Murder of a Warder - William Archer & Henry Dodd (Birdcage of the Bay: St Helena Island Prison)
Murder of Warder Henry Dodd
18th February 1898
Henry Dodd was a Warder / Tinsmith Trade Instructor in the St Helena Penal Establishment from 1887 to 1893, and was re-employed again in 1895 earning £120. He was well-like warder who conducted his job with care and attentiveness.
William Archer was a Scottish tailor and ex-navy man who came to Australia in 1884 and was incarcerated twice at St Helena Penal Establishment for larceny and breaking and entering. Whilst at St Helena he was put to work as a cutter in the Tailor’s workshop, but was regularly in trouble for assaulting the warders, disorderly conduct, disobeying orders and using obscene and abusive language. He had been punished many times with solitary confinement, being placed in a straight jacket as well as 24 lashes of the cat-o-nine tails. In February 1898, Archer had been a prisoner at St. Helena for six months.
Stabbing in the Tailor’s Shop.
William Davis, Tailor Trade Instructor at the St. Helena Penal Establishment had talked with William Archer at 2pm on February 18th. Archer asked I say, boss, can you not get me out of this shop? It is injuring my health, and affecting my mind. I have seen the doctor, and he will do nothing for me. Davis told him to return to his place, and Archer asked to “Go below” which meant he wished to visit the Water Closet or toilet.
Ah Sam, a prisoner, saw Warder Henry Dodd go into the Tailors' Shop, where Ah Sam worked, and stand about 2ft. inside the door. Archer come from the shoemakers' and saddlers' shop and walked towards Dodd, then put his right hand out against Dodd's stomach and pulled his arm back, exposing a bootmaker’s knife in his hand. Ah Sam saw Dodd move away holding his stomach and looking very pale, then walk to the gate and he also heard Archer say Where is Downie, the ------. Archer then picked up a shirt which was lying on the floor, wiped the knife upon it and went into the shoemakers' shop.
Warder William Downie was in the ‘closet’ on the F veranda, when he heard a hammering noise and a familiar voice - that of Warder Dodd. He immediately ran out to the gate leading to the workshops and saw Warder Dodd standing inside the shoemakers' shop, holding both hands to his abdomen. Downie unlocked the gate and Dodd walked towards the hospital.
Downie then went along the F veranda and came to a barred partition where he could look into the tailors' shop. He saw Archer wiping a knife and when Archer noticed Downie and then came towards him, put his arm through the iron bars, and threw the knife at witness saying, You're the ------ I intended it for. Archer rushed across to prisoner Albert Wilson's saddler's bench, and picked up a knife which he also threw at Downie, but it hit the iron bars. Archer headed back into the tailors' shop and Downie followed. Archer was spoken to by Trade Instructor William Davis, who asked him What are you doing, and why are you so excited, creating this disturbance? to which Archer replied, You would not get me out of the b ------ shop, but I've got myself out now.
Noticing Warder Downie, Archer picked up a pair of tailor's scissors and threatened Downie, saying It is you I want. The warder walked towards William Archer and Archer raised his arm and threw the scissors. Downie dodged the scissors, which fell on the floor behind him and jumped on a table near Archer. Archer picked up a galvanised iron pot and struck Downie, who warded off the blow with his arm, jumped off the table and caught hold of Archer. Warders Downie and Martin carried the struggling Archer to the solitary confinement cells.
Warder Henry Dodd, in the meantime, was being tended to by Dr. Charles Wray the Government Medical Officer, who happened to be in the island hospital that day. Dr Wray found Dodd suffering from a wound 1 inch in length, penetrating the lower left abdominal cavity. He dressed the wound, and ordered Dodd be taken immediately to the Brisbane Hospital where he was operated on that evening.
Warder Henry Dodd’s wife was told to say goodbye the next morning and he died on 19 February 1898 from his injuries. As many warders as could be spared attended the funeral in Toowong.
Fate of William Archer
William Archer was brought firstly to Brisbane Gaol to wait until he was brought before the court on the charge of Murder. Before justice could be served, Archer died in gaol. He had been in bad health when he was imprisoned and remained so, his death caused by ‘failure of the heart's action.’
---
The St Helena Stockade contains so many incredible stories from the prisoners and the warders who lived and worked there. Birdcage of the Bay: St Helena Island Prison invites guests to step into the 'Birdcage', the name given to the visitor box on the island, to experience stockade and life on the island.
