Dragnet

Dragnet is a 1947 American crime film directed by Leslie Goodwins and starring Henry Wilcoxon, Mary Brian, Douglass Dumbrille, Virginia Dale, Don C. Harvey, and Ralph Dunn. The screenplay was written by Barbara Worth and Harry Essex. The original music score was composed by Irving Gertz. It is also known as Dark Bullet and A Shot in the Dark. Plot summary A dead John Doe is found on the beach and Detective Lieutenant Tony Ricco gets the case to solve. With no clues whatsoever to the case, Tony asks for help to Geoffrey James, an old friend from Scotland Yard in London. After examining the body and the man's clothes, Geoffrey concludes he wore a Harris Tweed coat and had Sterling pound notes on him, and therefore has to be of British origin. Geoffrey also discovers a fluorescent paint on the coat, which would suggest it is the same paint as the one used to mark floating objects in water to easier spot and rescue them. The dead man had no water in his lungs, so he hadn't drowned, but maybe got the paint on him picking something up from the water, for example a life jacket.