Bill and Joe investigate a Bel Air mansion's reported burglary where the owner, Mrs. Graham, reports that her house was burglarized with a $200,000 collection of jade taken from her wall safe. The guest star is Dragnet's almost-regular female guest star, Virginia Gregg, who seems bothered that the detectives have to ask her "at least a thousand questions" since she figures the jade is already on its way to China.
The detectives are bothered more by some signs at the house that make it appear the burglary was staged. As they investigate, they learn from a jade expert, Lin Fong, that Graham has been selling her collection, one piece at a time for several months. The man says he is surprised that she has any jade left at all.
There was one set of fingerprints found at the Graham home, traced to an oft-prisoned burglar named Ben Martin (not Bill as one reviewer wrote) who is apprehended and confesses to committing several burglaries since his last release, but he cannot believe that all the places where he got a good take, the one they catch him for is the one place-the Graham place-where he was scared away by the gardener before he could take anything. He has never opened a safe before and insists he didn't there.
Furthermore, he convinces Bill and Joe that he isn't involved in stealing jade by showing his ignorance of the gem. He says he doesn't even know any "Swedes." When asked what that has to do with anything, he replies, "Isn't that where the stuff comes from...Switzerland?"
Back at Mrs. Graham's, the detectives confront her and get her to confess. Her late husband left her no insurance, only his precious jade collection. Living her rich life style-which includes a gardener and a maid-she found herself forced to sell off her collection to pay bills. When she learned about the gardener scaring off a burglar, she came up with the idea of opening her own safe, and staging a burglary so she could file her claim for the insurance money.
She tells our heroes that she doubts she could have cashed the insurance check when it came down to it. This, coupled with the fact that she reveals how much of the money she got for selling her jade that she gave to charities in just the last couple of months, makes her one of the most sympathetic crooks ever to appear on Dragnet.
The closing scenes say that the district attorney, after she dropped her insurance claim, decided not to press any charges against Mrs. Graham, which doesn't seem wrong at all to me. They said she moved-presumably to a more modest home using the money from selling her mansion to keep her afloat for some years.
Other reviewers have noted that the Chinese jade expert on this show was played by Keye Luke, who is most famous as the movie Charlie Chan's # 1 son Lee from the 1930s.
I present, via IMDB, a few interesting facts about Mr. Luke, born in China in 1904, raised in Seattle. His first credited film role was as Lee Chan in Charlie Chan in Paris in 1935. He appeared with Warner Oland as Chan's # 1 son Lee in 8 films that decade, then, after Oland passed away, played Lee Chan in a Mr. Moto movie. He did not appear as Lee Chan again until 10 years later when he was in two of last Chan movies with Roland Winters as his "pop" Charlie. Lee was much more of a help to Charlie and didn't do a lot of funny things. Those were by the portrayal of # 2 son Jimmy and # 3 some Tommy (both played by Victor Sen Yung, with Tommy also played by Benson Fong at times).
Luke also portrayed another famous crime fighter's assistant in two 1940s movies when he was Kato to Gordon Jones and Warren Hull's Green Hornet. Luke continued to get film roles and TV roles, mostly on long-forgotten series into the 1960s. He was on some well-known series, including Perry Mason, I Spy, The Andy Griffith Show (the time Aunt Bea invested in a Chinese Restaurant), Star Trek, Hawaii Five-O, MASH, and Marcus Welby, among others. He got into voice roles for animated series including a lead role as Charlie Chan in The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan in 1972. He is remembered for his role as one of Cain's teachers, Master Po on Kung Fu. His last role was in the series Alice in 1990.
I think it interesting that he was on one other episode of Dragnet, in 1968, playing a character named George Lum. Three years later he was on another Jack Webb series, Adam-12, again playing George Lum.
Nobody else has noticed, apparently, what I saw when I watched this Dragnet this morning: When they showed the exterior of Mrs. Graham's mansion, the picture was one used to represent Milburn and Margaret Drysdale's home on The Beverly Hillbillies.
The detectives are bothered more by some signs at the house that make it appear the burglary was staged. As they investigate, they learn from a jade expert, Lin Fong, that Graham has been selling her collection, one piece at a time for several months. The man says he is surprised that she has any jade left at all.
There was one set of fingerprints found at the Graham home, traced to an oft-prisoned burglar named Ben Martin (not Bill as one reviewer wrote) who is apprehended and confesses to committing several burglaries since his last release, but he cannot believe that all the places where he got a good take, the one they catch him for is the one place-the Graham place-where he was scared away by the gardener before he could take anything. He has never opened a safe before and insists he didn't there.
Furthermore, he convinces Bill and Joe that he isn't involved in stealing jade by showing his ignorance of the gem. He says he doesn't even know any "Swedes." When asked what that has to do with anything, he replies, "Isn't that where the stuff comes from...Switzerland?"
Back at Mrs. Graham's, the detectives confront her and get her to confess. Her late husband left her no insurance, only his precious jade collection. Living her rich life style-which includes a gardener and a maid-she found herself forced to sell off her collection to pay bills. When she learned about the gardener scaring off a burglar, she came up with the idea of opening her own safe, and staging a burglary so she could file her claim for the insurance money.
She tells our heroes that she doubts she could have cashed the insurance check when it came down to it. This, coupled with the fact that she reveals how much of the money she got for selling her jade that she gave to charities in just the last couple of months, makes her one of the most sympathetic crooks ever to appear on Dragnet.
The closing scenes say that the district attorney, after she dropped her insurance claim, decided not to press any charges against Mrs. Graham, which doesn't seem wrong at all to me. They said she moved-presumably to a more modest home using the money from selling her mansion to keep her afloat for some years.
Other reviewers have noted that the Chinese jade expert on this show was played by Keye Luke, who is most famous as the movie Charlie Chan's # 1 son Lee from the 1930s.
I present, via IMDB, a few interesting facts about Mr. Luke, born in China in 1904, raised in Seattle. His first credited film role was as Lee Chan in Charlie Chan in Paris in 1935. He appeared with Warner Oland as Chan's # 1 son Lee in 8 films that decade, then, after Oland passed away, played Lee Chan in a Mr. Moto movie. He did not appear as Lee Chan again until 10 years later when he was in two of last Chan movies with Roland Winters as his "pop" Charlie. Lee was much more of a help to Charlie and didn't do a lot of funny things. Those were by the portrayal of # 2 son Jimmy and # 3 some Tommy (both played by Victor Sen Yung, with Tommy also played by Benson Fong at times).
Luke also portrayed another famous crime fighter's assistant in two 1940s movies when he was Kato to Gordon Jones and Warren Hull's Green Hornet. Luke continued to get film roles and TV roles, mostly on long-forgotten series into the 1960s. He was on some well-known series, including Perry Mason, I Spy, The Andy Griffith Show (the time Aunt Bea invested in a Chinese Restaurant), Star Trek, Hawaii Five-O, MASH, and Marcus Welby, among others. He got into voice roles for animated series including a lead role as Charlie Chan in The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan in 1972. He is remembered for his role as one of Cain's teachers, Master Po on Kung Fu. His last role was in the series Alice in 1990.
I think it interesting that he was on one other episode of Dragnet, in 1968, playing a character named George Lum. Three years later he was on another Jack Webb series, Adam-12, again playing George Lum.
Nobody else has noticed, apparently, what I saw when I watched this Dragnet this morning: When they showed the exterior of Mrs. Graham's mansion, the picture was one used to represent Milburn and Margaret Drysdale's home on The Beverly Hillbillies.
