Radio Drama · Old Time Radio Researchers · Drama · Mystery & crime · News & history
Top Secret
- Networks
- NBC (as its archives name them)
- Heard
- 1950
- Episodes
- 26
TOP SECRET Ryan Ellett
More about it
It was announced in May 1950 that Ilona Massey had been signed for the NBC summer series Top Secret. Massey was a Hungarian-born actress who had appeared on Broadway in the 1943 Ziegfeld Follies and in a handful of Hollywood features including Rosalie (1937), Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) and Holiday in Mexico (1947). Top Secret was slated to replace The Adventures of Christopher London in the Monday night 10:30 (EST) time slot. Both series featured tales of international intrigue, a genre quickly gaining favor in the post-War landscape. Top Secret was one of several summer replacement series on NBC that year, a number of which featured female leads. Others in this summer replacement class included Kitty Pepper (with Arlene Francis), The Penny Singleton Show, The Cass Daley Show, Sara’s Private Caper (with Sara Berner), and Tugboat Annie (with Betty Garde). Harry Junkin was tapped to direct Top Secret and Alan Sloane wrote the scripts. The series was the result of survey data done by NBC indicating listeners were getting tired of the private eye stories that were so prevalent during the 1940s and wanted something different with a bit more realism. Their research department reported back “a strong preference for naturalistic, hard-boiled action without fancy frills.” Wanted and Confidentially Yours also emerged from this corporate research. Top Secret aired from June 12 to October 26, 1950. It aired on various days and in different timeslots…
Episodes, in broadcast order
Where it comes from 2
The archive items its episodes are played from, best first, with each one’s rights as its archive states them. An episode two sets both hold is played from the first.
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OTRR Top Secret Singles
the Internet Archive states no licence or rights for it.
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Top Secret - 17 Episodes of the Old Time Radio show
the Internet Archive states no licence or rights for it.
2 more sets hold only episodes played here from a set above.
A set by the Old Time Radio Researchers Group (otrr.org), at the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio collection.
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Radio drama, old-time radio and historic broadcasts from the Internet Archive (its Old Time Radio collection with the Old Time Radio Researchers' sets, WWII Era Audio Recordings, the Pacifica Radio Archives, the Radio Haiti Archive, German radio plays and listeners' uploads), Wikimedia Commons (with the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision's broadcasts) and the Library of Congress. Every episode plays from its archive, which this site does not copy; rights are as each archive states them. Nothing here is called public domain on this site's say-so. In the United States, sound recordings first fixed before 15 February 1972 have federal protection under the Music Modernization Act of 2018, for most until 2067 at the latest, so most American radio of the 1930s to the 1950s is not in the public domain there. Each set shows the licence, mark or statement its archive gives, and says whose it is. Horror, crime, war and westerns are for teenage and adult profiles, racist caricature for adults only, and children’s profiles hear what was made for children. More about these archives.