In the Shadow of Greatness
2012 book
In the Shadow of Greatness is a book written by 33 members of the United States Naval Academy Class of 2002 and published by the United States Naval Institute in 2012.
The authors describe how their lives were shaped by their experiences at the Academy, the September 11 attacks, and the events following graduation. The stories describe subjects such as relief assignments to Haiti, diplomatic missions, cross-service training and deployments, losing infantrymen in combat, and the stress of pilots on missions. There are homages to the fallen, including Navy Lieutenant Richard F. Andersen, Marine Corps Capt. Matthew C. Freeman, Navy Lieutenant John J. Houston, Marine Corps Lt. Col. Kevin Shea, and Marine Corps 2nd Lieutenant Andrew Torres. Gary C. Ross discusses his same-sex marriage following the repeal of DADT; others tell of rescues at sea and in the crater of Mount St. Helens. Other topics include two-career couples and the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The foreword was written by David Gergen and the epilogue by Admiral Mike Mullen. General John Allen—Commandant of Midshipmen in 2002—wrote for the book, as did his predecessor, Admiral Sam Locklear.
The authors' proceeds go to veterans' organizations, including Luke's Wings, the Semper Fi Fund, The Mission Continues, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, The Travis Manion Foundation, and the Matthew Freeman Project.
Released in August 2012, "In the Shadow of Greatness" achieved Los Angeles Times Bestseller status that October. John Nagl reviewed the book in the September 2012 issue of the Naval Institute's Proceedings Magazine, writing: "All of these stories give voice to courage, sacrifice, and the nobility of living in the service of others." Tom Brokaw provided this blurb: "This is a must read for all Americans - an up close and personal account of duty and sacrifice by graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy in Iraq and Afghanistan."
References.
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United States Naval Institute
American private non-profit naval military association
The United States Naval Institute (USNI) is a private non-profit military association that offers independent, nonpartisan forums for debate of national security issues. In addition to publishing magazines and books, the Naval Institute holds several annual conferences. The Naval Institute is based in Annapolis, Maryland.
Established in 1873, the Naval Institute claimed "almost 50,000 members" in 2020, mostly active and retired personnel of the United States Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. The organization also has members in over 90 countries.
The organization has no official or funding ties to the United States Naval Academy or the United States Navy, though it is based on the grounds of the Naval Academy through permission granted by a 1936 Act of Congress.
History.
The United States Naval Institute was formed on October 9, 1873, by 15 naval officers gathered at the Naval Academy's Department of Physics and Chemistry building in Annapolis to discuss, among other topics, the implications of a smaller, post-Civil War Navy. Rear Admiral John L. Worden, former commander of the USS "Monitor", served as the first president.
In 1874, the Naval Institute began to accept papers and publish the proceedings of its discussions, which were distributed to the organization's members. In 1898, the Naval Institute Press was created to publish basic naval guides. The most popular of these, "The Bluejacket's Manual", is on its 26th edition, and is still issued to all enlistees of the United States Navy. The press eventually expanded to publish more general-interest titles in history, biography, and current affairs.
In 1992, the Naval Institute Foundation, Inc., was established to stabilize the organization's funding.
In 1999, the Naval Institute transferred its former headquarters, Preble Hall, to the Naval Academy, and renovated a derelict Navy hospital to serve as its new headquarters. The new building was named Beach Hall after Captain Edward L. Beach Jr., author and Navy Cross recipient; and his father, Captain Edward L. Beach Sr., who had served as the institute's secretary-treasurer.
On 30 September 2021, the Naval Institute opened a conference center with a 406-seat auditorium, reception spaces, an indoor/outdoor rooftop terrace, five meeting rooms, and a broadcast studio. It is named for Jack C. Taylor, a decorated World War II Navy fighter pilot who founded Enterprise Rent-A-Car.
Publications and products.
"Proceedings".
"Proceedings" is the Naval Institute's monthly magazine. Published since 1874, it is one of the oldest continuously published magazines in the United States. Issues include articles from military professionals and civilian experts, historical essays, book reviews, full-color photography, and reader commentary. Roughly a third are written by active duty and active reserve personnel, a third by retired military, and a third by civilians. "Proceedings" also frequently carries feature articles by Secretaries of Defense, Secretaries of the Navy, Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and top leaders of the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. The magazine has published controversial articles on contentious issues; moreover, military officials have been known to block certain articles from being submitted to the journal. For example, in 1962, the Department of Defense blocked a Marine Corps lieutenant colonel from submitting an article to "Proceedings" about a 1949 proposal to merge the Marines' aviation units into the Air Force.
