“Yeah, danger is my assignment–I get sent to a lot of places I can’t even pronounce. Dangerous Assignment (1949-53) aired “The Lost City” on May 17, 1950. Since this is only the fifth episode we have offered of Dangerous Assignment since February of 2017 and the first since March of 2019, a reprise of its background is in order for newcomers to the series. 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, photo top right) 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.
Without giving too much away, this episode takes undercover agent Steve Mitchell to the Middle East to find 100,000 barrels of missing oil, where he of course must work around semi-hostile police, escape treachery, and thwart his own murder, all before he can uncover the secret of “The Lost City.”
Play Time: 29:08
{Danger, thrills, and adventure were on the minds of the neighborhood gang after listening to this episode of Dangerous Assignment, if what they brought home from the nearby newsstand is any indication. Danger (1950) seemed promising but alas, lasted but two issues, the September 1950 issue was its last. Fantastic Novels (1940-41, 1948-51) brought classic material to a new audience. The cover story on the issue below is by one Eric North, which was a pseudonym used by Bernard Cronin, not an everyday name in the SF world. That said, Cronin’s more popular pseudonym is more recognized by those of a certain age and generation. One of the very first SF novels I read before I was 10 was Eric North’s juvenile, page-turning The Ant Men (1955). While North’s cover story below is hailed as a novel, it is in fact a novella that first appeared in the Melbourne Herald in 1924, and then as a 5-part serial beginning in the July 2, 1938 issue of Argosy. Fantastic Novels was a bi-monthly in 1950. Thrilling Detective (1931-53) was one of the most popular of the remaining detective pulps to survive into the 1950s; hardly a surprise if it could still draw cover-worthy talent like Carroll John Daly as on the cover below.. It was a monthly until late 1945, ran a total of a whopping 213 issues since its premiere issue, and ended its laudable run as a bi-monthly.]
[Left: Danger, May 1950 – Center: Fantastic Novels, June 1950 – Right: Thrilling Detective, April 1950]
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