Dragnet - The Big Guilt

(4.6 stars; 11 reviews)

The Off-Beat Generation Dragnet - The Big Guilt November 23, 1952 The Big Guilt is the tale of a murder investigation.  This episode doesn't open with a blaze of gunfire, a story of love and betrayal, or an adventure involving a clutch of precious jewels.  It opens with a body found in an alley at sunrise. The characters are simple:  A drunk looking for a place to flop, not knowing with whom he is sharing his alley.  A friend who owns a business nearby.  An ex-con who had been seen with the victim.  A wife who knows that something has gone wrong, and suspects the worst. The detectives follow leads, talk to neighbours, and break the news to the family.  This is a story of the legwork that brings the officers closer to the truth.  Leads are run down, alibis check out, and suspicions are disproven, but each step leads the detectives closer to a solution.  How close, they don't know.  This is a simple tale of how a murder is approached by police, and how the detectives follow a trail of information until the truth comes out. Carolyn Jones: A notable feature of this episode is the participation of a young actress who would go on to have a remarkable career, Carolyn Jones.  This Dragnet episode aired just one month after Carolyn's first television appearance, and just eight days after the release of her first movie, The Turning Point, with William Holden, Edmond O'Brien, and Alexis Smith. In The Big Guilt, Carolyn Jones plays the role of Mrs. McKinley, the wife of the murdered man.  When officers visit her home to break the news of the fate of her husband, she exhibits none of the clichés of shock, hysteria, or sorrow.  Instead, Jones is eerily quiet.  Her introverted reaction draws the listener into her emotions, showing a genuine, natural insight into the grief and loss that remains when a loved one is taken from us. This sequence illustrates well the divergent repercussions of a homicide, and the divergent emotions that it arouses.  When the listener has settled comfortably into the logical left-brain exercise of piecing together the clues, into the terse Dragnet script is inserted Jones' introspective near-monologue, one that would be at home in any of the great works of the Southern Gothic literary genre. In discussions of radio drama, much is said of the 'mind's eye', and OTR is sometimes referred to as 'the theatre of the mind', but this segment shows that the heart can empathize equally well, if not more so. This scene is remarkable not just for the dichotomy between its cadence and the rest of the show, but also for the poise and restraint that, at just twenty-two years of age, actress Carolyn Jones possessed.  Jack Webb would remember Carolyn, having her appear in a small role in a later radio episode of Dragnet, and larger roles in five of the television episodes. Films Of The '50s: Edmond O'Brien, with whom she appeared in her first film, The Turning Point, also remembered Carolyn Jones two years later when he directed and starred in the 1954 noir Shield For Murder.  In this high-velocity cop-gone-bad tale, Carolyn appears in only one brief scene, as a patron of the bar in which O'Brien's character, rogue officer Detective Lt. Nolan, chooses to play the role of tough guy for the other customers.  Carolyn's character quietly sits down beside Nolan and schools him on how to emulate a tough guy, from the look in the eyes to the way he holds his cigarette.  While her part consisted of only this one scene, Carolyn's participation in the film is unforgettable. Carolyn Jones would soon earn a reputation as the go-to actress for the small, offbeat roles, and she invariably made the most of them.  Illness cost her a chance to vie for the role of prostitute Alma 'Lorene' Burke in the 1953 Fred Zinneman epic From Here To Eternity, a role for which Columbia Pictures had wanted Carolyn to test (some sources say the part was written specifically for her). While that film certainly would have jump-started her career, she was not lacking for quality roles.  Throughout the 1950s, Jones would establish her off-kilter persona in crime films such as The Turning Point and Fritz Lang's The Big Heat, romantic comedies such as The Seven Year Itch and The Tender Trap, and horror and science fiction films such as House Of Wax, War Of The Worlds, and the legendary Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. Carolyn Jones herself, and as a gangster's moll in The Turning Point Morticia Addams: The character for which Carolyn is best remembered today is undoubtedly one of the quirkiest roles, in one of the quirkiest series to ever hit television.  In 1964, Jones took on the role of Morticia Frump Addams in The Addams Family, based on the New Yorker cartoons of Charles Addams. Anyone familiar with the series can tell how visually close the television family came to the original cartoons, seen below.  