"Naval History".
"Naval History" is the Naval Institute's bimonthly magazine. First published in 1987, its articles detail the role of sea power in American history. The magazine's contributors have included historians David McCullough and James M. McPherson; former sailors, Marines and Coast Guardsmen such as Ernest Borgnine, Gene Hackman, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.; and journalists, such as Walter Cronkite and Tom Brokaw.
Naval Institute Press.
The Naval Institute Press was founded in 1898 and publishes about 80 books a year. Its twice-yearly catalog includes works on history, biography, professional military education, and occasional works of popular fiction, such as Tom Clancy's first novel, "The Hunt for Red October" and Stephen Coonts' "Flight of the Intruder". Its professional titles include "The Bluejacket's Manual", "Naval Shiphandling", "The Naval Officer's Guide", "The Marine Officer’s Guide", and "The Coast Guardsman’s Manual". "The Naval Institute Guide to Combat Fleets of the World" and "The Naval Institute Guide to Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet" are popular reference books with the military, the media, and maritime enthusiasts.
USNI News.
USNI News is the Naval Institute's news service. Founded in 2012, USNI News operates from Monday to Friday and primarily focuses on defense-related topics. USNI News heavily covered the Fat Leonard scandal as it developed.
"Americans at War".
In 2007, USNI produced "Americans At War", a series of video interviews with American combat veterans of conflicts dating to World War I. Former President George H. W. Bush, Senators Bob Dole, Daniel Inouye, Bob Kerrey, and others described how combat changed their lives. The series was broadcast on PBS television stations nationwide.
Archives.
Photographs.
The Naval Institute holds more than 450,000 images of people, ships and aircraft from all branches of the armed forces. The photographs date from the American Civil War to the present.
Oral histories.
The Naval Institute's oral history program preserves the reminiscences of numerous American military figures, including General Jimmy Doolittle, Admirals Arleigh Burke and Chester W. Nimitz. The Naval Institute records a series of interviews covering the life story of each participant. The interviews are then transcribed, annotated, indexed, and bound. Since the inception of the program in 1969, more than 230 bound volumes have been completed, and interviews have been recorded to produce dozens more.
Notable members.
The institute's notable current and former members include:
References.
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The Shadow
Fictional character
The Shadow is a fictional character created by American magazine publishers Street & Smith and writer Walter B. Gibson. Originally created to be a mysterious radio show narrator, and developed into a distinct literary character in 1931 by Gibson, The Shadow has been adapted into other forms of media, including American comic books, comic strips, serials, video games, and at least five feature films. The radio drama included episodes voiced by Orson Welles.
The Shadow debuted on July 31, 1930, as the mysterious narrator of the radio program "Detective Story Hour", which was developed to boost sales of Street & Smith's monthly pulp "Detective Story Magazine". When listeners of the program began asking at newsstands for copies of "that Shadow detective magazine", Street & Smith launched a magazine based on the character, and hired Gibson to create a concept to fit the name and voice and to write a story featuring him. The first issue of the pulp series "The Shadow Magazine" went on sale April 1, 1931.
On September 26, 1937, "The Shadow", a new radio drama based on the character as created by Gibson for the pulp magazine, premiered with the story "The Death House Rescue", in which The Shadow was characterized as having "the hypnotic power to cloud men's minds so they cannot see him". In the magazine stories, The Shadow did not become literally invisible.
The introductory line from the radio adaptation of The Shadow – "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!" – spoken by actor Frank Readick, has earned a place in the American idiom. These words were accompanied by an ominous laugh and a musical theme, Camille Saint-Saëns' "Le Rouet d'Omphale" ("Omphale's Spinning Wheel" composed in 1872).
The Shadow, at the end of each episode, reminded listeners, "The weed of crime bears bitter fruit! Crime does not pay...The Shadow knows!"
Some early episodes used the alternate statement, "As you sow evil, so shall you reap evil! Crime does not pay...The Shadow knows!"
Publication history.
Origin of the character's name.
