RIP Colonel Sherman T. Potter

[Ikaria]

"M*A*S*H" star Harry Morgan died at his home in Los Angeles on Wednesday morning. The character actor was 96.
He was best known for playing Colonel Sherman T. Potter on the long-running army comedy.

[yose]

I always liked his dry humor in dragnet

[dattia]

I miss M*A*S*H... it was a favorite of mine.

RIP Harry Morgan

[luckydog]

1967–70 remake





Webb and Morgan in 1968.
When Webb remounted Dragnet in 1966, he tried to get Ben Alexander to rejoin him as Frank. Alexander was then committed to an ABC police series, Felony Squad, and its producers would not release him. Webb reluctantly recast the role of Joe Friday's partner: Bill Gannon, played by movie and TV veteran Harry Morgan. Morgan in 1949 had a voice role as rooming house proprietor "Luther Gage" in the episode "James Vickers". Bill Gannon, like Frank Smith, was businesslike on duty but chatty in informal situations. Ben Alexander's light-comedy dialogues now fell to Morgan, who played some of it more broadly; in "The Big Neighbor" his ad libs cause Webb to openly burst out laughing, and in "The Weekend," Gannon's step-by-step preparation of a "garlic-nut-butter sandwich" is greeted with incredulous reactions from his friends.

Webb produced a TV movie pilot for the new, color version of the show for Universal Television, although it did not air until January 1969. NBC bought the show on the strength of the movie and debuted it as a mid-season replacement for the sitcom The Hero on Thursday nights in January 1967. In order to distinguish it from the original, the year was included in the title of the show (e.g., Dragnet 1967). Although Joe Friday had been a lieutenant during the final season of the original 1950s production, Jack Webb decided to revert to Sergeant with his familiar badge number, "714." (When LAPD Sergeant Dan Cooke was promoted to lieutenant, he arranged to carry the same lieutenant's badge, number 714, as worn by Joe Friday during the final season of the original series. Cooke had been Webb's contact in the department during the production of the revived Dragnet series. Cooke was also technical advisor to the KNBC documentary "Police Unit 2A-26," directed by John Orland. He brought it to the attention of Jack Webb, who hired Orland to direct and film the "This is the City," a series of mini-documentaries about Los Angeles that preceded most of the TV episodes during the 1969 and 1970 seasons.)

The remake would also distinguish itself, and gain notoriety among some viewers, for its greater emphasis than the original upon juvenile delinquency, drug abuse, student dissidence, and relations between the police department and the community. Webb would later state that an explicit goal of the Dragnet revival and his subsequent shows was to improve the reputation of local forces throughout the U.S., particularly in urban areas. The generally conservative posture of the show toward the hippie movement (the so-called "counterculture") earned the new Dragnet both appreciative fans and dismayed critics, the latter of whom deemed Webb as a rigid authoritarian who could not adjust to social change. However, most of the criticism of the counterculture on the show was not so much based on the hippies' desire for change, but more on their impatience for it and tactics for achieving it. Also, the show was decidedly positive in its assessment of American blacks and other racial minorities, mitigating somewhat the charges against Webb of xenophobia.

The show enjoyed good ratings on NBC's schedule for four seasons, although its popularity did not exceed that of the 1950s version. In 1968, Webb decided to spin off from Dragnet a show based on the experiences of patrol officers. Named Adam-12, that show would go on to run seven years in its own right. Much like he had done 11 years earlier, Webb decided voluntarily to discontinue Dragnet after its fourth season in order to focus on creating, producing, and directing Adam-12 and, later, Emergency!, which portrayed the fledgling paramedic program of the L.A. County Fire Department.

Reruns of this version were popular on local stations, usually during the late afternoons or early evenings, in the early 1970s. In the late 1980s, they found their way to Nick at Nite and, beginning in the late 1990s, its sister cable channel TV Land. Currently the program airs over many of the stations of the broadcast digital subchannel network Antenna TV. Currently all four seasons are available on DVD and for free on-demand streaming on Hulu.com for US residents.