TV series and Frank was a frequent actor in many movies and TV roles. Definitely worth a watch.