Big Town

How It Got Started

Big Town was built as a vehicle for Edward G. Robinson, who was looking for a way out of the gangster typecasting that had followed him since Little Caesar in 1931. The idea was to put him on the right side of the law — not as a cop or a detective, but as a newspaper editor. Robinson's Steve Wilson ran the Illustrated Press, a fictional crusading daily operating in a city explicitly identified in the opening as "neither New York, Chicago, Saint Louis or San Francisco" but meant to represent "the same as the people in every large city." The show premiered on CBS on October 19, 1937, with Lever Brothers' Rinso soap as its first sponsor, strategically placed in the hour leading into the Al Jolson Lifebuoy Show on Tuesday nights, partly as counter-programming against Jack Benny on NBC.

Robinson had no real radio experience when he took the job — Big Town was his first radio role. His Steve Wilson wasn't entirely heroic at the start; in some early broadcasts he came across, by various accounts, as "a bit of a louse" before settling into the full crusader the show became famous for. Once he hit his stride, Robinson played Wilson in what might be called his Little Caesar register — barking orders with the authority of a man who had been scary on screen for years, now redirecting that energy toward racketeers and grafters instead of toward the law. The show frequently reminded listeners that Wilson wielded the power of the press "heavily but wisely."

Writer Jerry McGill, who had actually worked as a newspaperman before moving into radio, brought a strong editorial slant to the material. The show was not shy about the soapbox. Episodes attacked juvenile delinquency, racism, and drunk driving. McGill's reporters were portrayed as diligent, sober champions of justice — an idealized version of the press with a recurring slogan delivered through an echo chamber: "Freedom of the press is a flaming sword! Use it justly . . . hold it high . . . guard it well." McGill took creative license freely, slipping into high melodrama when the story called for it, but the newsroom setting gave the show an institutional gravity that pure detective dramas didn't have.

The Cast in the Robinson Years

Claire Trevor played Lorelei Kilbourne, the society editor who joined Wilson's racket-busting adventures, when the show launched. She was a young Hollywood actress at the time — her biggest role in Stagecoach was still two years away when Big Town debuted. The character's function was partly to provide Wilson with a moral conscience, an echo of the editor's secretary Robinson had played opposite in his Oscar-nominated 1931 film Five Star Final. He and Lorelei's eventual replacement, Ona Munson, had actually appeared together in that same film, and the opening episode of Big Town deliberately echoed its closing scene.

Trevor's exit in 1940 came gradually. She later described the process in a straight-faced summary of what her part had been reduced to: "I'll wait for you in the car, Steve" and "How'd it go, Steve?" Her replacement was found through a blind audition in which recordings were numbered and played for agency staff who didn't know whose voice they were hearing. When they heard Ona Munson's reading, one of the agency men said, "We all felt as if we'd like to take her out on a date." Munson won the role. There was also a personal thread running through the first run: Claire Trevor had married producer Clark Andrews in 1938, and both left the series in 1939.

The production team around Robinson included director William N. Robson, who was also a former cub reporter — he confirmed this in a later interview with radio historian Dick Bertel — and co-producer Crane Wilbur. Gale Gordon played the pompous District Attorney Miller. Lou Merrill handled many of the gangster roles and was often kept close as a potential stand-in for Robinson. The show's theme was composed by Fran Frey, with Leith Stevens directing the music. Carlton KaDell announced. A newsboy played by Bobby Winckler opened each episode with the cry "Extra, extra, get your Illustrated Press!"

The New York Years

When production moved from Hollywood to New York in 1942, Robinson chose not to follow. His departure looked, at the time, like the end of the show. Jerry McGill disagreed. He assembled a new cast and resumed production in 1943, keeping the show going for another nine years.

The rebuilt Big Town was headed by Edward Pawley, a Broadway veteran born in Kansas City in 1901 whose stage credits included the title role in the 1928 production of Elmer Gantry and, much later, a 1942 production of The Willow and I opposite a young Gregory Peck. Pawley had crossed paths with Robinson before — both had appeared in a 1926 comedy called The Stolen Lady at Werba's Brooklyn Theater. His baritone voice drew favorable notices from journalists including Walter Winchell and Heywood Hale Broun. Fran Carlon played Lorelei in the new run, and the character evolved from moral conscience to a more equal crime-reporting partner.

