'The Shadow' is a
fictional character created by
Walter B. Gibson in 1931 with the first story title "The Living Shadow". The character is one of the most famous of the
pulp heroes of the 1930s and 1940s -- made even more famous through a popular
radio series originally played by Orson Welles, The Shadow has also been featured in
comic books,
comic strips,
television, and at least seven
motion pictures. Regardless, ''The Shadow'' is best regarded for its radio years, in which pulp crime fiction received perhaps its most compelling broadcast interpretation.
Even after decades, the unmistakable introduction from ''The Shadow'', intoned by announcer
John Archer, has earned a place in the American
lexicon: "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!"
Background
''The Shadow's'' birth as a furtive crime solver was practically an accident. Beginning July 31,
1930 [1], "The Shadow" was the name given to the narrator of ''Detective Stories'' (
James LaCurto and, later,
Frank Readick), a radio show whose plots were drawn from the pulp magazine of the same name. The magazine was published by
Street and Smith, and the company aimed the radio program at boosting the magazine's circulation. However, listeners found the announcer far more compelling than the stories -- and began asking newsstands for copies of ''The Shadow Magazine'', though it did not exist.
Recognising the demand and responding promptly, Street and Smith commissioned
Walter B. Gibson to begin writing stories of ''The Shadow''. Using the house pen name
Maxwell Grant, Gibson wrote a reported 282 out of 325 ''Shadow'' books over twenty years: a novel-length story twice a month (1st and 15th). He initially fashioned the character as a man of villainous elements who used them to battle crime, clad in black and working predominantly after dark, burglarizing in the name of justice, and terrifying criminals into vulnerability before he or someone gunned them down. The first book produced was
The Living Shadow, published April 1, 1931.
The Shadow was a
noirish anti-hero in every sense, likely inspired by
mentalist Joseph Dunninger, a friend of Gibson's.
The Golden Vulture
Because of the effort involved in getting out two stories every month, a number of guest writers were brought in to do occasional stories to lighten Gibson's work load. One of these was
Lester Dent, who wrote the
Doc Savage stories. Fans of Doc Savage who read "The Golden Vulture" (July 15, 1938) are disappointed as it is a run of the mill Shadow story. This is said to be because Gibson, fearing Dent's obvious skill as a story writer, that he could be called on to do more and more stories until he took over The Shadow. So Gibson butchered the story, cutting out important and exciting elements from it. This is possible because it was far from Dent's normal standard and because Dent did no more Shadow stories.
Character evolution
The character evolved over his lengthy fiction life. In print, he slouched elusively beneath hat, cape, and often, a black or red silk mask, anticipating another popular radio anti-hero, ''
The Green Hornet''. He also skulked in the shadows by his skill at concealing himself -- at first. In due course, and in his most famous incarnation, The Shadow became an invisible man who supposedly learned "while traveling through
East Asia...the mysterious power to cloud men's minds, so they could not see him."
In part, that new incarnation was born of necessity; radio's time constraints made it difficult to describe The Shadow in hiding and nearly invisible. Some believe the Shadow was a
hypnotist, as explicitly mentioned in at least a few radio episodes; others contend that The Shadow could manipulate
Qi. But because radio was not a visual medium, audiences found The Shadow's invisibility easy to accept.
Character universe
In print, The Shadow was born Kent Allard, a famed aviator who crashed in the
South American tropical jungles and, after making a fortune in that region, returned to the United States, arriving in
New York City and adopting numerous identities to cloak his return.
One of these was Lamont Cranston, "wealthy young man about town." In fact, Cranston was a separate character whom Allard resembled (see the story ''The Shadow Laughs''). While Cranston traveled the world, Allard assumed his identity in New York. In their first meeting, with Allard/The Shadow in bed recovering from wounds, he threatens Cranston, saying that he has arranged to switch signatures on various documents and other means that will allow him to take over the Lamont Cranston identity entirely unless Cranston agrees to allow Allard to impersonate him when he is abroad. Cranston agrees. The two men sometimes meet in order to impersonate each other (see ''Crime over Miami'').
He also carries out undercover work as Fritz, a doddery old janitor who cleans at Police Headquarters and listens in on their conversations.
The Shadow had an entire network of agents who helped him in his fight against crime. These included:
★
Harry Vincent, his most trusted associate whose life he saved when Vincent wanted to commit suicide in the first Shadow pulp;
★ Moe Shrevnitz, a cab driver who doubled as his chauffeur;
★
Margo Lane, a wealthy socialite;
★ Clyde Burke, newspaper man; and
★ Burbank, a radio operator who maintained contact between The Shadow and his agents.
