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 goes undercover!

Episode 1.35 “Tin Pan Payoff”

(Dir by David Alexander, originally aired on June 9th, 1958)

After songwriter Chick Williams is found murdered in his apartment, the only clue that the police have going for them is a vinyl record spinning on Chick’s record player.  (Welcome to 1958!)  The singer on the record is Sally Masters (Ellen Parker), a local nightclub performer.  The police figure out that it’s a “demo record.”  Sally is the number one suspect so Casey goes undercover as a music agent and discovers just how cutthroat the business can be.

This episode was a whodunit.  It turns out that Chick cheated and betrayed a lot of people in his life.  It seems like the entire city of New York has a motive but, since this is Decoy, Casey quickly narrows it down to four suspects.  Casey going undercover as a music agent was actually more interesting than the mystery itself, if just because Casey got to dress up and hang out in one of those wonderfully atmospheric New York nightclubs.  She also learned about how DJs like Jerry Lynch (Lee Bergere) can make someone a star and also how even successful songwriters like Chick Williams occasionally employed “a ghost writer.”  Watching Decoy, it’s hard not to feel that the best thing about Casey’s job is that she has an unlimited wardrobe and she gets to investigate every single facet of New York society.

Like a lot of the later Decoy episodes that I’ve seen, this episode isn’t quite as gritty as the earlier episodes.  There’s less emphasis on Casey as a tough cop and more on Beverly Garland looking glamorous undercover.  That said, Casey still gets the job done and takes a few minutes to speak directly to the audience.  One thing I appreciate about Casey is that she doesn’t let her own feelings get in the way of doing her job.  At a time when women were often portrayed being too flighty or emotional to be trusted in a position of authority, Casey always got results.