Dragnet 1967 (TV Series) The Bookie (1967) User Reviews

You Can't Help But Feel Sorry For This Crook

[ccthemovieman-1 · 8/10 · 5 April 2008]

This was an odd episode; the first one I felt sorry for the "crook." You couldn't help but feel that way. He was a bartender who helped run a bookmaking scheme. He didn't do much, just hand out phone numbers on where to call or took the bet, like a runner for the numbers racket. He did it to help pay for his daughter's open-heart operation. His 10-year-old kid had a bad heart. It sounds corny, but these are true stories. Of course, the guy gets caught but it turns out he also was wanted in Pennsylvania for a forgery. There was justice, as his charge in L.A. was dismissed but he was extradited.

Another unusual aspect of this case was that Friday had a new partner. Since Gannon was too well-known in the North Hollywood area to go undercover, the L.A. police chaplain, "Sgt. Bill Riddle," worked with Joe. William Reynolds played that part.

Gannon (Harry Morgan, who is excellent in this role and is getting funnier with each episode) is happy. He thinks the chaplain might be a good influence on Joe because he says "I always knew one thing about you."

"How's that?" asks Friday.

"You're a heathen."

Dragnet Oddity

[jbacks3 · 7/10 · 6 May 2010]

This one's just strange. In Jack Webb's alter ego Joe Friday's world there's no gray areas. Everything's either black or white. This episode's an exception: there's sympathy for the bad guy. Weirder still is the fact that the bad guy's Bobby Troup, who was far-more-happily-married to Webb's ex-wife Julie London (the couple would pair up in Webb's hit series Emergency! four seasons later). It's interesting to note that that Webb/Friday never would show a sympathetic doper or unrepentant hippie (there was one episode where hippie scum Gary Crosby got a haircut after realizing the error in his lifestyle), so the criminal had to be involved in the relatively innocuous activity of bookmaking. Also, gaze in awe here of Friday's smooth pick up lines. He thrives on rejection. Very, very strange stuff.

Your not gonna do any driving. Sure I will I'm too drunk to walk.

[sol1218 · 8/10 · 23 October 2011]

***SPOILERS*** Working out of the LAPD's Administrative Vice Division Sgt. Joe Friday, Jack Webb, goes undercover-using the name Joe Frazier- together with fellow cop Sgt. William Riddle, William Reynolds, posing as land survivors in order to bust a major bookie operation in the city. Keying in on the Domino Bar & Grill Friday & Riddle are sure that it's bartender Richard Clinger,Bobby Troup, is working for big time L.A bookmaker Gordon R. Westerfeld who never utters a single word,and who's name isn't in any of the cast credits, in the entire Dragnat 1967 episode. Clinger is in fact taking under the table illegal and nontaxable, by the city state and federal government, bets for him.

It takes while for both Friday & Riddle to get bartender Clinger, who's a bit suspicious of them at first, to take their bets but once he does the dye is cast for him together with Westerfeld & Co.to be busted by the LAPD and Federal Agents. What makes this bust so hard to take for both Sgt. Friday & Riddle is that Clinger a widower who's also wanted back in Pennsylvania for forging checks has a critically ill 10 years old daughter Shirley who needs a heart operation in order to save her life. This in fact may be why Clinger, together with his forging checks, is taking book for Westerfeld in order to pay for Shirley's doctor bills.

***SPOILERS*** Heart wrenching final with Clinger now behind bars and withing to be tried telling both Sgt. Friday & Riddle that his daughter had just passed away on the operating table and him wanting to find someone to do the religious service by saying the right words for her. Since he doesn't have any money and not being a church going man Clinger doesn't know anyone who can do the service for him. Sgt. Friday with tears swelling up in his eyes tells Clinger not to worry and ends up saying sure we've got somebody to do it for you free of charge. As it turned out Friday's partner in busting Clinger Sgt.Riddle is also the Chief Chaplin for the LAPD!

P.S The charges against Richard Clinger were dismissed by the L.A District Attorney's office in that it felt that Clinger he had suffered enough already and a fine or jail time added to his already many problems would not be in the interest of justice.

Keep the Kleenex handy.

[planktonrules · 9/10 · 16 November 2009]

There is a back story to this episode that makes it a lot more interesting. This episode stars Bobby Troup as a rather pitiful small-time criminal and the show was a great showcase for him as an actor. Now here's the interesting aspect. Jack Webb (Sgt. Friday and the show's guiding force) was married to Julie London. After they divorced, London married Troup. Yet Webb apparently harbored no grudge towards Troup. On the contrary, he was given several chances to appear on "Dragnet" and was even given a regular job working on "Emergency" was one of the doctors. As I said, an interesting back story.