Though wanted by the police, The Shadow also worked with them and through them, notably gleaning information from his many chats with Commissioner Weston at the Cobalt Club. Weston believed that Cranston was a rich playboy who dabbled in detective work. Another police contact was Detective Joe Cardona, who was active in many Shadow books.
Those whose relationship with The Shadow came through radio alone had to wait until the August
1937 publication of ''The Shadow Unmasks'' to learn the truth; in this novel, Cranston revealed his true identity as Kent Allard.
Radio program
''The Shadow'' was long believed to have debuted on radio as a program in its own right
September 26,
1937, on the
Mutual Broadcasting System. But the character actually premiered in September
1931, on
CBS, as part of the hour-long ''The Blue Coal Radio Revue'' (named for the show's sponsor), featuring Frank Readick -- the "Shadow" announcer of ''Detective Stories'' -- as The Shadow, and playing Sundays at 5:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. The stories also appeared on Thursday nights for a month, when ''Love Story Drama'' (another Street and Smith creation) took the Thursday night slot -- but also featured occasional portrayals of The Shadow.
Blue Coal had a long relationship with the Shadow, moving the radio series to
NBC in October
1932 with Readick playing the character on Wednesday nights now. Two years later, NBC ran the stories on Mondays and Wednesdays, both at 6:30 p.m., with LaCurto taking occasional turns as the title character. Three years later came the beginning of the half-hour drama radio buffs have remembered so well, with the then-unknown
Orson Welles as The Shadow, the show moving to Mutual, and the famous catch phrase now in full play accompanied by the strains of an excerpt from Opus 31 of the
Camille Saint-Saëns classical composition, "Le Rouet d'Omphale".
Welles did not speak that signature line -- Readick did, using a water glass next to his mouth for the echo effect. But Welles did make a credible Shadow, two years before his notoriety as the mastermind of
Mercury Theatre on the Air's production of ''
War of the Worlds''.
After Welles left the role for a career in the cinema, The Shadow was portrayed by such actors as
Bill Johnstone,
Bret Morrison (the longest tenure, with ten years in two separate runs),
John Archer, and
Steve Courtleigh as Lamont Cranston/The Shadow. The radio show also introduced female characters into the Shadow's realm, most notably Margot Lane (played by
Agnes Moorehead among others) as Cranston's love interest and crime-solving partner (the character was eventually integrated into Gibson's pulp novels). Lane was described as Cranston's "friend and companion" in later episodes, although the exact nature of their relationshp was left unclear. In the 1994 movie, Margot's name was spelled "Margo." However, early scripts of the radio show clearly show that the character's name was spelled "Margot".
Once ''The Shadow'' joined Mutual as a half-hour series, it did not leave Sunday evenings radio until
December 26,
1954, outlasting the magazine that gave birth to it: ''The Shadow Magazine'' ended with the summer
1949 issue, although Gibson wrote three new "official" stories between
1963 and
1980. Gibson started off a short series of updated Shadow novels for Belmont with ''Return of the Shadow'' under his own name, followed by ''The Shadow Strikes'', ''Beware Shadow'', ''Cry Shadow'', ''The Shadow's Revenge'', ''Mark of The Shadow'', ''Shadow Go Mad'', ''Night of The Shadow'', and ''Destination: Moon''. The Shadow had mental powers in these books, to cloud men's minds so he effectively became invisible, to conquer pain, etc.
Comic books
Cover to ''The Shadow'' #1,
November 1973. Art by Michael Kaluta.
''The Shadow'' has been depicted in comic books several times:
★ A comic strip by
Vernon Greene in
1938.
★
Street & Smith published their own comic line for awhile and this included a ''Shadow Comic'' that lasted 101 issues between 1940-1948.
★ The next comic was the short-lived comic put out by
Archie Comics under their
Mighty Comics line. At first, the Shadow depicted was loosely based on the radio version (but with blonde hair), but in the third issue was turned into a camp superhero by
Jerry Siegel.
★ The most acclaimed depiction was the
1970s Shadow comic initially written by
Dennis O'Neil and
Mike Kaluta, published by
DC Comics. Of interest to pulp fans is issue 11, which guest-starred another pulp-fiction character ''
The Avenger''.
