Dangerous Assignment (1949-53) aired “Strategic Base Sabotaged (New Guinea)” on April 29, 1953. Since this is only the 8th episode of Dangerous Assignment we’ve offered since the first in February of 2018, a reprise of its background is in order for newcomers to the show. The show debuted on the NBC network in July of 1949 as a summer replacement and ceased in August after 7 episodes. It was popular enough with listeners and was picked up in February of 1950 to begin its almost 4-year run. It starred popular Hollywood actor Brian Donlevy (1910-1972) as secret agent Steve Mitchell, who was sent as an undercover foreign correspondent by an unnamed U. S. State Department agency on delicate assignments abroad where U. S. interests were involved. His only “agency” contact was “the commissioner,” who would read him in on the background of the situation and then send him off to various hotspots around the globe to rectify the situation. He was rather like an early James Bond character, but much more low-key and without all the gadgets, though the situations were very much in line with some of the problems a Bond character might face.

Dangerous Assignment proved popular enough (and through the savvy management of Donlevy himself) that it was given a television show that ran from late 1951 until May of 1952 and comprised 39 episodes. Donlevy himself led quite an interesting life with several SF genre connections, about which more in a moment. For his role as Sergeant Markoff in 1939’s Beau Geste he was nominated for a Best Supporting Acting Oscar, but lost. His career spanned the decades of the 1930s-1960s in both motion pictures (over 80 films), and television, where he played both good and bad characters in numerous popular shows. As to Donlevy’s pre-radio and film careers, in 1916 he answered the Wisconsin Army National Guard’s call to join the Pancho Villa Expedition, and though he was only 14 and lied about his age, he was accepted and served as a bugler. And during World War I he ended up in France with Company C, 127th Infantry Regiment, which was a part of the 32nd Infantry Division.

As to Donlevy‘s SF connections, there are two worthy of interest. He played the lead role of Professor Bernard Quatermass in the 1955 British film The Quatermass Xperiment (retitled The Creeping Unknown in the U. S.), then reprised his role as Professor Quatermass in the 1957 British sequel Quatermass II (poster at left, retitled as Enemy from Space in the U. S.). As to his second genre connection of note, it has to do with iconic early horror actor Bela Lugosi (1882-1956). It would seem that our Bela was either a ladies man or had trouble keeping them, for he was married five times. The total elapsed time of his marriage to four of his wives was a mere 8 years. The marriage to his fourth wife, however, was to be for 20 years to Lillian Arch. Lillian Arch (1911-1981) was 19 when they married, Bela was 51. They remained married from 1933-1953, at which time they divorced. A partial reason given for the divorce was Bela’s jealousy of Lillian’s close friendship with none other than Brian Donlevy, with whom Lillian worked on both the radio and television programs as a full-time assistant. Bela’s jealousy, warranted or not, ten years after Bela’s death in 1956, Brian would marry Lillian, the fourth ex-Mrs. Bela Lugosi. They would remain married until Donlevy’s death in 1972.

This episode finds Steve being assigned to the South Pacific, specifically to New Guinea. Following World War II the United States and Australia decided to strengthen their defensive posture in the South Pacific by building strategically positioned military bases on certain islands. The United States has recently been made aware that one of its bases on New Guinea has experienced an act of sabotage and Steve’s mission is to find the perpetrator or perpetrators and bring them to justice. With only a slim lead to go on, Steve and his Australian counterpart put their heads (and intelligence sources) together to put an end once and for all to the international incident known in a secret file as “Strategic Base Sabotaged (New Guinea).”