Birdcage of the Bay: St Helena Island Prison is a free exhibition at Queensland State Archives, on display until September 2019.
Words at War: Apartment in Athens / They Left the Back Door Open / Brave Men
Greece entered World War II on 28 October 1940, when the Italian army invaded from Albania, beginning the Greco-Italian War. The Greek army was able to stop the invasion and even push back the Italians into Albania, thereby winning one of the first victories for the Allies. The Greek successes and the inability of the Italians to reverse the situation forced Nazi Germany to intervene in order to protect her main Axis partner's prestige. The Germans invaded Greece and Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941, and overran both countries within a month, despite British aid to Greece in the form of an expeditionary corps. The conquest of Greece was completed in May with the capture of Crete from the air, although the Fallschirmjäger suffered such extensive casualties in this operation that the Germans abandoned large-scale airborne operations for the remainder of the war. The German diversion of resources in the Balkans is also considered by some historians to have delayed the launch of the invasion of the Soviet Union by a critical month, which proved disastrous when the German army failed to take Moscow.[citation needed]
Greece itself was occupied and divided between Germany, Italy and Bulgaria, while the King and the government fled into exile in Egypt. First attempts at armed resistance in summer 1941 were crushed by the Axis, but the Resistance movement began again in 1942 and grew enormously in 1943 and 1944, liberating large parts of the country's mountainous interior and tying down considerable Axis forces. However, political tensions between the Resistance groups resulted in the outbreak of a civil conflict among them in late 1943, which continued until the spring of 1944. The exiled Greek government also formed armed forces of its own, which served and fought alongside the British in the Middle East, North Africa and Italy. The contribution of the Greek war and the merchant navies in particular was of special importance to the Allied cause.
Mainland Greece was liberated in October 1944 with the German withdrawal in the face of the advancing Red Army, while German garrisons continued to hold out in the Aegean Islands until after the war's end. The country was devastated by war and occupation, and its economy and infrastructure lay in ruins. Greece suffered more than 400,000 casualties during the occupation, and the country's Jewish community was almost completely exterminated in the Holocaust. By 1946, however, a vicious civil war erupted between the British and American-sponsored conservative government and leftist guerrillas, which would last until 1949.
Things Mr. Welch is No Longer Allowed to do in a RPG #1-2450 Reading Compilation
A list of things that Mister Welch is no long allowed to do in a tabletop rpg game. From Dungeons and dragons, call of cthulu, Pathfinder, Star Wars, and many other tabletop games and modules! 2450 entries in all!
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The complete reading compilation of Things Mr. Welch is No Longer Allowed to do in a RPG numbers 1-2540! Enjoy the insanity, featuring RPG loop holes, insanity, and all sorts of table top shenanigans!
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Pixel Peeker Polka - slower Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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Minecraft is bad and I have friends
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Sunday AM Sept 29 2019 Bring The Banjo Pastor Wilkerson
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Words at War: Eighty-Three Days: The Survival Of Seaman Izzi / Paris Underground / Shortcut to Tokyo
The French Résistance has had a great influence on literature, particularly in France. A famous example is the poem Strophes pour se souvenir, which was written by the communist academic Louis Aragon in 1955 to commemorate the heroism of the Manouchian Group, whose 23 members were shot by the Nazis.
The Résistance is also portrayed in Jean Renoir's wartime This Land is Mine (1943), which was produced in the USA.
In the immediate post-war years, French cinema produced a number of films that portrayed a France broadly present in the Résistance.[188][189] The 1946 La Bataille du rail depicted the courageous efforts of French railway workers to sabotage German reinforcement trains,[190] and in the same year Le Père tranquille told the story of a quiet insurance agent secretly involved in the bombing of a factory.[190] Collaborators were hatefully presented as a rare minority, as played by Pierre Brewer in Jéricho (1946) or Serge Reggiani in Les Portes de la nuit (1946), and movements such as the Milice were rarely evoked.
