On The Spot by Edgar Wallace. BBC RADIO DRAMA

6 months ago
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On the Spot
Edgar Wallace's most famous play is set against a completely authentic background of gangland life in Chicago during Prohibition of 1920s and 30s USA: Tony Perelli is the Big Shot with his gunmen and his dames – running a drinks racket. Playing the organ in his fancy home, he loads "his women with jewels and the coffins of his enemies with orchids” - an appalling figure of polished criminality. But Detective-Commissioner John Kelly, Chief of Police is after Perelli - and if he catches him, he wants to watch him hang for murder...
Tony Perelli .... Peter Woodthorpe
DC John Kelly, Chief of Police .... Trevor Martin
Shaun O'Donnell .... Leslie Heritage
Minn Lee .... Denise Bryer
Angelo Verona .... Robert Rietty
Con O'Hara .... Michael Kilgarriff
Mike Feeney .... Malcolm Hayes
Maria Pouliski .... Sandra Clark
Jimmy McGarth .... John Forrest
Doctor .... Haydn Jones
Priest .... David Neal
Written by Edgar Wallace
Dramatised by Raymond Raikes
Directed by Jean Bower
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 1976

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was a British writer of sensational detective, gangster, adventure, and sci-fi novels, plays and stories.

Born into poverty, Wallace left school at the age of 12. He joined the army at age 21 and was a war correspondent during the Second Boer War for Reuters and the Daily Mail. Struggling with debt, he left South Africa, returned to London and began writing thrillers to raise income, publishing books including The Four Just Men (1905). Drawing on his time as a reporter in the Congo, covering the Belgian atrocities, Wallace serialised short stories in magazines such as The Windsor Magazine and later published collections such as Sanders of the River (1911). He signed with Hodder and Stoughton in 1921 and became an internationally recognised author.

Wallace was such a prolific writer that one of his publishers claimed in 1929 that a quarter of all books in England were written by him. In 1931, Wallace moved to Hollywood, where he worked as a script writer for RKO. He died suddenly from undiagnosed diabetes, preparing the initial draft of King Kong (1933). Over his lifetime, Wallace wrote screenplays, poetry, historical non-fiction, 18 stage plays, 957 short stories and over 170 novels, 12 in 1929 alone. More than 160 films have been made of Wallace's work.

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