AustLit

Benny is the 'wide boy' of the title: a minor crook making a precarious living selling black-market pantyhose. But when he steals a handbag and finds it contains a compromising letter from the woman's married lover, he starts on a even more precarious but hopefully more profitable career as a blackmailer.

Wide Boy started life as a radio play, but newspaper reports in early 1952 indicate that 'though rehearsals were completed and a recording made yesterday', the BBC pulled the play on the day it was due to be broadcast, stating 'that the theme of the play was considered unsuited to the listening audience at the time arranged for it–8 p.m.' (The West Australian, 7 February 1952, p.9). Reinits is quoted in the report as noting that 'he was left in the unsatisfactory position of not knowing whether it was the story, the background or the treatment which was disapproved of' (p.9).

Wide Boy was later released as a short story, published with the novelisation of another Rienits film, Assassin for Hire.

Further Reading

'Broadcast of Play Cancelled', The West Australian, Thursday 7 February 1952, p.9.