The episode begins with Friday and Gannon attending an interdenominational prayer breakfast for a police fraternity. Afterwords, Friday is given a special assignment with the police chaplain who did the benediction at the breakfast. According to the story, Gannon was too well-known in this part of LA and this might jeopardize his cover.

Friday and his new partner have heard that a bartender named Clinger (Troup) is the contact person for people wanting to do some illegal gambling. They do an undercover investigation and cozy up to Clinger--hoping they'll get him to place bets for them.

In an unusual bit of comic relief, Sidney Miller appears in the bar at the end of one evening. He sits down with Joe and does one of the funniest drunk routines I've seen. He was awfully funny and I didn't mind this bit of padding in the show.

Later, Friday finds out that Clinger has a young daughter who is sick with a severe heart defect. His wife is dead and you get the impression he's a very nice guy despite being the contact man for the gamblers. The show did a good job of building sympathy for the hard-luck guy.

I won't go into what happens next--you can see it yourself. But I gotta admit that this is one of the only episode of "Dragnet" that really hit me emotionally. Though I've seen the episode several times, when I just watched it again it had me tearing up by the end. A very good episode and one that takes a lot of emotional risk. One of the better written episodes, even if the story is very, very simple.

A Genuine Drama.

[rmax304823 · 6/10 · 1 September 2016]

Usually the bad guys are snots, while Friday and Gannon are all business, but here the detectives get involved with a bookmaker whose little daughter is dying of a heart disease. Of course they get him anyway, but he's not your typical heavy.

The bookie bartender is played by Bobby Troup, whose name is probably unfamiliar to today's generation, but he was quite a talented musician. He graduated from prep school, was a Phi Beta Kappa at the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, served as a captain in the Marine Corps during World War II, and wrote a couple of songs that can still be heard from time to time -- "Get Your Kicks On Route Sixty Six" and "The Girl Can't Help It." He acted too and although he wasn't a bravura performer he always looked sympathetic. He married Julie London, Jack Webb's former wife.

You'll have to excuse me. I sometimes go on these tangential tours. The voices tell me to do it.

Anyway, except for Troup's character, this wasn't an especially impressive episode. I still don't know why bookies do what they do. And the humor -- or rather the attempts at humor -- lack their usual authority.

The Bookie

[Scarecrow-88 · 5/10 · 11 November 2011]

Bookmaking is the crime in this episode of Dragnet 1967, not that exciting really if I'm honest. When your most memorable scene features a drunk from Pismo beach, fumbling over his speech as Sgt Joe Friday (Jack Webb), undercover as a local man "looking for some action", looks at him in amusement (uncharacteristic of this show is the fact that the scene painfully drags on for minutes), trying to get the wasted out-of-towner to get in a cab and to a resting place, then you know the episode doesn't particularly register as of the show's more remarkable efforts. The plot just doesn't generate many exciting or interesting moments, although there is some pathos thanks to the unfortunate predicament of a bartender, of a Dominos Bar and Grille, part of the bookmaking operation under investigation. While Gannon (Harry Morgan) is part of the surveillance team overlooking the major boss of the bookmaking operation, Friday will partner with a police chaplain, Sgt William Riddle (William Reynolds), who has made some friends in the Dominos Bar and Grille, preferably the aforementioned bartender, Richard Clinger (Bobby Troup), a good man who has aligned himself with the wrong people because he needs some "side money" to furnish a heart operation for his ailing daughter. Nothing against Reynolds, but I think the Webb/Morgan relationship/dynamic is an essential ingredient in why this show works so well, and removing him almost completely from the equation doesn't do a rather dull case any favors. To the credit of the show, the dissection of bookmaking is well told to a viewer who might not have any knowledge of illegal gambling rackets, so this episode might educate and enthrall others. Maybe it was the fact that this episode follows some pretty strong stories such as an auto accident-prone drunk hitting an elderly couple and a cop shooting investigation—when your plot consists of Joe Friday going undercover to foil a bartender (trying to earn some extra cash by working with a bookie to help pay for an operation for a sick daughter), and disrupt a bookmaking scheme (even though it is a crime against the penal code of California), then maybe it might pale in comparison to those stories preceding it. Trying to score a date with a Dominos waitress, hoping to find a way to get that phone number from Clinger which would lead to an arrest, Friday enters a conversation with her regarding men, certainly not what we are accustomed to with this series.