Espionage drama · CBS / NBC
The Man Called X
July 10, 1944 – May 27, 1952 · 171 broadcasts
The Man Called X (1944-1952) was radio's suave globe-trotting spy drama, and its secret weapon was a voice. Herbert Marshall -- the distinguished English film star of Trouble in Paradise and Foreign Correspondent -- played Ken Thurston, an American intelligence agent known in the shadows simply as "Mr. X." Each week his cases carried him into the world's great intrigue capitals, Cairo, Istanbul, Lisbon, on the trail of spies, smugglers, and saboteurs, with Marshall's cultured, unhurried delivery doing as much for the atmosphere as any sound effect. Lightening the danger was Leon Belasco as the rogueish con-man sidekick Pegon Zellschmidt, who had an uncanny way of turning up in the most remote corners of the earth -- he always seemed to have a "cousin" nearby. Behind the microphone stood serious talent: it was written by Stephen Longstreet and produced and directed by William N. Robson, the same prestige craftsman who shaped Suspense, Escape, and Calling All Cars. Shifting between CBS and NBC across eight years -- and once filling in as Bob Hope's summer replacement -- the show later became a syndicated Ziv television series in 1956. But on radio it belonged entirely to Herbert Marshall.
Collection status:
112 of 171 held (65% complete)
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Episode Spine
Grouped by year. Jump to the full list below, or open a season on its own page.
- 1944 (4 episodes)
- 1945 (1 episodes)
- 1946 (2 episodes)
- 1947 (39 episodes)
- 1948 (39 episodes)
- 1950 (12 episodes)
- 1951 (52 episodes)
- 1952 (22 episodes)
1944
Palace intrigue swirls around Ken Thurston at the court of an Indian Maharajah, where the simple delivery of a letter proves anything but simple.
1945
1946
A stranger's kiss in a New York theatre lobby draws Ken Thurston to Paris and the trail of the stolen Rotterdam jewel collection.
1947
When an authority on uranium deposits is thrown overboard on a voyage to Antarctica, Ken Thurston takes up a case that soon puts his own life over the side.
April 10, 1947
(untitled)
Sabotage cripples the Acme Oil Company in the Middle East, sending Ken Thurston to Kuwait to hunt the wreckers.
May 1, 1947
(untitled)
May 8, 1947
(untitled)
May 22, 1947
(untitled)
May 29, 1947
(untitled)
A Hawaiian land company is cheating veterans out of property it never owned, and Ken Thurston is framed for murder the moment he starts asking questions.
June 12, 1947
(untitled)
On the trail of Red Sea pirates in Cairo, Ken Thurston is met by an assassin bearing three silver bullets, and plays dead to draw the killers into the open.
July 3, 1947
(untitled)
July 10, 1947
(untitled)
July 17, 1947
(untitled)
Ken Thurston and Pegon Zellschmidt ride a cross-country flight guarding a shipment of radium.
July 31, 1947
(untitled)
A tommy-gun murder leads Ken Thurston and Pegon Zellschmidt to Lisbon and an international marriage racket.
Ken Thurston heads to Mexico to stop smugglers spreading smallpox across the U.S. border.
August 28, 1947
The Least of These
September 11, 1947
(untitled)
September 25, 1947
(untitled)
Ken Thurston goes to Monte Carlo to recover stolen plans for a form of atomic energy that needs no uranium.
October 23, 1947
No Greater Evil
October 30, 1947
(untitled)
A vanished shipment of the rare drug streptomycin leads Ken Thurston to a remote Greek island.
Stolen expedition data and a murdered scientist send Ken Thurston to Boston.
Ken Thurston and Pegon Zellschmidt travel to Tahiti to investigate a string of mysterious explosions at a phosphate mine.
1948
A Los Angeles physics teacher is shot dead moments after telling Ken Thurston about some missing carbon 14.
Ken Thurston heads for the East Indies to trap 'The Fish Peddler' and his net of crime.
A shipment of explosives leads Ken Thurston to Panama and a revolutionary known as 'El Tigre.'
Ken Thurston travels the river aboard the 'Niger Queen' to find two million dollars in missing guns.
In Philadelphia, Ken Thurston hunts a pair of George Washington's candlesticks that hold the key to hidden Nazi loot.
Ken Thurston goes to Switzerland to uncover who is flooding Europe with counterfeit American currency.