★ In the late 1980s, another DC reincarnation was created by
Howard Chaykin,
Andy Helfer,
Bill Sienkiewicz, and
Kyle Baker, in a miniseries and sequel ongoing series. This version brought The Shadow to modern day New York. While initially successful, this version was not popular with "Shadow" traditionalists, because it depicted The Shadow using Uzi submachineguns and rocket launchers, as well as featuring a strong strain of black comedy throughout. It was canceled after an issue in which the Shadow's head was transplanted onto a robot body.
★ In 1988 O'Neil and Kaluta (with inker Russ Heath) returned to the Shadow with the Marvel Graphic Novel "Hitler's Astrologer" set in 1941.
★ From 1989 to 1992, DC published a new series, ''The Shadow Strikes'', by
Gerard Jones and
Eduardo Barreto. This series was set in the 1930s, and returned The Shadow to his pulp origins. The series featured The Shadow's first team-up with
Doc Savage, another popular pulp hero. The stories in this series often led The Shadow into encounters with well-known celebrities of the 1930s, such as
Albert Einstein,
Amelia Earhart,
Charles Lindbergh, union organizer
John L. Lewis, and Chicago gangsters
Frank Nitti and
Jake Guzik.
★ In issue 11 of ''The Shadow Strikes'', the Shadow even teams up with a radio announcer named Grover Mills -- a character based on the young
Orson Welles -- who has been impersonating The Shadow on the radio. (The character's name is taken from Grover's Mill, New Jersey -- the name of the town where the Martians land in Welles's 1938 radio broadcast of ''
The War of the Worlds.'')
★
Dark Horse Comics published three mini-series based on the character, including an adaptation of the 1994 movie. It also published another team-up between The Shadow and
Doc Savage.
Films
The character has been adapted for
film numerous times.
The Shadow Strikes (1937) & International Crime (1938)
The movie ''The Shadow Strikes'' was released in 1937, starring
Rod Larocque in the title role. Larocque returned the following year in ''
International Crime'', although in this version "The Shadow" was merely a radio gimmick.
The Shadow (1940)
A
serial produced by Columbia Studios starring
Victor Jory premiered in 1940. The Black Tiger is a criminal mastermind who is sabotaging rail lines and factories across America, and Lamont Cranston must become his shadowy alter ego to uncover the fiend and halt his schemes.
The Shadow Returns (1946)
Low-budget motion picture studio Monogram produced a trio of films in 1946 starring
Kane Richmond: ''The Shadow Returns'', ''Behind the Mask'' and ''The Missing Lady''. Richmond's Shadow, in fact, wore a black face-mask similar to the type worn by the serial hero The
Masked Marvel.
The Shadow (1994)
Main articles: The Shadow (1994 film)
In
1994, the Shadow was recast once again in a big-budget feature film, ''
The Shadow'', starring
Alec Baldwin as Lamont Cranston/The Shadow and
Penelope Ann Miller as
Margo Lane. This time, Cranston was written as a disaffected veteran of
World War I who drifted through
Asia and ultimately became a brutal
warlord and
opium smuggler, until he was kidnapped by a
Tibetan order of monks and brought to their
monastery. A
tulku, their leader, recognizing the power of harnessing Cranston's inner darkness, reformed and trained him to use that darkness against
evil rather than for it. Cranston then learned how to confuse and control the minds of others, particularly how to become invisible except for his shadow. His nemesis in the film was an evil warlord and fellow
telepath named Shiwan Khan, the last descendant of
Genghis Khan, played by
John Lone. Shiwan Khan is characterized by his witty remarks made toward the Shadow, such the odd conversation concerning a tie from Brooks Brothers and his response to being called a barbarian, "Thank you. We both are." Their struggle eventually ended when Cranston threw a mirror shard into Khan's head; surgery saved his life, but it removed a small but critical piece of the front lobe of his brain, and thus the source of his telepathic powers. Though the storyline provided a certain logic to the old radio hit's suggestion that Cranston learned his dark art in East Asia, the film was a
box office bomb that never came close to launching the new
franchise planned for it.
New Shadow Movie
On
December 11, 2006, the website
SuperHero Hype reported that director
Sam Raimi and
Michael Uslan will co-produce a new ''Shadow'' film for
Columbia Pictures.
Siavash Farahani will write the screenplay. Raimi tried (and failed) to gain the rights in the late
1980s, which resulted in his now-famous
1990 feature film, ''
Darkman''.
TV Series
Two attempts were made to make a television series based on the character. The first in
1954 was called, obviously, ''The Shadow'', starring
Tom Helmore as Lamont Cranston. The second attempt in 1958 starring
Richard Derr was called ''The Invisible Avenger'', which compiled the first two unaired episodes and was released theatrically instead. This film was then re-released in
1962 as ''Bourbon Street Shadows'', with additional footage meant to appeal to "adult" audiences.