The post-1942 show introduced a richer gallery of recurring characters. Robert Dryden played Harry the Hack, a cab driver with encyclopedic knowledge of Big Town's back alleys and little-used streets whose tips regularly gave Wilson an edge over the criminals he was tracking — a role later filled by both Ross Martin and Mason Adams. Larry Haines played Mozart, the blind piano player who owned a bistro somewhere in Big Town's underworld-adjacent geography. Donald MacDonald played Willie the Weep, a waterfront contact who talked in a steady sob. Lawson Zerbe played Dusty Miller the photographer. The post-1942 production also used a studio organ rather than a full orchestra, and the announcer handled commercial transitions rather than a narrator providing scene-setting prose — a leaner sound that reflected the show's move away from the Hollywood production values of the Robinson era.

Sterling Drugs, the parent company behind Ironized Yeast and Bayer Aspirin, sponsored the returning CBS run. When the show moved to NBC in September 1948, Lever Brothers came back — this time promoting Lifebuoy soap rather than Rinso. Pawley delivered the Lifebuoy commercials in character as Steve Wilson. The show aired Tuesdays at 10 on NBC, then returned to CBS for a final run beginning December 1951, airing Wednesdays at 8 until the last broadcast on June 25, 1952.

The Pawley years were commercially strong. In the January 1948 Nielsen ratings, Big Town ranked twelfth among all radio programs — ahead of Suspense, The Adventures of Sam Spade, Mr. District Attorney, The FBI in Peace and War, Blondie, and Mr. and Mrs. North. During his tenure the show was rated first among reporter-type drama series and claimed a listening audience estimated between ten and twenty million people. The post-1942 run continued the show's crusading character, but the flavor and star power of the Robinson years were harder to replicate. Pawley's Big Town was a solid, well-rated program; it was not quite the same show.

Pawley left after the 1950–51 season. He retired to Rappahannock County, Virginia, raised championship goats, wrote poetry, and worked part-time as a radio announcer at WCVA in Culpeper. Walter Greaza took over the role of Steve Wilson for the show's final months. A biography of Pawley — Edward J. Pawley: Broadway's Elmer Gantry, Radio's Steve Wilson, and Hollywood's Perennial Bad Guy, by Robert Gibson Corder — was published by Outskirts Press in 2006.

Beyond Radio

Big Town moved into other formats while the radio show was still running. Pine-Thomas Productions, a low-budget unit at Paramount nicknamed "The Two Dollar Bills" for producers William Pine and William C. Thomas, bought the film rights in 1945 and released four pictures: Big Town (1947), I Cover Big Town (1947), Big Town After Dark (1947), and Big Town Scandal (1948). All four starred Phillip Reed as Wilson and Hillary Brooke as Lorelei. The first film's script was co-written by Daniel Mainwaring, who later called it one of the early projects he was proud of. When the films moved into television syndication, they were retitled to avoid confusion with the TV series: Big Town became Guilty Assignment, I Cover Big Town became I Cover the Underworld, and so on.

The television series debuted on CBS on October 5, 1950, and ran through 1956, eventually moving to NBC for its final two seasons. Patrick McVey played Wilson for the CBS run; Mark Stevens took over for NBC and also produced, wrote, and directed most of the final season, which adopted a Dragnet-style documentary format. Five different actresses played Lorelei across the TV run. Repeat episodes also aired on DuMont under the title City Assignment, and reruns circulated under additional titles including Heart of the City, Headline, and Byline Steve Wilson. TV Guide described the CBS version as "a routine cops-and-robbers show in which the managing editor and the girl reporter were forever chasing after gangsters and replating Page One."

DC Comics extended the franchise further with a Big Town comic book that ran for fifty issues from January 1951 through early 1958, edited by Whitney Ellsworth. The title drew on artists including Carmine Infantino, Gil Kane, and Alex Toth, with most later scripts by John Broome. The first issue featured Steve Wilson solving a food poisoning mystery in a story called "Deadly Nightmare!" The Lorelei character on the comic's covers appeared alongside Wilson on equal footing — a visual statement of how far her role had evolved from the early radio days, when she had been reduced to waiting in the car.