Edgar Wallace's most famous play takes place in a completely authentic context of gang life in Chicago during the Prohibition of the 1920s and 30s in the United States: Tony Perelli is the Big Shot with his gunmen and his ladies who run a drink trade. Playing the organ in his luxurious home, he loads “his wives with jewels and the coffins of his enemies with orchids” – a frightening figure of refined criminality. But Detective Chief Constable John Kelly is after Perelli – and if he catches him, he wants to see him hanged for murder…
Tony Perelli…Peter Woodthorpe
DC John Kelly, Chief Constable…Trevor Martin
Shaun O'Donnell….Leslie Legacy
Minn Lee…Denise Bryer
Angelo Verona …. Robert Rietty
With 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
Dramatized 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 novels, plays and sensational detective, gangster, adventure and science fiction stories.
Born into poverty, Wallace left school at the age of 12. He joined the army at 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 supplement his income, publishing books including The Four Just Men (1905). Drawing on his experience as a journalist in the Congo, covering atrocities in Belgium, Wallace published 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 renowned 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 screenwriter for RKO. He died suddenly of undiagnosed diabetes while preparing the first version of King Kong (1933). During his life, Wallace wrote screenplays, poetry, historical works, 18 plays, 957 short stories and more than 170 novels, including 12 in 1929 alone. More than 160 films were made about the Wallace's work.
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