Dangerous Assignment
NBC radio and television series
Dangerous Assignment is an NBC Radio drama starring Brian Donlevy broadcast in the US 1949–1953, a syndicated television series distributed in the US 1951–1952 (also starring Brian Donlevy), and an Australian radio series broadcast in 1954-1956 as remakes of the original American radio scripts.
Series premise
"The Commissioner" sent US special agent Steve Mitchell to exotic locales all over the world, where he would encounter adventure and international intrigue in pursuit of some secret. Each show would always open with a brief teaser scene from the episode to follow. After the intro, Steve Mitchell would be summoned to the office of 'The Commissioner', the regional head of an unnamed US State Department agency created to address international unrest as it affected U.S. interests. "The Commissioner" would give background information, explain the current situation and tell Steve his assignment. Steve's cover identity, in almost all his adventures, was that of a suave debonair foreign correspondent for an unnamed print publication — his assignments invariably involved deceit, trickery, and violence, all tied together into a successful resolution by the end of the episode.
Radio series
Dangerous Assignment started out as a replacement radio series broadcast in the US on the NBC radio network in the summer of 1949; it became a syndicated series (produced in Australia) in early 1954. Reportedly, star Brian Donlevy himself was the one who brought the show to NBC.
In the American radio shows, Donlevy was both the protagonist within the action and the narrator, giving the show "a suspenseful immediacy." The only other regular actor on the radio shows was Herb Butterfield, who played "The Commissioner." Many stage and screen actors appeared as guest-stars including, among many others, William Conrad, Raymond Burr, Paul Frees, Jim Davis, Dan O'Herlihy, Richard Boone, and Eddie Cantor.
The Australian series was begun as a result of the popularity of the American series—scripts from shows already broadcast in the US were re-done with Australian actors in 1954. The Australian producers re-created and broadcast thirty-nine episodes from 1954 on.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Dangerous Assignment” as nBC radio and television series. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as nBC radio and television series. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3859270. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1949, 1953, 1951 and 1952.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dangerous Assignment” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.