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The Little Man Inside Radio Program

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KGO's original building on the grounds of a G.E. transformer factory at 5441 E. 14th Street in Oakland

The new NBC--KPO--KGO building on Taylor and O'Farrell Streets. Dubbed NBC Radio City upon its completion

The new NBC--KPO--KGO building onTaylor and O'Farrell Streets. Dubbed NBC Radio City upon its completion April 26, 1942, it was home to all three entities for several years. The name Radio City was soon supplanted by NBC's Radio City in Hollywood. Most of NBC's productions of the 1940s and beyond were moved to Hollywood's NBC Radio City and the spanking new NBC Radio City in San Francisco remained mostly unused--and unoccupied--until 1967.

Background

Radio and Television legend Jack Webb's four years at San Francisco Radio station KGO produced quite an eclectic mix of programming. Working as a disc jockey, writer, producer, director, political commentator, performer and conductor during his Bay Area years, Webb's energy and drive were truly the stuff of legend.

Usually tapping Bay Area roommate Richard Breen as his aide de camp in these undertakings, the duo's output spanned the radio continuum of straight drama to slapstick comedy to daily morning music interludes--and everything in between.

During Webb's four years with KGO, he was featured in at least the following productions:

1945 The Little Man Inside
1946 One Out of Seven
1946 The Jack Webb Show
1946 Monte Masters' Spotlight Playhouse
1946 Music for The Family
1946 Pat Novak . . . for Hire
1946 Are These Our Children?
1947 Murder and Mr. Malone

It's also worth noting that the above programs were an even mix of both sponsored and sustaining productions while at KGO. It was also a time of transition at KGO, San Francisco. The breakup of the National Broadcasting Corporation's 'Red' and 'Blue' networks had initially spawned 'The Blue Network' which was ultimately renamed the now more familiar American Broadcasting Company (ABC).

San Francisco's KGO and KPO had intially been Bay Area keystations for NBC-Red [KPO] and NBC-Blue [KGO]. After the FCC-mandated breakup of NBC, KGO became the keystation for The Blue Network [and later, ABC].

One of the more prolific stations among The Blue Network affiliates, KGO produced a great deal of local and regional programming which often extended far beyond California--some productions being picked up nationally. This proved to be fertile soil for both Jack Webb and Dick Breen--and by extension, William Conrad and Raymond Burr as well during the same era.

San Francisco's KGO gives Jack Webb a primetime slot for The Little Man Inside

One of Jack Webb's first reasonably well documented Radio efforts, The Little Man Inside was a series of tongue-well-in-cheek insights into the inner workings of an average joe's unedited thoughts.

Series Derivatives:

None

Genre:

Anthology of Golden Age Radio Comedy

Network(s):

ABC [KGO]

Audition Date(s) and Title(s):

45-0x-xx Getting A Raise from The Boss [for The Blue Network]

Premiere Date(s) and Title(s):

45-09-19 01 Title Unknown

Run Dates(s)/ Time(s):

45-09-19 to 45-11-09; ABC [KGO]; Sixteen, 15-minute programs;

Syndication:

ABC

Sponsors:

Sustaining

Director(s):

Richard Breen

Principal Performers:

Jack Webb

Recurring Character(s):

John Nelson's 'Little Man Inside' [Jack Webb]

Protagonist(s):

Author(s):

None

Writer(s)

Richard Breen, Jack Webb

Music Direction:

Organ Music

Musical Theme(s):

Organ Music

Announcer(s):

Estimated Scripts or
Broadcasts:

Episodes in Circulation:

Total Episodes in Collection:

Provenances:

Hickerson Guide.

Notes on Provenances:

The most helpful provenances were newspaper listings.

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[Date, title, and episode column annotations in red refer to either details we have yet to fully provenance or other unverifiable information as of this writing. Red highlights in the text of the 'Notes' columns refer to information upon which we relied in citing dates, date or time changes, or titles.]


