Movies - The Shadow

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The Shadow is a fictional character created by Walter Gibson.

Initially a pulp hero, The Shadow became even more famous on radio, and has since been featured also in comic books, 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 has earned a place in the American lexicon: "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!"

An accidental birth

The Shadow's birth as a furtive crime solver was practically an accident: the character's name first belonged to the announcer (James LaCurto and, later, Frank Readick) of Detective Stories, 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. The problem was that listeners found the announcer far more compelling than the stories — and began asking newsstands for copies of The Shadow Magazine, though it didn't exist.

Recognising the demand and responding promptly, Street and Smith commissioned Walter B. Gibson to begin writing stories of The Shadow. Using the pen name Maxwell Grant, Gibson wrote a reported 282 out of 325 Shadow books over twenty years: a novel-length story a month. 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, burglarising in the name of justice, and terrifying criminals into vulnerability before he or someone gunned them down. The Shadow was a noirish antihero in every sense.

An evolutionary Shadow

The character evolved over his lengthy fiction life. In print, he slouched elusively beneath hat, cape, and often, a black 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 in the Orient ... 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 constraint made it difficult to describe the Shadow hiding and nearly invisible. Some believe the Shadow a hypnotist, as was explicitly mentioned in at least a few radio episodes; others contend that the Shadow could manipulate Qi. But considering radio wasn't a visual medium in the first place, the Shadow's invisibility was easy enough to accept.

Who Knew What Evil

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 identities was Lamont Cranston, wealthy young man about town. 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.

The Shadow of the air

The Shadow was long believed to have debuted on radio as a program in its own right 26 September 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.

Welles didn't 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
.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for The Shadow ]

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Movies - The Shadow

An accidental birth

An evolutionary Shadow

Who Knew What Evil

The Shadow of the air

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