“The streak has peaked at the right
time. Right from the get go”said the basketball icon in the windy city’s springtime. But when he was
still in his cribbed womb and sitting in his hi- chair, he would have remembered
another streak at the very beginning of televisions birth into dramatic
shootouts in our cultural boondocks.
II
Across from Jack LaRue’s (Gene Autry’s nemesis) villainy bistro
on Ventura Boulevards reality
scene in Republic Studio’s television pre digital menu was “Gunsmoke” starring Marshall Matt
Dillon.
James Arness into the role for so long, the towering
Angel of frontier justice couldn’t remember.
His skimpy Deputy had long since passed on to the prairie beyond , the script changes and
the clutter that constitute that reality scene.
Down away on Ventura Boulevard before the freeway
was Burbank’s hosting the Warner Brothers studio and the likes of Clint
Eastwood’s own pre Italian spaghetti shootouts and Lorne Green’s Boys High
ensemble “Bonanza”
Yet earlier Jack L. had given the “get go”
to a local detective drama starring Jack Webb as the honcho. Barrio, Whittier
Boulevard, Hollenbeck police station Brooklyn Avenue, Boyle Heights culture
vulture tacos and tamale carts..
III
“Just the facts, mam. Just the
facts,” said detective Joe Friday, his mind set and fedora angled like a
21st century Dick Tracy, pounding the East L.A. beat, keeping tabs on his Julie
London, his cell phone mercilessly ticking....
Julie was also an expatriate from Boyle Heights
and the Hollenbeck Jr. High,
Roosevelt High School’s
campus. Thus “Dragnet” peaked into a popular mass appeal crime “drama”. The
shoot out, opposite the Burbank
studio...it’s eatery “The
Smokehouse”
“Awesome””
the city
that never sleeps, March 28,2013