The Little Man Inside Radio Program Log
Date	Episode	Title	Avail.	Notes
45-0x-xx		Getting A Raise from The Boss		[The Blue Network Audition; announces "tune in every day for. . "; some circulating 'auditions' cite a 1941 date for this recording]
45-09-12	--		--	45-09-12 Oakland Tribune 9:00 P.M. KGO-General Malone
45-09-19	1	Title Unknown	N	[ABC Premiere; announces "listen every Wednesday and Friday for . . "] 45-09-12 Oakland Tribune 9:00 P.M. KGO-Little Man Inside
45-09-21	2	First Play-by-Play Broadcast of A Dream	Y	45-09-21 Oakland Tribune 9:00 P.M. KGO-Little Man Inside
45-09-26	3	Meet Mary Nelson	N	45-09-26 Oakland Tribune 9:00 P.M. KGO-Little Man Inside
45-09-28	4	Title Unknown	N	45-09-28 Oakland Tribune 9:00 P.M. KGO-Little Man Inside
45-10-03	5	Title Unknown	N	45-10-03 Oakland Tribune 9:00 P.M. KGO-Little Man Inside
45-10-05	6	Title Unknown	N	45-10-05 Oakland Tribune 9:00 P.M. KGO-Little Man Inside
45-10-10	7	Title Unknown	N	45-10-10 Oakland Tribune 9:00 P.M. KGO-Little Man Inside
45-10-12	8	Title Unknown	N	45-10-12 Oakland Tribune 9:00 P.M. KGO-Little Man Inside
45-10-17	9	Title Unknown	N	45-10-17 Oakland Tribune 9:00 P.M. KGO-Little Man Inside
45-10-19	10	Title Unknown	N	45-10-19 Oakland Tribune 9:00 P.M. KGO-Little Man Inside
45-10-24	11	Title Unknown	N	45-10-24 Oakland Tribune 9:00 P.M. KGO-Little Man Inside
45-10-26	12	Title Unknown	N	45-10-26 Oakland Tribune 9:00 P.M. KGO-Little Man Inside
45-10-31	13	Title Unknown	N	45-10-31 Oakland Tribune 9:00 P.M. KGO-Little Man Inside
45-11-02	14	Title Unknown	N	45-11-02 Oakland Tribune 9:00 P.M. KGO-Little Man Inside
45-11-07	15	Title Unknown	N	45-11-07 Oakland Tribune 9:00 P.M. KGO-Little Man Inside
45-11-09	16	Title Unknown	N	[ Final installment; replaced by orchestral music] 45-11-09 Oakland Tribune 9:00 P.M. KGO-Little Man Inside
45-11-14	--		--	45-11-14 Oakland Tribune 9:00 P.M. KGO-Orch

