Newsletter July 2026

In 1944 when The Man Called X premiered on CBS, Ken Thurston — the agent with the mysterious codename — soon had listeners glued to their radios.  Thurston, working for an unnamed superior and an organization referred to simply as “the Bureau” accepted his U.S. Government assignments without question and jetted off to far-flung locations, landing in situations fraught with danger.  Whether on the trail of “hot” diamonds in Argentina, smashing an international marriage racket in Lisbon, tracking down stolen planes for atomic energy in Monte Carlo, or recovering a cholera virus in Guatemala, Thurston always knew he was working for the right side.  Pegon Zellschmidt (portrayed by Leon Belasco) was Thurston’s nemesis, out to beat him to the target and sell the proceeds on the black market for the highest price.  Yet despite his mercenary streak, Pegon also assisted Thurston in his adventures and played the role of comic sidekick.  But make no mistake; if a higher bidder emerged, Pegon would certainly have sold Thurston straight down the river.  The Man Called X started out like many radio programs of the era, as a summer replacement to fill a gap in the schedule for a sponsor unwilling to relinquish their block programming.  Early episodes offered standard detective fare, but then the plot lines began to shift to favor stories about Nazi attempts to sabotage U.S. interests.  By the late 1940s, the time of the so-called “Red Scare” espionage and Soviet infiltration, the villains became Communists and Thurston foiled their plans — sometimes publicly exposing American traitors.  In the Spring of 1951, the program’s star, screen actor Herbert Marshall, suffered a pulmonary embolism following surgery.  Van Heflin, Joseph Cotton, and John Lund each took on the role of Thurston for a single episode, and after a short time, Marshall was well enough to return — by this time, the radio series only had an additional year — bowing out in 1952.  In 1956, ZIV Productions assembled 39 half-hour films adapted from radio scripts for television sydication, with Barry Sullivan in the role of Ken Thurston.  DID YOU KNOW? British-born actor Herbert Marshall lost a leg during active service on the Western Front in World War I. You can notice a slight limp in many of his film including Foreign Correspondent (1940), The Letter (1940), The Razor’s Edge (1946) and The Fly (1958).