In the 1950s, a less heroic interpretation of the Résistance to the occupation gradually began to emerge.[190] In Claude Autant-Lara's La Traversée de Paris (1956), the portrayal of the city's black market and general mediocrity revealed the reality of war-profiteering during the occupation.[191] In the same year, Robert Bresson presented A Man Escaped, in which an imprisoned Résistance activist works with a reformed collaborator inmate to escape.[192] A cautious reappearance of the image of Vichy emerged in Le Passage du Rhin (1960), in which a crowd successively acclaim both Pétain and de Gaulle.[193]
After General de Gaulle's return to power in 1958, the portrayal of the Résistance returned to its earlier résistancialisme. In this manner, in Is Paris Burning? (1966), the role of the resistant was revalued according to [de Gaulle's] political trajectory.[194] The comic form of films such as La Grande Vadrouille (1966) widened the image of Résistance heroes to average Frenchmen.[195] The most famous and critically acclaimed of all the résistancialisme movies is Army of Shadows (L'Armee des ombres), which was made by the French film-maker Jean-Pierre Melville in 1969. The film was inspired by Joseph Kessel's 1943 book, as well as Melville's own experiences, as he had fought in the Résistance and participated in Operation Dragoon. A 1995 television screening of L'Armee des ombres described it as the best film made about the fighters of the shadows, those anti-heroes.[196]
The shattering of France's résistancialisme following the events of May 1968 emerged particularly clearly in French cinema. The candid approach of the 1971 documentary The Sorrow and the Pity pointed the finger on anti-Semitism in France and disputed the official Résistance ideals.[197][198] Time magazine's positive review of the film wrote that director Marcel Ophüls tries to puncture the bourgeois myth—or protectively askew memory—that allows France generally to act as if hardly any Frenchmen collaborated with the Germans.[199]
Franck Cassenti, with L'Affiche Rouge (1976); Gilson, with La Brigade (1975); and Mosco with the documentary Des terroristes à la retraite addressed foreign resisters of the EGO, who were then relatively unknown. In 1974, Louis Malle's Lacombe, Lucien caused scandal and polemic because of his absence of moral judgment with regard to the behavior of a collaborator.[200] Malle later portrayed the resistance of Catholic priests who protected Jewish children in his 1987 film Au revoir, les enfants. François Truffaut's 1980 film Le Dernier Métro was set during the German occupation of Paris and won ten Césars for its story of a theatre production taking place while its Jewish director is concealed by his wife in the theatre's basement.[201] The 1980s began to portray the resistance of working women, as in Blanche et Marie (1984).[202] Later, Jacques Audiard's Un héros très discret (1996) told the story of a young man's traveling to Paris and manufacturing a Résistance past for himself, suggesting that many heroes of the Résistance were imposters.[203][204] In 1997, Claude Berri produced the biopic Lucie Aubrac based on the life of the Résistance heroine of the same name, which was criticized for its Gaullist portrayal of the Résistance and over-emphasis on the relationship between Aubrac and her husband.[205]
In the 2011 video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, in which a hypothetical World War III is depicted, a French resistance movement is formed to act against Russian occupation. The playable characters of many factions in-game receive assistance from this Resistance . This is in line with previous, World War II-based Call of Duty games, which often featured involvement with the Resistance of that era.
Age of Deceit (2) - Hive Mind Reptile Eyes Hypnotism Cults World Stage - Multi - Language
An information packed documentary ranging from topics to the Upside Down Cross to Alister Crowley to The Beatles to Sigil Trances to Archetypal Symbolic Programming to Subliminal Magic to 5G Hive Programming to Project Mauntak to Triggering MK Ultra Programming to Witchcraft in Hollywood to transgender CEOs to Ancient Witch Covens to Ley Line Satellite Cities to the City of The Fallen Angels to The Curse of Griffith Park to just so much more.
