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FRIDAY’S BIGGEST CASE ...WELL, LONGEST, ANYWAY “are young men in a hurry.” Webb, long accustomed to the tight budgets and express-train speed of radio and TV schedules, waltzed his crew through the picture in just 22 shooting days. (The average Warners picture takes 55; “A Star Is Born” took almost nine months.) “It was shooting in color that took so much time,” he says, almost apologetically. Strictly no-nonsense on the set, Webb paced his work with the at¬ titude of a man who had to get on the air at 9 P.M. next Thursday. When he finished, he had two hours and Reminiscent: Webb and Ben Alexander brought flavor of TV show to film. 12 minutes’ worth of film on his hands. He spent three solid days in the cutting room whittling it down to an hour and 37 minutes—an achieve¬ ment which seemed to give him more deep-down satisfaction than making the picture in the first place. Another innovation which set Warners heads to shaking was the liberal use of the Teleprompter, the electronic device which gives actors their lines in large type just off cam¬ era. Webb and Alexander, who can read without moving their eyes, went through scene after scene without committing a single word to memory. Put into general use by movie stu¬ dios, it presumably could save count¬ less hours and dollars—as it already has in TV studios. Webb also affronted the Warners make-up department by using virtu¬ ally no make-up at all, an almost radical departure from accepted movie technique. “Color and camera work have improved to the point where it just isn’t necessary,” Webb contends. “The girls use regular street make-up and the men use an occasional dab of powder on a shiny nose. That’s all.” The story, according to Webb, is typical Dragnet. “You know right off the bat who committed the crime,” he says. “The idea is to find out why.” No newcomer to pictures (he’s played a number of featured and supporting roles, including a part in “Sunset Boulevard”), Webb obviously got quite a kick out of the red-carpet treatment extended him by Warners. He was especially fond of his dressing room. “Just look for Judy Garland’s,” he’d grin. “Mine’s right next to it.” What’s next for Webb? Starting in October he’ll get to work on 23 more half-hour Dragnet TV films to carry the program through October of next year. Sometime in January he expects to start a second picture for Warners, this one to be based loosely on his long-planned Pete Kelly's Blues TV series. He will then make 72 more Drag¬ net films, after which he hopes to wash his hands of the show. He has sold it to MCA, one of the Na¬ tion’s largest talent agencies, retain¬ ing a percentage of future profits and a say in any future developments. But once the 95 films are made, he’s through as Sgt. Joe Friday. Insti¬ tutions, in these times of high-pres¬ sure daily entertainment, build fast and die even faster.