Decoy Mongols

[From the Decoy episode “Around the World,” February 24, 1958. John Newton as Lieutenant Kendall, Frank Silvera (of Stanley Kubrick’s Killer’s Kiss ) as Andrew Garcia.]

[From the Decoy episode “Reasonable Doubt,” March 10, 1958. Eugene Peterson as Lieutenant Franklin.]

[From the Decoy episode “Tin Pan Payoff,” June 9, 1958. Mike Kellin as songwriter Harry Keenan. Click any image for a larger view.]

Decoy was a short-lived television show, thirty-nine episodes, 1957–1958. We found it, or most of it, on YouTube. It is said to be the first television series about a policewoman — Patricia “Casey” Jones, played by Beverly Garland.

As the show’s title suggests, Jones did much though not all of her work undercover, posing as an art collector, a bar girl, a drug addict, a prison inmate, a model, a nurse, a secretary, a sideshow dancer. As with Naked City, exterior scenes were filmed on location, so we get to see New York City playgrounds, a housing project, Penn Station, Fordham University, the Lower East Side, Greenwich Village streets, and Washington Square Park (along with low-budget studio interiors). Many recognizable names show up in individual episodes: Ed Asner, Martin Balsam, Peter Falk, Diane Ladd, Lois Nettleton, Suzanne Pleshette, and others.

What I most appreciate about the show is the chance to see Beverly Garland as something other than Mrs. Steve Douglas of My Three Sons. Here she’s an unmarried woman with a revolver in her purse and virtually no private life, “effortlessly cool,” my daughter says. Decoy is worth watching.

Related reading
Decoy , all of it : Decoy at Fordham
All OCA Mongol posts (Pinboard)

[It’s my favorite pencil.]