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Icelandic: fallinn engill
Italian: Angelo caduto
Hebrew: מלאך שנפל
Japanese: 堕天使
Javanese: widodari tiba
Georgian: დაცემული ანგელოზი
Kazakh: құлаған ангел
Khmer: ទេវតាធ្លាក់ចុះ
Kannada: ಬಿದ್ದ ದೇವದೂತ
Korean: 타락한 천사
Latin: fallen angel
Lao: fallen angel
Lithuanian: kritęs angelas
Latvian: kritušais enģelis
Malagasy: anjely nianjera
Maori: anahera hinga
Macedonian: паднат ангел
Malayalam: വീണുപോയ ദൂതൻ
Mongolian: унасан тэнгэр элч
Marathi: पडलेला देवदूत
Malay: malaikat yang jatuh
Maltese: waqa 'anġlu
Myanmar (Burmese): ပြိုလဲကောငျးကငျတမနျ
Nepali: गिर परी
Dutch: gevallen engel
Norwegian: Fallen engel
Chichewa: mngelo wakugwa
Punjabi: ਡਿੱਗ ਦੂਤ
Polish: upadły anioł
Portuguese: anjo caído
Romanian: inger decazut
Russian: падший ангел
Sinhala: වැටුනාවූ දූතයා
Slovak: padlý anjel
Slovenian: padli angel
Somali: malaa'igtii dhacday
Albanian: engjell i rene
Serbian: пали анђео
Sesotho: lengeloi le oeleng
Sundanese: malaikat fallen
Swedish: fallen ängel
Swahili: malaika aliyeanguka
Tamil: விழுந்த தேவதை
Telugu: స్వర్గం నుంచి పడిన దేవత
Tajik: фариштаи золим
Thai: เทวดาตกสวรรค์
Filipino: nahulog na anghel
Turkish: düşmüş melek
Ukrainian: занепалий ангел
Urdu: باغی فرشتہ
Uzbek: tushgan farishta
Vietnamese: Thiên thần sa ngã
Yiddish: געפאלן מלאך
Yoruba: angẹli ti o ṣubu
Chinese: 堕落的天使
Chinese (Simplified): 堕落的天使
Chinese (Traditional): 墮落的天使
Zulu: ingelosi ewile
Afrikaans: transhumanisme
Arabic: بعد إنسانية
Azerbaijani: transhumanism
Belarusian: трансгуманизма
Bulgarian: трансхуманизъм
Bengali: transhumanism
Bosnian: transhumanizam
Catalan: transhumanisme
Cebuano: transhumanism
Czech: transhumanismus
Welsh: trahumaniaeth
Danish: transhumanisme
German: Transhumanismus
Greek: διανθρωπισμό
English: transhumanism
Esperanto: transhumanism
Spanish: transhumanismo
Estonian: transhumanism
Basque: transhumanism
Persian: transhumanism
Finnish: Transhumanismi
French: transhumanisme
Irish: trashumanachas
Galician: transhumanismo
Gujarati: ટ્રાન્સહ્યુમેનિઝમ
Hausa: transhumanism
Hindi: ट्रांसह्युमेनिज़म
Hmong: transhumanism
Croatian: transhumanizam
Haitian Creole: transhumanism
Hungarian: transzhumanizmust
Armenian: տրանսմունաբանություն
Indonesian: transhumanisme
Igbo: transhumanism
Icelandic: transhumanism
Italian: transumanesimo
Hebrew: טרנסומניזם
Japanese: トランスヒューマニズム
Javanese: transhumanisme
Georgian: ტრანსჰუმანიზმი
Kazakh: траншуманизм
Khmer: transhumanism
Kannada: ಟ್ರಾನ್ಸ್ಹ್ಯೂಮನಿಸಂ
Korean: 트랜스 휴머니즘
Latin: transhumanism
Lao: transhumanism
Lithuanian: transhumanizmas
Latvian: transhumanismu
Malagasy: transhumanism
Maori: transhumanism
Macedonian: трансхуманизам
Malayalam: മനുഷ്യത്വവാദം
Mongolian: transhumanism
Marathi: ट्रान्सहुमनिझ्म
Malay: transhumanisme
Maltese: transumaniżmu
Myanmar (Burmese): transhumanism
Nepali: transhumanism
Dutch: transhumanisme
Norwegian: transhumanism
Chichewa: transhumanism
Punjabi: transhumanism
Polish: transhumanizm
Portuguese: transumanismo
Romanian: transumanismului
Russian: трансгуманизма
Sinhala: අධිරාජ්යවාදය
Slovak: transhumanism
Slovenian: transhumanizem
Somali: transhumanism
Albanian: Transhumanizmi
Serbian: трансхуманизам
Sesotho: transhumanism
Sundanese: transhumanism
Swedish: transhumanism
Swahili: transhumanism
Tamil: மீவு மனிதத்துவம்
Telugu: రూపాంతరణ
Tajik: transhumanism
Thai: transhumanism
Filipino: transhumanism
Turkish: transhumanism
Ukrainian: трансгуманізм
Urdu: ٹرانسمیشنزم
Uzbek: transhumanizm
Vietnamese: siêu nhân
Yiddish: טראַנסהומאַניסם
Yoruba: transhumanism
Chinese: 超人
Chinese (Simplified): 超人
Chinese (Traditional): 超人
Zulu: transhumanism
The Ex-Urbanites / Speaking of Cinderella: If the Shoe Fits / Jacob's Hands
Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 -- 22 November 1963) was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel writing, film stories and scripts. Huxley spent the later part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death.
