Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Decoy, which aired in Syndication in 1957 and 1958.  The show can be viewed on Tubi!

This week, Casey gets involved in a domestic drama.

Episode 1.29 “Cry Revenge”

(Dir by David Alexander, originally aired on April 28th, 1958)

Mrs. Hart (Fran Carlon) has been getting threatening phone calls from criminal James Anderson (Lee Bergere), who is trying to keep Mrs. Hart from testifying against him in court.  Casey is sent over to the Hart home to provide 24-hour protection.  It’s there that she meets Norma (Zohra Lampert), Mrs. Hart’s club-footed daughter.  Norma blames her mother for both her father’s death and her disability.

Norma stuns everyone when she announces that she has married Howard Farley (Lonny Chapman), one of Anderson’s criminal associates.  Norma is getting back at her mother but what she doesn’t realize is that Howard only married her so that he and James could rob the family business!

Casey didn’t really get to do much in this episode, as she herself admitted at the end of the episode.  (In her closing  monologue, she tells us that she’ll always think of the Harts whenever she wonders what happens behind the curtains of a seemingly perfect home.)  This episode is a bit of a soap opera, with Norma eventually discovering the truth about her alcoholic father and how he was responsible for her twisted foot.

Zohra Lampert, who previously appeared on this show as the victim of a heroin dealer, gives a good performance as Norma, playing her as being both vulnerable and vindictive.  This episode eventually got a bit too overwrought for its own good but Lampert made the episode worth watching.