Decoy

Yes, this is a wonderfully gritty, no-nonsense cop yarn. What struck me is: Where's the sexism? Where's the condescension? Where's the "Oh, ya gonna arrest me, Officer Sweetie Pie?" This was the Fifties, right? It's a cop show with a twist: a cop who gets emotional over what she sees and what she has to do. But Casey Jones never, and I mean never, lets it get in the way of her completely professional approach to her job. She works with male officers, and they are nothing if not equals, comrades in arms. And for those of you who know Beverly Garland only from the fluff of My Three Sons, have you got a surprise coming. Great entertainment all the way around. And for something a little snappier, try Front Page Detective.

Watching this on Amazon Prime. It's a series I hadn't had the opportunity to view on television. Yes, it's dated and some police techniques might seem questionable by today's standards, but it's ahead of its time by focusing on a female police officer and female victims and criminals. Lots of terrific early performances by actors who became well known and respected.

Most lead characters on TV cop shows in the 1950s and 60s were guys. Decoy was a departure from the usual fare by casting Beverly Garland as Policewoman Casey Jones. Amazon Prime currently has all episodes available.

"Decoy," a title fitting perfectly with Casey's assignments, would have benefited with the more marketable name "Policewoman." Surprisingly the classictvhistory.wordpress blog only mentions Decoy once in an article about Brenner, another late-50s Manhattan-based crime show. It deserves a detailed analysis.

What I first noticed about Decoy is the performance by the great Beverly Garland and her sympathetic yet no-nonsense, duty-bound and calm characterization. There is no humor whatsoever in Decoy, not even fatalistic police humor or the sardonic closing line of a conversation that Jack Webb practically patented in Dragnet. In her narration, she accepts her job with a sense of pessimism about the worst qualities of human nature that she knows will continue to repeat. What real policemen and policewomen see and deal with everyday would break the average person.

Then there's the world Casey lives in, when police science technology was still fairly crude and a lack of knowledge by the TV writers about the physical reality of criminal acts, something that continues in today's TV and films. She relies on her intuition and her ability to influence criminals to accept her so she can find the evidence or get the confession that allows her to slap the cuffs on them. There's very little gun play and shootouts, no insane car chases or gun glorification that's filled TV screens for decades and there's not much physical violence, something that Angie Dickinson's Policewoman would make up for in the more permissive 1970s, adding sexual themes and an emphasis on Dickinson's sex appeal to the mix.

The black and white location shooting of New York City and outer boroughs, when the city was heading to a decline adds a huge downbeat, melancholy tone. The dirty streets, sense of decay and crumbling tenements that Naked City also captured (and Hawk did in color in the 60s) creates a moody, grim feel to Casey's thankless job. The threadbare, shabby studio sets, a standard in 50s TV, reinforces that atmosphere. The brief, opening theme music to Decoy is stock, used in several earlier movies, and creates a sense of impending doom that sets the pace.

Casey solves her cases with a sense of fatalism, knowing that solving a case doesn't close the book on the tragedy in the wake of a crime. Families are destroyed, reputations are tarnished.

Later on, Beverly Garland opened the Beverly Garland hotel in Studio City. I occasionally attended movie collectible shows at the hotel but never had the chance to meet her and get an autograph. Now called The Garland as of 2014, it was built by her second husband.

This show took me completely by surprise. When it showed up on my suggested list, on a whim I watched the 1st episode and was hooked.

It's been called the female Dragnet but in my opinion it is better. The topics are timely even for today and definitely ahead of it's time for 1958. Filmed entirely in NYC, it is a enlightening snapshot of the city in the 50's with many of the structures looking exactly the same to this day. Also of note are the many actors appearing in Decoy who would go on to become household names.

Don't let the name or age of the show dissuade you. I think American TV audiences were just not ready for an empowered female lead in a series and that's a shame because personally, I would have liked to have seen a few more seasons.

Decoy's the first TV police drama to star a woman and casting couldn't have done better than Garland. She's strong and appealing but hardly glamorous, and really good at not over-playing her part though the tension is often there. As Casey Jones she goes undercover in downscale NYC to crack cases. The on-location filming in the city's seediest precincts lends a lot of color plus perspective to even the mildest episodes. Nevertheless, I'll bet the Chamber of Commerce was none to happy about grubby sites not often shown. Anyway, we get perspectives on the Statue of Liberty, crowded city streets, and soaring towers that seemingly entrap her as she walks along. All add color and period interest to the storylines. Of course some episodes are better than others but all offer abundant compensations. I haven't seen every episode, but let me recommend The Red Clown as particularly riveting. A look at the cast lists shows no stars but an abundance of familiar A-grade supporting players, e.g. Simon Oakland, Barbara Barrie. I guess ratings weren't strong enough for a second season (1958). Likely, 50's audiences weren't ready for a female lead in a traditionally male genre. Then again, to my knowledge, Decoy's never been re-run or put into syndication; so to say it's obscure is a mild understatement. Too bad, because the series was clearly ahead of its time, while its abundant human interest has no time limit.

In passing-- I caught up with the complete series in a DVD collection titled "Decoy" from Film Chest Media. I'd recommend the collection because of the detailed notes about locations and historical aspects of the productions that the enclosed booklet provides. For those like me who've never been to NYC, it's something of an interesting tour guide.