The Little Man Inside Radio Program Biographies

John Randolph 'Jack' Webb (Narrator/Performer) Radio, Stage, Screen and Television Actor, Radio Disc Jockey, Recording Artist, Producer, Director, and Writer (1920-1982) Birthplace: Santa Monica, CA Education: Belmont High School, Los Angeles, CA Radiography: 1945 The Little Man Inside 1946 One Out of Seven 1946 The Jack Webb Show 1946 Music for the Family 1946 Spotlight Playhouse 1946 Are These Our Children? 1947 The New Adventures Of Michael Shayne 1947 Johnny Madero, Pier 23 1947 Suspense 1948 Murder and Mr Malone 1948 Escape 1948 The Whistler 1948 Ellery Queen 1948 Jeff Regan, Investigator 1948 Errand of Mercy 1948 Guest Star 1948 The Anacin Hollywood Star Theatre 1949 Three For Adventure 1949 Pat Novak For Hire 1949 Dragnet 1949 The Adventures Of Sam Spade 1950 Family Theatre 1950 Night Beat 1950 The Story of Dr Kildare 1951 Pete Kelly's Blues 1953 The Martin and Lewis Show 1953 The Bob Hope Show 1959 Hollywood Salutes the National Guard 1963 Weekend Sound Flights 1969 The Charlie Greer Show 1969 Special Delivery: Vietnam Three For Adventure Mark VII, Limited Productions: 1951-1959 Dragnet 1956-1957 Noah's Ark 1959 The D.A.'s Man 1959 Pete Kelly's Blues 1962-1963 General Electric 'TRUE' 1967-1970 Dragnet 1968-1975 Adam-12 1971-1972 The D.A. 1971-1972 O'Hara, U.S. Treasury 1972-1979 Emergency! 1972-1974 Hec Ramsey 1973 Escape 1973-1974 Chase 1974 Sierra 1975 Mobile One 1978-1979 Project UFO August 16, 1951 Article on Jack Webb's Work Ethic	Jack Webb ca. 1955 Jack Webb (lower right) at Belmont High School ca. 1938 Jack Webb ca. 1948 Jack Webb as Joe Friday ca. 1951 Jack Webb, providing direction to Ella Fitzgerald, ca 1954 Jack Webb and first wife famed Jazz songstress, Julie London ca 1955 Jack Webb at home with his first daughter, Stacey ca. 1953 Jack Webb, reading a script on set, ca. 1953 Webb, with Peggy Lee and George Jessel at 1953 Cerebral Palsy Fund Raiser Ben Alexander and Jack Webb confer in the Radio studio for Dragnet, ca. 1953 Jack Webb, resting on a lighting board for the production set of Pete Kelly's Blues, ca. 1955 Jack Webb, ca. 1965	Born in Santa Monica, California, on April 2, 1920, Jack Webb's father had already left home before his birth and Jack Webb would never know him. John Randolph Webb was raised by his mother and maternal grandmother amidst the poverty immediately preceding the Great Depression. To make matters worse, Webb suffered from acute asthma from the age of six until his death, despite a cigarette intake that often reached three packs a day throughout his adulthood. Even as a young man, Jack Webb's great passion was movies, and he dreamed of one day directing them. His other passion--Jazz, was the gift of an ex-jazz performer who lived in Webb's Bunker Hill, L.A. apartment building. He gave Webb an LP of the legendary Bix Beiderbecke, the first of over 6,000 jazz recordings Jack Webb would collect over his lifetime. Jack Webb served in the U.S. Army Air Forces as a crewmember of a B-26 Marauder medium bomber during World War II. Upon receiving his discharge, he relocated to San Francisco, working first as a late night disc jockey, then starring in his own radio shows, The Jack Webb Show (1946), a half-hour comedy that aired on the West Coast over ABC Radio. His first acting roles in Radio were in San Francisco-based Monte Masters' Spotlight Playhouse (1946) performing with Masters' wife Natalie Park (later of Candy Matson fame), 1947's The New Adventures of Michael Shayne, and his own Johnny Madero, Pier 23. He would later spin off his Johnny Madero character into Pat Novak for Hire and Jeff Regan, Detective before he refined his crime drama sights to the more realistic and subdued Joe Friday character in Dragnet. Most notable--and personal--of his early projects was One Out of Seven (1946) in which Webb performed all the voices, attacking many social ills of the era, including race prejudice, corrupt politicians, and Red-baiting. Jack Webb had an extraordinary ear for the 'throwaway line' most often associated with the work of Raymond Chandler. But it was Webb's genius for drolly and cynically delivering those Chandleresque lines, that made every radio program he recorded during that era some of the most often revisited recordings among Golden Age Radio collectors. Nevermind the fact that he was bouncing those memorable, hard-boiled retorts off of the likes of Raymond Burr, William Conrad, Wilms Herbert, Tudor Owen, Herb Butterfield--and yes, even the famous Carlisle Bibbers. Webb's influence continued throughout most of the radio noir genre detective and crime dramas that followed, even though Webb's own Joe Friday character never uttered a Chandleresque line himself during any of the iterations of Dragnet that followed. Indeed it was a small role as a crime lab technician in the film noir classic He Walked by Night (1948) that led him to the creation of "Dragnet." Dragnet first aired over NBC radio on June 3, 1949, and moved to TV ("Dragnet" (1951)) on December 16, 1951, where it ran until September 1959. Webb also appeared in the famous Billy Wilder film, Sunset Boulevard (1950) as William Holden's energetic best friend. But it was the influence of the gritty, hyper-realistic He Walked By Night, that linked Webb to Detective Sergeant Marty Wynn of the Los Angeles Police Department. Wynn was a technical consultant for He Walked By Night, and with Wynn's assistance--and entre to legendary LAPD Chief William H. Parker--that Webb mapped out the pains-taking, hyper-realistic model for Dragnet. Dragnet's ground-breaking influence was being felt in both Radio and Television. Webb's star continued rising fast, and the 1950s saw him become a film director, directing (and starring in) five features: Dragnet (1954), Pete Kelly's Blues (1955), The D.I. (1957), -30- (1959), and The Last Time I Saw Archie (1961). Webb's famous--or infamous--attention to the minutest details made him a natural behind the camera, but his last two directorial outings were box office flops. Jack Webb's personal life was also arcing from the mid-1940s through the 1950s. He met and married beautiful Jazz songstress and actress Julie London, in 1947. The couple had two daughters, Stacey (1950) and Alisa (1952) and Webb was a doting father, albeit greatly compromised for quality time throughout what came to be the most active and demanding years of his professional life. The compromises inevitably took their toll, and the couple divorced in 1953. Webb would marry three more times during his life; to Dorothy Towne (2 years), Jackie Loughery (6 years), and Opal Wright (2 years). After his divorce from Jackie Loughery in 1964, Webb would remain single until he married Opal Wright in 1980, just two years before his sudden heart attack just before Christmas of 1982. Webb's return to Television in 1962 led to his appointment as Head of Production for Warner Bros. Television in February 1963. Webb had taken over from William T. Orr as executive producer of the hit ABC detective series 77 Sunset Strip (1958). Webb demanded wholesale changes in the program, retaining only Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., in the role of Stuart Bailey from the previous rotating ensemble cast of Zimbalist, Ed Byrnes, Roger Smith, Louis Quinn, Jaqueline Beer, and Richard Long. The result was a predictable disaster. Its ratings plummeted, and Warner Bros. canceled the Webb-helmed series midway into its sixth season. Apart from the poor box office showing of Webb's two previous films, Webb's reputation as one of Hollywood's wunderkind had continued to rise. The loss of his position with Warner Bros. was the first significant stumble of Webb's career Following two years of unemployment--and reflection, Universal Studios invited Webb to do a new Dragnet as a TV movie. The result so pleased NBC and Universal that they offered Webb a new Dragnet series--Dragnet 1967. The new, updated series was an almost instant hit, and Dragnet 1967 ran for three seasons, followed by over ten years in syndication. Webb leveraged Dragnet 1967's success into a second hit, Adam-12 (1968), which gave both Jack Webb and his Mark VII, Limited production company a new lease on life. Webb's success developing new television programs with Mark VII continued through the 1970s, right up until the time of his unexpected passing in 1982. Webb's daughter Stacy tragically died in an automobile accident in 1996. Jack Webb was a tireless champion of both social justice and the peace officers he so respected throughout his adult life. Jack Webb's mark in Radio influenced hundreds of other productions throughout the 1940s and 1950s. His influence on Television is felt to this day. But for his Radio fans, his body of work--and its far-reaching influence--carries on, generation after generation through the magic of The Golden Age of Radio and the wonderful recordings we've managed to preserve from the era.

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