Aldous Huxley was a humanist, pacifist, and satirist, and he was latterly interested in spiritual subjects such as parapsychology and philosophical mysticism. He is also well known for advocating and taking psychedelics.
By the end of his life Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the pre-eminent intellectuals of his time.
The Great Gildersleeve: The Grand Opening / Leila Returns / Gildy the Opera Star
Premiering on August 31, 1941, The Great Gildersleeve moved the title character from the McGees' Wistful Vista to Summerfield, where Gildersleeve now oversaw his late brother-in-law's estate and took on the rearing of his orphaned niece and nephew, Marjorie (originally played by Lurene Tuttle and followed by Louise Erickson and Mary Lee Robb) and Leroy Forester (Walter Tetley). The household also included a cook named Birdie. Curiously, while Gildersleeve had occasionally spoken of his (never-present) wife in some Fibber episodes, in his own series the character was a confirmed bachelor.
In a striking forerunner to such later television hits as Bachelor Father and Family Affair, both of which are centered on well-to-do uncles taking in their deceased siblings' children, Gildersleeve was a bachelor raising two children while, at first, administering a girdle manufacturing company (If you want a better corset, of course, it's a Gildersleeve) and then for the bulk of the show's run, serving as Summerfield's water commissioner, between time with the ladies and nights with the boys. The Great Gildersleeve may have been the first broadcast show to be centered on a single parent balancing child-rearing, work, and a social life, done with taste and genuine wit, often at the expense of Gildersleeve's now slightly understated pomposity.
Many of the original episodes were co-written by John Whedon, father of Tom Whedon (who wrote The Golden Girls), and grandfather of Deadwood scripter Zack Whedon and Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog).
The key to the show was Peary, whose booming voice and facility with moans, groans, laughs, shudders and inflection was as close to body language and facial suggestion as a voice could get. Peary was so effective, and Gildersleeve became so familiar a character, that he was referenced and satirized periodically in other comedies and in a few cartoons.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne | Part 1 of 2 | Audiobook with subtitles
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea (Version 3)
Jules VERNE , translated by F. P. WALTER
Originally published 1870, this recording is from the English translation by Frederick P. Walter, published 1991, containing the unabridged text from the original French and offered up into the public domain. It is considered to be the very first science fiction novel ever written, the first novel about the undersea world, and is a classic science fiction novel by French writer Jules Verne published in 1870. It tells the story of Captain Nemo and his submarine Nautilus, as seen from the perspective of Professor Pierre Aronnax - Summary by Michele Fry
Genre(s): Action & Adventure Fiction, Travel Fiction
Chapters:
1:15 | Introduction
12:20 | 1-1. A Runaway Reef
29:22 | 1-2. The Pros and Cons
43:22 | 1-3. As Master Wishes
55:22 | 1-4. Ned Land
1:12:15 |1-5. At Random!
1:27:56 | 1-6. At Full Steam
1:48:13 |1-7. A Whale of Unknown Species
2:05:17 | 1-8. Mobilis in Mobili
2:24:49 | 1-9. The Tantrums of Ned Land
2:41:04 | 1-10. The Man Of The Waters
3:02:02 | 1-11. The Nautilus
3:21:39 |1-12. Everything through Electricity
3:38:19 | 1-13. Some Figures
3:55:10 |1-14. The Black Current
4:22:52 | 1-15. An Invitation in Writing
4:41:57 | 1-16. Strolling the Plains
4:57:14 | 1-17. An Underwater Forest
5:14:02 | 1-18. Four Thousand Leagues Under the Pacific
5:34:33 | 1-19. Vanikoro
5:59:28 | 1-20. The Torres Strait
6:19:46 | 1-21. Some Days Ashore
6:44:41 | 1-22. The Lightning Bolts of Captain Nemo
7:09:26 |1-23. Aegri Somnia
7:29:58 | 1-24. The Coral Realm
7:49:50 | 2-1. The Indian Ocean
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Calling All Cars: Highlights of 1934 / San Quentin Prison Break / Dr. Nitro
The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is the police department of the city of Los Angeles, California.