Influence
★ Some argue that ''The Shadow'' birthed much of the concept we have come to know as the modern
superhero; such characters as
Batman and
The Green Hornet reference Lamont Cranston's
alter ego. Both characters operated mostly by night, and the Green Hornet in particular operated outside the law, insinuating himself into criminal plots in order to put an end to the activities of master criminals. But whereas The Shadow carried a real gun, the Green Hornet carried only a lightweight pistol that fired non-lethal gas and, later (on a short-lived television version) a retractable electronic
ultrasonic "sting" used mostly to cut through thick barriers. While Batman briefly carried a pistol in his first few years, he quickly abandoned the use of firearms altogether; his creators are alleged to have feared that giving the character a
side arm would make him resemble the Shadow too greatly; many comic historians consider it more likely to have been the desire on the part of the publisher to tone down the violence used by the character in his early adventures.
★ ''The Shadow'' later inspired anotherr radio hit, ''
The Whistler'', whose
protagonist likewise knew "many things, for I walk by night. I know many strange tales, many secrets hidden in the hearts of men and women who have stepped into the shadows. Yes, I know the nameless terrors of which they dare not speak," and whose calling card -- a short, almost macabre whistle -- was at least as familiar as ''The Shadow's'' famous opening line. Interestingly, former Shadow Bill Johnstone once portrayed the Whistler.
★ In
1981, ''The Shadow'' became one of the acknowledged influences for V, the title character in ''
V for Vendetta''.
★
Science fiction writer
Philip José Farmer depicted the Shadow as part of his
Wold Newton family of interrelated fictional characters.
★ In the ''Sin City'' novella "Family Values" a crook says Dwight "thinks he's The Shadow" upon discovering his two .45 pistols.
★ '' introduced a character called the
Gray Ghost, in an episode called "
Beware The Gray Ghost", who bore a striking resemblance to the Shadow. In the episode, Bruce Wayne is partly inspired by the Gray Ghost to form his own persona of the Batman. There was an issue of ''The Shadow'' pulp magazine titled "The Gray Ghost".
★ The Disney cartoon character
Darkwing Duck has many traits in common with the Shadow, such as a similar costume (wide-brimmed fedora, suit and cape), an overly dramatic entrance speech, and a secret identity by the name of Drake Mallard (perhaps a play on Kent Allard).
★ The computer game "Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars" has a unit called "Shadow Team" dressed in black, with folding red wings, carrying two pistols and having stealth abilities.
★ An analogue of The Shadow, the
Green Hornet, and
The Spider, also shows up in
Warren Ellis' ''
Planetary'' series as a member of Doc Brass' (Doc Savage) group of superheroes.
★ In the video game
Luminous Arc the character Mel, a young-looking Witch who has a soft spot for old comics, television shows and serials utters the line, "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Master Mel knows! Hahahaha!"
★ In ''
Mad Magazine'' in the 1950s, The Shadow was spoofed as "The Shadow'" (the apostrophe because the name was short for "Lamont Shadowskeedeeboomboom"). In the story "Margo Pain" gets The Shadow' into predicaments--fights with gangsters, musical instruments (including a piano) dropped on him, etc. At the end of the story The Shadow' tricks Margo into going into an
outhouse surrounded by
dynamite--and, outside, he pushes the plunger down!
See also
★
List of The Shadow stories
★
Condé Nast Publications - Owner of The Shadow intellectual property.
Notes and references
External links
★
''The Shadow Podcast''
★
''The Shadow Knows'' A 2-hour online documentary from the Dial B for Burbank blog.
★
ThePulp.Net's The Shadow page
★
★
OTR-Reviews.com -- Download over 200 The Shadow MP3 Episodes
★
Old Time Radio Fans.com -- ten episodes of ''The Shadow'' radio show [.mp3]
★
''The Living Shadow'' by Maxwell Grant. Complete text of first Shadow story at archive.org
★
TheShadowFan.com -- The #1 source for all Shadow related items
★
The Shadow: Master of Darkness -- Information on The Shadow in pulps, radio, comics, movies, and memorabilia. Includes fan art, fan fiction, polls, tidbits, and more.
★
★
The Shadow in Review -- Reviews of the original Shadow stories, as well as "Two-Minute Mysteries", original short mysteries starring the Shadow
★
The Shadow at the National Film and Sound Archive
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