"She sauntered in, moving slowly from side to side like a hundred and eighteen pounds of warm smoke."

In the journey from B-26 crewman and amateur Jazzman to Sgt Joe Friday, Pat Novak for Hire is an important milestone. Novak does not have the legitimacy that Dragnet would gain with its association with the Los Angeles Police Department. He isn’t a cop, not even a full time detective, but he is more “hard-boiled” that Friday with his “Just the facts” demeanor. Pat Novak is just a guy who runs a boat shop on Pier 19 on San Francisco’s rough and tumble waterfront.

The location is as much of a character in the program as Novak himself. It is a natural setting, Jack Webb and his writing partner, Richard Breen were establishing their credibility at KGO, the former Blue Network and now ABC West coast affiliate in San Francisco. The program typically opens with Novak’s footsteps echoing as he walks along the foggy pier (foghorns moaning in the background) and we hear Webb saying “Sure, I’m Pat Novak… For Hire”. In the best hard-boiled/pulp detective tradition, Novak narrates the story as well as plays in it. A mysterious stranger asks Novak to help solve a problem, usually a problem on the shady side of legitimacy. When Novak accepts the job, we will follow him as he meets a seductive dame or two (either a damsel in need of rescue or a femme-fatale, trouble either way), runs into a few underworld figures who do not have Pat’s best interest at heart, and eventually a body. Police Inspector Hellman, played by Raymond Burr, will show up and threaten to run Novak in for the murder, which Novak will use his threatened freedom to solving. Along the way, Novak turns to his friend and supposed mentor, Jocko Madigan, for help. Jocko, played by Tudor Owen, a doctor who has drank his way into retirement, offers a booze-addled form of wisdom and surprisingly reliable help. By the end of the episode, Novak will have tied up the loose ends and dispensed more than a few pithy observations before we hear him walking down the pier again, and telling us that “Hellman had only question…” Naturally, Novak provides the answer dripping with hard-boiled irony.

Pat Novak for Hire launched on KGO in August 1946 as “The Gallenkamp Shoe Show”, and Gallenkamp’s Good Shoes supported the program with press ads featuring the image of Miss America 1946, UCLA grad Marilyn Burferd. Whether Miss America actually heard the program before lending her praise is debatable, but Gallenkamp had problems of their own with a labor strike and a public relations nightmare. The shoe store dropped their sponsorship after their 52-week contract and Webb and Breen were hired by Mutual in Los Angeles to create Johnny Modero, Pier 23, a very direct rip-off of Pat Novak. KGO kept Novak as a sustained program for the 1947 season using another actor. Webb resumed the role in 1949 when ABC took the program nation-wide from their Hollywood Studios. Click here to read more about Pat Novak For Hire