Phyllis Newman | Through the Shattered Lens

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, Decoy comes to an end.

Episode 1.39 “The Lost Ones”

(Dir by Arthur H. Singer, originally aired on July 7th, 1958)

The final episode of Decoy finds Casey dropping in on Elsa Kramer (Phyllis Newman), a recently-released juvenile offender who Casey previously arrested. Casey just wants to check on her and to welcome her back to society. But, when Casey steps — unannounced, which may be okay in New York but seems rather rude to my Texas sensibilities — into the family’s small kitchen, she discovers Elsa’s abusive father is dead and Elsa is holding the gun. Elsa makes a run for it. Elsa’s mother (Adelaide Klein) and brother (Morton Lighter) say that Elsa shot her father in self-defense.

Casey doesn’t think Elsa pulled the trigger and is determined to find Elsa and learn the truth before Elsa is arrested again. Not surprisingly, Casey’s right. It was her brother who killed their father. Elsa took the blame because her brother was going to medical school whereas Elsa really didn’t have much of a future to lose.

In some ways, this episode is an appropriate send-off for Casey and Decoy. It has some location footage of New York, which was always the show’s main appeal outside of Beverly Garland’s lead performance. It features Casey trying to prove that a seemingly guilty person is actually innocent. That’s certainly preferable to what we saw last week.

At the same time, this episode had some of the same flaws that were present in quite a few of Decoy’s final episodes. The dialogue was a bit overbaked. Even worse, the acting from the supporting cast was not particularly impressive. Morton Lighter was so twitchy as Elsa’s brother that there wasn’t much doubt as to who the guilty party was. This episode also featured Casey meeting with the least intimidating street gang in New York history. The whole thing lacked the authenticity that distinguished Decoy at its best. I’m not really sure if the show’s producers knew that this would be the final episode of the series. If they did, they allowed to show to end on a bit of anticlimactic note.

So, that’s it for Decoy. For the most part, it was a good show. The last few episodes were perhaps a bit too melodramatic for their own good. One got the feeling that the show’s writers were under orders to “liven” things up. But the early episodes made great use of the New York setting and, throughout the series, Beverly Garland gave a great performance as the tough but compassionate Casey Jones.

What will I be watching next? I’ll let you know next week!

This week, Casey goes after a drug dealer.

Episode 1.5 “Dream Fix”

(Dir by Teddy Sills, originally aired on November 11th, 1957)

This week’s episode opens with Casey walking down a city street. She tells us that she’s working Juvenile undercover, which apparently means that she just walks around the city and waits for a teenager to do something strange. When she sees a teenage girl collapse on the sidewalk, Casey runs over to her and looks at the powder in her hand. Casey tastes it.

“Heroin!” Casey snaps.

(How are cops always able to dip their fingers in random powers and then taste it without anything bad happening? What if the cocaine turned out to be strychnine? It just seems like a poor training and an unnecessary risk.)

Joanne Kittridge (Phyllis Newman) is indeed hooked on cocaine and heroin. However, neither her rich father (Les Damon) or her attorney (Frank Bandimer) want her to work with the police to track down her dealer. Her attorney arranges for Joanne to be sent to a rehab. Casey’s lieutenant (played, in this episode, by Simon Oakland) assigns Casey to undercover as a nurse.

In the end, Joanne not only gets straight but she reveals that her drug dealer is her lawyer! When the attorney pulls a gun on Joanne, Casey pulls her gun and shouts, “Freeze, police!”

This was a good episode, one that was well-acted by the entire cast and which featured Beverly Garland at her best. (Garland even gets to show off some karate moves when she disarms the attorney.) That said, it’s starting to bother me how almost all of Casey’s assignments seem to involve her pretending to be someone’s friend. I get that she’s working undercover but it’s sometimes hard not to wonder what’s going to happen to people like Joanne after they realize that the only reason Casey talked to her in the first place was because someone ordered her to.