The LAPD has been copiously fictionalized in numerous movies, novels and television shows throughout its history. The department has also been associated with a number of controversies, mainly concerned with racial animosity, police brutality and police corruption.
radio show Calling All Cars hired LAPD radio dispacher Jesse Rosenquist to be the voice of the dispatcher. Rosenquist was already famous because home radios could tune into early police radio frequencies. As the first police radio dispatcher presented to the public ear, his was the voice that actors went to when called upon for a radio dispatcher role.
The iconic television series Dragnet, with LAPD Detective Joe Friday as the primary character, was the first major media representation of the department. Real LAPD operations inspired Jack Webb to create the series and close cooperation with department officers let him make it as realistic as possible, including authentic police equipment and sound recording on-site at the police station.
Due to Dragnet's popularity, LAPD Chief Parker became, after J. Edgar Hoover, the most well known and respected law enforcement official in the nation. In the 1960s, when the LAPD under Chief Thomas Reddin expanded its community relations division and began efforts to reach out to the African-American community, Dragnet followed suit with more emphasis on internal affairs and community policing than solving crimes, the show's previous mainstay.
Several prominent representations of the LAPD and its officers in television and film include Adam-12, Blue Streak, Blue Thunder, Boomtown, The Closer, Colors, Crash, Columbo, Dark Blue, Die Hard, End of Watch, Heat, Hollywood Homicide, Hunter, Internal Affairs, Jackie Brown, L.A. Confidential, Lakeview Terrace, Law & Order: Los Angeles, Life, Numb3rs, The Shield, Southland, Speed, Street Kings, SWAT, Training Day and the Lethal Weapon, Rush Hour and Terminator film series. The LAPD is also featured in the video games Midnight Club II, Midnight Club: Los Angeles, L.A. Noire and Call of Juarez: The Cartel.
The LAPD has also been the subject of numerous novels. Elizabeth Linington used the department as her backdrop in three different series written under three different names, perhaps the most popular being those novel featuring Det. Lt. Luis Mendoza, who was introduced in the Edgar-nominated Case Pending. Joseph Wambaugh, the son of a Pittsburgh policeman, spent fourteen years in the department, using his background to write novels with authentic fictional depictions of life in the LAPD. Wambaugh also created the Emmy-winning TV anthology series Police Story. Wambaugh was also a major influence on James Ellroy, who wrote several novels about the Department set during the 1940s and 1950s, the most famous of which are probably The Black Dahlia, fictionalizing the LAPD's most famous cold case, and L.A. Confidential, which was made into a film of the same name. Both the novel and the film chronicled mass-murder and corruption inside and outside the force during the Parker era. Critic Roger Ebert indicates that the film's characters (from the 1950s) represent the choices ahead for the LAPD: assisting Hollywood limelight, aggressive policing with relaxed ethics, and a straight arrow approach.
Dragnet: Big Kill / Big Thank You / Big Boys
Dragnet is a radio and television crime drama about the cases of a dedicated Los Angeles police detective, Sergeant Joe Friday, and his partners. The show takes its name from an actual police term, a dragnet, meaning a system of coordinated measures for apprehending criminals or suspects.
Dragnet debuted inauspiciously. The first several months were bumpy, as Webb and company worked out the program's format and eventually became comfortable with their characters (Friday was originally portrayed as more brash and forceful than his later usually relaxed demeanor). Gradually, Friday's deadpan, fast-talking persona emerged, described by John Dunning as a cop's cop, tough but not hard, conservative but caring. (Dunning, 210) Friday's first partner was Sergeant Ben Romero, portrayed by Barton Yarborough, a longtime radio actor. After Yarborough's death in 1951 (and therefore Romero's, who also died of a heart attack, as acknowledged on the December 27, 1951 episode The Big Sorrow), Friday was partnered with Sergeant Ed Jacobs (December 27, 1951 - April 10, 1952, subsequently transferred to the Police Academy as an instructor), played by Barney Phillips; Officer Bill Lockwood (Ben Romero's nephew, April 17, 1952 - May 8, 1952), played by Martin Milner (with Ken Peters taking the role for the June 12, 1952 episode The Big Donation); and finally Frank Smith, played first by Herb Ellis (1952), then Ben Alexander (September 21, 1952-1959). Raymond Burr was on board to play the Chief of Detectives. When Dragnet hit its stride, it became one of radio's top-rated shows.
