Wide Boy is a 1952 British second feature ('B')[2] crime film directed by Ken Hughes and starring Susan Shaw, Sydney Tafler and Ronald Howard.

There are only two other customers there at the bar, Robert Mannering and his mistress Caroline Blaine, and it is clear from their conversation that he is a famous surgeon whose wife is dying.

He decides to blackmail the couple, and Mannering agrees to pay him as he does not want any scandal as he is trying to get voted onto the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons.

She tells the police, who are waiting for Benny when he turns up; he tries to escape by scrambling over the bridge but falls to his death on the tracks below.

[9] The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Coincidence plays a large part in this story, which has action and movement but is not, as a whole, particularly competent.

"[10] Kine Weekly wrote: "The picture, a tidy affair, moves briskly along Londen's seamy side.

"[11] BFI Screenoline said Hughes "displays a keen awareness of class differences and, although opportunities for character development are strictly limited by the film's brief running time, he manages to avoid caricature and sketches a series of contrasting milieus with the authenticity brought by the careful observation of detail.

Hughes also takes the trouble to make sure that, while conventional morality is upheld, we retain some shred of sympathy for his wide boy.

"[13] Sight and Sound wrote "Ken Hughes' direction captures an existence of cheap dreams, 20-shillings-per-week lodging houses and harshly neon-lit streets; Tafler's "glycerine mouthed" spiv is far more charismatic than Ronald Howard's police inspector.