When the show was created, Addams was granted a great deal of input into the nature of the characters, even as far as providing their names.  In the cartoons, the only character with a name was 'It', later renamed 'Cousin Itt' (sic) for television Here is how Charles Addams saw the TV couple in 1963, in preparation for the show, as quoted on the Addams Family DVDs by Kevin Miserocchi of The Tee and Charles Addams Foundation:  "Morticia is the head of the family, the driving force behind the family.  Low-voiced, incisive, and subtle, smiles are rare.  This ruined beauty has a romantic side too, and is given to low-keyed rhapsodies about her garden of deadly nightshade, henbane, and dwarf's hair. Gomez, husband of Morticia (if indeed they are married at all):  A crafty schemer, but also a jolly man in his own way.  He is dressed in a tight double-breasted striped suit and is sometimes seen in a rather formal dressing gown.  The only one who smokes, though Pugsley can be allowed an occasional cigar." Carolyn Jones and John Astin as Morticia and Gomez Addams, and Charles Addams' original New Yorker family. It is almost impossible to imagine any actress of the 1960s, other than Carolyn Jones, playing the character of Morticia Addams.  To establish a character this offbeat, while making her natural and believable, takes the special insight that Carolyn had honed with each role of her career. The blissful quirkiness and graceful reserve of Carolyn's Morticia were the first two dimensions of the character, but Carolyn Jones added the third dimension by making her Morticia one of the most alluring characters on television.  Her husband Gomez, the incurable romantic played by John Astin, was deeply in love with her, put her on a pedestal, and would gladly die for her honour.  At the same time, he could be driven wild with lust by the merest glance from Morticia, or the slightest phrase, particularly if that phrase was in French. At a time when most programs were unwilling to reflect prevailing attitudes toward intimacy between married couples (even the deeply in love Rob and Laura Petrie, of The Dick Van Dyke Show, slept in separate beds), the wild, unbridled passion that Gomez Addams displayed for his wife Morticia was revolutionary. "Just say you love me.  You don't have to mean it." Hollywood's official recognition of Carolyn Jones' unique talents came for her portrayal of the open-minded woman known only as 'The Existentialist' in the Delbert Mann film The Bachelor Party.  For her eight minute appearance in this 1957 film, Carolyn received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.  The Bachelor Party also produced one of the iconic lines of 1950s cinema: when Jones' character allows herself to be seduced by Charlie, the married and deeply conflicted bookkeeper played by Don Murray, she tells him "Just say you love me. You don't have to mean it." As well as being a compelling story of police procedure, and the far-reaching repercussions of the most inhuman of crimes, this episode of Dragnet provides us with insight into the offbeat acting style of one of America's most unique actresses, at the genesis of her long, distinguished career. Links:  To visit the OTRR's Dragnet page, with almost four hundred episodes available, click here . To visit Introduction To Old-Time Radio's Dragnet page, click here . To view the entire ITOTR collection, click here . To watch Carolyn Jones' brief appearance in the August 24, 1954 Dragnet television episode The Big Producer, click here . If the voice of 'big producer' Charles Hopkins sounds familiar, actor Ralph Moody also appears in the ITOTR collection as Mr. Flavin in the Dragnet episode The Big Little Jesus.  The Big Producer also features a very young Martin Milner, who would go on to star in Adam-12, the 1968-75 series created and produced by Jack Webb. To watch the trailer for the above-mentioned film 'Shield For Murder', packing more action into 105 seconds than most movies have in two hours, click here . To watch the full movie, click here . For another early performance by another master of offbeat acting, from the same generation as Carolyn Jones, we recommend the February 14, 1952 Dragnet television episode The Big Cast. As with Jones' scene in The Big Guilt, Webb allows the detectives only enough input to impel the guest star's near-monologue, which in The Big Cast comprises nearly the entire second half of the episode (of course, Sergeant Friday gets the last word). Who is this future cult superstar of the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s? You'll have to watch to find out (and no peeking at the reviews!). To watch The Big Cast, click here . Carolyn Jones: Not your typical Hollywood starlet! Text © 2017 W.H.Wilson (exclusive of 'fair use' citing of Charles Addams' description of Morticia and Gomez Addams)

This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.