April 4, 1948
(untitled)
April 11, 1948
(untitled)
April 18, 1948
(untitled)
April 25, 1948
(untitled)
May 2, 1948
(untitled)
May 9, 1948
(untitled)
May 16, 1948
(untitled)
May 23, 1948
(untitled)
May 30, 1948
(untitled)
June 6, 1948
(untitled)
June 13, 1948
(untitled)
June 20, 1948
(untitled)
June 27, 1948
(untitled)
July 4, 1948
(untitled)
July 11, 1948
(untitled)
July 18, 1948
(untitled)
July 25, 1948
(untitled)
August 1, 1948
(untitled)
Ken Thurston works to recover a stolen art collection meant to aid Italian war orphans, aided by a dazed, frightened girl who cannot remember.
In the CBS run's finale, Ken Thurston goes to Sicily to buy a bankrupt circus as cover for breaking the Mafia's American gun-smuggling pipeline.
1950
Returning to NBC, the series opens with a murder aboard the Istanbul Express and a box of custom-blended cigarettes that are far more than they seem.
In a return of an earlier case, Ken Thurston heads for the East Indies to trap 'The Fish Peddler' and his net of crime.
A transport-plane crash off the Greek coast and a murder in Athens draw Ken Thurston into a case turning on a possible cure for cancer.
An atomic scientist vanishes from Austria, and Ken Thurston sets out to find him.
A telegrapher is shot in Rangoon to stop a message getting out, and a fellow agent has disappeared, so Ken Thurston flies to Burma.
A Tibetan prayer wheel draws Ken Thurston to Lhasa.
A cryptographer's electronic deciphering machine and the cryptographer himself both go missing, sending Ken Thurston from Virginia to California through a maze of impostors.
Ken Thurston is sent to Guatemala to recover stolen cholera-virus serum.
In Syria, a smear of red mud helps Ken Thurston solve sabotage on an important pipeline.
A Christmas fantasy: Mr. X crashes the plane he is flying somewhere in the Middle East just before the holiday.
Witchcraft and death stalk a uranium mine in the Belgian Congo, and Ken Thurston goes to investigate.
1951
Five years after first hearing of the 'Himmler Plates' in a wartime concentration camp, Ken Thurston follows the world's most dangerous fifty-dollar bills to Montevideo.
A man carrying sabotage pamphlets walks into an airplane propeller at LaGuardia, sending Ken Thurston to Cuba to find the source of the trouble.
Ken Thurston flies to Japan to learn who killed a scientist working on a cure for radiation poisoning.
A dying saboteur in Stuttgart gasps three words -- 'Zardoff, Friday, Orient Express' -- and Ken Thurston follows where they lead.
A submarine flying an American flag is sinking ships in the Bay of Bengal, its German-accented crew keeping watch for the Man Called X.
Sabotage is suspected at a troubled coal mine in the Saar basin, and Ken Thurston goes to investigate.
Ken Thurston crosses into communist North Korea on a rescue mission.
A shepherd from Soviet Azerbaijan tries to warn the Man Called X of a coming grab for Middle Eastern oil, but dies at the shortwave set before he can finish.
When Pegon Zellschmidt is caught smuggling opium into the country, Ken Thurston flies to Los Angeles after the ring behind it.
Ken Thurston joins U.S. Immigration agents at a Montana ranch to break a ring flying illegal aliens in from Mexico.
Ken Thurston travels to Leiden to find who murdered his old friend, an outspoken liberal Dutch professor.
Sent to Guayaquil, Ecuador, Ken Thurston wades into the question of what became of one John Beringer.
Stolen British atomic-energy reports draw Ken Thurston to a Dublin tavern, The Blue Unicorn, to outbid foreign agents for the secret documents.
Ken Thurston works to save an Indian land-reclamation project from sabotage.
Ken Thurston goes to Alamogordo to stop a leak of secrets from the White Sands rocket tests.
The murder of a crusading Puerto Rican newsman by the Nationalist party pulls Ken Thurston into the case.
In Port-au-Prince, where voodoo drums still sound in the jungle nights, an ancient terror awaits a well-dressed man stepping from a limousine -- and the Man Called X.
On the glittering French Riviera, a deadly game plays out in a villa just across the Monaco border, with death for the stakes.
