Never Bet the Devil Your Head

My name is Poe. Edgar Allan Poe. I write stories. Charges have been brought against me by certain ignoramuses that I have never written a tale with a moral. By way of mitigating these ridiculous accusations, I offer the following unusual history, a history about who is moral, there can be no question whatsoever.

However, you can see the moral in its very title, never bet the devil your head, and note, please, that I do not bring in the lesson at the tag end of the fable, as others I want to do.

Very well, here then I denounce my critics, and beg no favor other than your close attention. From Hollywood, the CBS radio workshop, dedicated to man's imagination, the theatre of the mind. The world too long thought of Edgar Allan Poe as a door misogynist who concerned himself with black cats, gold bugs, pits, pendulums, and murder.

Few realized and fewer would believe that this man of gloom had a sense of humor. This the workshop now seeks to prove, in William N. Robeson's production of Edgar Allan Poe's satiric story, Never Bet the Devil Your Head, starring John Dana, with music conducted by I'm a rigo merino and with Jack Johnstone as guest director.

It is not my design to vituperate my deceased friend Toby Dammit. He was a sad dog, it is true, and a dog's death it was that he died. But he himself was not to blame for his vices.

They grew out of a personal defect in his mother. I recall a conversation I had with her when Toby was a mere baby-n-arm. Duties to a well-regulated mind, Mr. Poe, are always pleasures. It is my duty, and therefore my pleasure, to see that as quickly as possible my son learns the difference between right and wrong.