Webb insisted on realism in every aspect of the show. The dialogue was clipped, understated and sparse, influenced by the hardboiled school of crime fiction. Scripts were fast moving but didn't seem rushed. Every aspect of police work was chronicled, step by step: From patrols and paperwork, to crime scene investigation, lab work and questioning witnesses or suspects. The detectives' personal lives were mentioned but rarely took center stage. (Friday was a bachelor who lived with his mother; Romero, a Mexican-American from Texas, was an ever fretful husband and father.) Underplaying is still acting, Webb told Time. We try to make it as real as a guy pouring a cup of coffee. (Dunning, 209) Los Angeles police chiefs C.B. Horrall, William A. Worton, and (later) William H. Parker were credited as consultants, and many police officers were fans.
Most of the later episodes were entitled The Big _____, where the key word denoted a person or thing in the plot. In numerous episodes, this would the principal suspect, victim, or physical target of the crime, but in others was often a seemingly inconsequential detail eventually revealed to be key evidence in solving the crime. For example, in The Big Streetcar the background noise of a passing streetcar helps to establish the location of a phone booth used by the suspect.
Throughout the series' radio years, one can find interesting glimpses of pre-renewal Downtown L.A., still full of working class residents and the cheap bars, cafes, hotels and boarding houses which served them. At the climax of the early episode James Vickers, the chase leads to the Subway Terminal Building, where the robber flees into one of the tunnels only to be killed by an oncoming train. Meanwhile, by contrast, in other episodes set in outlying areas, it is clear that the locations in question are far less built up than they are today. Today, the Imperial Highway, extending 40 miles east from El Segundo to Anaheim, is a heavily used boulevard lined almost entirely with low-rise commercial development. In an early Dragnet episode scenes along the Highway, at the road to San Pedro, clearly indicate that it still retained much the character of a country highway at that time.
Auburn Coach Wife Kristi Malzahn Agrees with Match & eHarmony: Men are Jerks
My advice is this: Settle! That's right. Don't worry about passion or intense connection. Don't nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling Bravo! in movie theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go. Based on my observations, in fact, settling will probably make you happier in the long run, since many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year. (It's hard to maintain that level of zing when the conversation morphs into discussions about who's changing the diapers or balancing the checkbook.)
Obviously, I wasn't always an advocate of settling. In fact, it took not settling to make me realize that settling is the better option, and even though settling is a rampant phenomenon, talking about it in a positive light makes people profoundly uncomfortable. Whenever I make the case for settling, people look at me with creased brows of disapproval or frowns of disappointment, the way a child might look at an older sibling who just informed her that Jerry's Kids aren't going to walk, even if you send them money. It's not only politically incorrect to get behind settling, it's downright un-American. Our culture tells us to keep our eyes on the prize (while our mothers, who know better, tell us not to be so picky), and the theme of holding out for true love (whatever that is—look at the divorce rate) permeates our collective mentality.
Even situation comedies, starting in the 1970s with The Mary Tyler Moore Show and going all the way to Friends, feature endearing single women in the dating trenches, and there's supposed to be something romantic and even heroic about their search for true love. Of course, the crucial difference is that, whereas the earlier series begins after Mary has been jilted by her fiancé, the more modern-day Friends opens as Rachel Green leaves her nice-guy orthodontist fiancé at the altar simply because she isn't feeling it. But either way, in episode after episode, as both women continue to be unlucky in love, settling starts to look pretty darn appealing. Mary is supposed to be contentedly independent and fulfilled by her newsroom family, but in fact her life seems lonely. Are we to assume that at the end of the series, Mary, by then in her late 30s, found her soul mate after the lights in the newsroom went out and her work family was disbanded? If her experience was anything like mine or that of my single friends, it's unlikely.
And while Rachel and her supposed soul mate, Ross, finally get together (for the umpteenth time) in the finale of Friends, do we feel confident that she'll be happier with Ross than she would have been had she settled down with Barry, the orthodontist, 10 years earlier? She and Ross have passion but have never had long-term stability, and the fireworks she experiences with him but not with Barry might actually turn out to be a liability, given how many times their relationship has already gone up in flames. It's equally questionable whether Sex and the City's Carrie Bradshaw, who cheated on her kindhearted and generous boyfriend, Aidan, only to end up with the more exciting but self-absorbed Mr. Big, will be better off in the framework of marriage and family. (Some time after the breakup, when Carrie ran into Aidan on the street, he was carrying his infant in a Baby Björn. Can anyone imagine Mr. Big walking around with a Björn?)