Aboard an ocean liner bound for Hawaii, Ken Thurston hunts an elusive countess and a spy six months dead yet lately seen in a San Francisco bar.
Five Haitian officials are killed by 'zombies,' and Ken Thurston's investigation nearly makes him one of the living dead himself.
In Hong Kong, one of Ken Thurston's agents works to stop American medical supplies being smuggled into Red China, until a druggist turns up murdered.
When an American businessman 'confesses' to spying in Bucharest, Pringle and Pegon Zellschmidt head to Romania to get him out.
In an India stalked by hunger, a black market in grain breeds violence, and draws Ken Thurston.
Up the Amazon in Brazil, Ken Thurston works to head off a native uprising that threatens America's rubber supply.
In a Vienna where the past forever intrudes on the present, Ken Thurston investigates the murder of the owner of the city's last free newspaper.
Two U.S. agents are suspected of defecting to Russia with the secrets of 'Operation Zero,' and Ken Thurston flies to France after the rogue.
Accidents and murder are hampering the nationalization of Indonesia's oil industry, and Ken Thurston travels to the Sumatran fields.
July 20, 1951
(untitled)
July 27, 1951
(untitled)
August 3, 1951
(untitled)
August 10, 1951
(untitled)
August 17, 1951
(untitled)
August 24, 1951
(untitled)
August 31, 1951
(untitled)
September 7, 1951
(untitled)
September 14, 1951
(untitled)
September 21, 1951
(untitled)
September 28, 1951
(untitled)
Ken Thurston flies to Chicago to find the missing Jack Doyle and shut down a source of vicious rumors.
October 8, 1951
(untitled)
October 15, 1951
(untitled)
October 22, 1951
(untitled)
October 29, 1951
(untitled)
November 5, 1951
(untitled)
November 12, 1951
(untitled)
November 19, 1951
(untitled)
November 26, 1951
(untitled)
December 3, 1951
(untitled)
December 10, 1951
(untitled)
December 17, 1951
(untitled)
December 24, 1951
(untitled)
1952
Ken Thurston poses as a pilot to learn which of three atomic scientists stole the elusive 'Formula H.'
Terror is striking those behind 'Radio Freedom,' the Luxembourg station broadcasting the truth past the Iron Curtain, and Ken Thurston investigates.
At the Casablanca cafe 'Sword of Allah,' Ken Thurston works the trail of a spy ring.
A friend of Ken Thurston's is shot dead at home, victim of a dirty racket preying on Korean War veterans.
A body found in a Tokyo park is identified as Ken Thurston himself -- the Man Called X.
After devastating floods, Ken Thurston goes to Italy to learn where U.S. relief supplies vanished and who killed the relief administrator.
A rare half-penny stamp carrying hidden information draws Ken Thurston to Egypt, past a corpse aboard a train and a menace called the Man with the Third Green Eye.
In the Orinoco river basin of Venezuela, Ken Thurston takes up a case rooted in the country's founding dream of liberty.
A man is shot dead on a Yokohama pier right in front of Pegon Zellschmidt, gasping the name 'Ken Thurston.'
March 25, 1952
(untitled)
April 1, 1952
Cobalt Conspiracy in Tanganyika
April 8, 1952
(untitled)
The Story
The Man Called X (1944-1952) was radio's suave globe-trotting spy drama, and its secret weapon was a voice. Herbert Marshall -- the distinguished English film star of Trouble in Paradise and Foreign Correspondent -- played Ken Thurston, an American intelligence agent known in the shadows simply as "Mr. X." Each week his cases carried him into the world's great intrigue capitals, Cairo, Istanbul, Lisbon, on the trail of spies, smugglers, and saboteurs, with Marshall's cultured, unhurried delivery doing as much for the atmosphere as any sound effect. Lightening the danger was Leon Belasco as the rogueish con-man sidekick Pegon Zellschmidt, who had an uncanny way of turning up in the most remote corners of the earth -- he always seemed to have a "cousin" nearby. Behind the microphone stood serious talent: it was written by Stephen Longstreet and produced and directed by William N. Robson, the same prestige craftsman who shaped Suspense, Escape, and Calling All Cars. Shifting between CBS and NBC across eight years -- and once filling in as Bob Hope's summer replacement -- the show later became a syndicated Ziv television series in 1956. But on radio it belonged entirely to Herbert Marshall.
Full story — coming soon while it's being curated.
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