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All American Old Time Radio Show Classic

The Shadow MP3 CD

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The Shadow is a fictional character created by Walter B. Gibson in 1931 with the first story title "The Living Shadow". One of the most famous of the pulp heroes of the 1930s and 1940s, it was 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.

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, 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.

Even after decades, the unmistakable introduction from The Shadow, intoned by announcer Frank Readick, has earned a place in the American lexicon: "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!"

Blue Coal had a long relationship with the Shadow. The radio series was moved to NBC 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 relationship 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.

So how did the character develop? 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.

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.

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.

So, if you want to know what evil lurks in the hearts of men, catch the over 40 hours in over 95 episodes of The Shadow, because he knows!

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