To boost the sales of its "Detective Story Magazine," Street & Smith Publications hired David Chrisman, of the Ruthrauff & Ryan advertising agency, and writer-director William Sweets to adapt the magazine's stories into a radio series. Chrisman and Sweets thought the upcoming series should be narrated by a mysterious storyteller with a sinister voice and began searching for a suitable name. One of their scriptwriters, Harry Engman Charlot, suggested various possibilities, such as "The Inspector" or "The Sleuth". Charlot then proposed the ideal name for the phantom announcer: "The Shadow".
Thus, beginning on July 31, 1930, "The Shadow" was the name given to the mysterious narrator of the "Detective Story Hour" radio program. The narrator was initially voiced by James LaCurto, who was replaced after four months by prolific character actor Frank Readick Jr. The episodes were drawn from the "Detective Story Magazine" issued by Street & Smith, the nation's oldest and largest publisher of pulp magazines at the time. Although the latter company had hoped the radio broadcasts would boost the declining sales of "Detective Story Magazine", the result was quite different. Listeners found the sinister announcer much more compelling than the unrelated stories. They soon began asking newsdealers for copies of "that "Shadow" detective magazine", even though it did not exist.
Creation as a distinctive literary character.
Recognizing the demand and responding promptly, circulation manager Henry William Ralston of Street & Smith commissioned Walter B. Gibson to begin writing stories about "The Shadow" Using the pen name of Maxwell Grant and claiming the stories were "from The Shadow's private annals" as told to him, Gibson wrote 282 out of 325 tales over the next 20 years: a novel-length story twice a month (1st and 15th). The first story produced was "The Living Shadow" published April 1, 1931.
Gibson's characterization of The Shadow laid the foundations for the archetype of the superhero, including stylized imagery and title, sidekicks, supervillains, and a secret identity. Clad in black, The Shadow operated mainly after dark as a vigilante in the name of justice, terrifying criminals into vulnerability. Gibson himself claimed the literary inspirations upon which he had drawn were Bram Stoker's "Dracula" and Edward Bulwer-Lytton's "The House and the Brain". Another possible inspiration for The Shadow is the French character Judex; the first episode of the original "Judex" film serial was released in the United States as "The Mysterious Shadow", and Judex's costume is similar to The Shadow's. French comics historian Xavier Fournier notes other similarities with another silent serial, "The Shielding Shadow", whose protagonist had a power of invisibility, and considers The Shadow to be a mix between the two characters. In the 1940s, some "Shadow" comic strips were translated in France as adventures of Judex.
Because of the great effort involved in writing two full-length novels every month, several guest writers were hired to write occasional installments in order to lighten Gibson's workload. Those guest writers included Lester Dent, who also wrote the Doc Savage stories, and Theodore Tinsley. In the late 1940s, mystery novelist Bruce Elliott (also a magician) temporarily replaced Gibson as the primary author of the pulp series (he wrote #'s 306 through 320). Richard Wormser, a reader for Street & Smith, wrote two Shadow stories. For a complete list of Street and Smith's Shadow novels (and a list of the reprint editions), see the List of The Shadow stories article.
A new beginning at Belmont Books.
"The Shadow Magazine" ceased publication with the Summer 1949 issue, but Walter B. Gibson wrote three new "official" stories between 1963 and 1980. The first began a new series of nine Shadow mass market paperback novels from Belmont Books. In this series, The Shadow is given psychic powers, including the radio character's ability "to cloud men's minds", so that he effectively became invisible. "Return of The Shadow" was published under his own name. The remaining eight novels in this series, "The Shadow Strikes", "Shadow Beware", "Cry Shadow", "The Shadow's Revenge", "Mark of The Shadow", "Shadow Go Mad", "Night of The Shadow", and "The Shadow, Destination: Moon", were written by Dennis Lynds, not Gibson, under the Maxwell Grant pseudonym.
The other two Gibson works were the novelettes "The Riddle of the Rangoon Ruby", published June 1, 1979 in "The Shadow Scrapbook". and "Blackmail Bay", published February 1, 1980 in "The Duende History of The Shadow Magazine".
Literary sequels and reboots.
The Shadow returned in 2015 in the authorized novel "The Sinister Shadow", an entry in the "Wild Adventures of Doc Savage" series from Altus Press. The novel, written by Will Murray, used unpublished material originally written in 1932 by Doc Savage originator Lester Dent and published under the pen name Kenneth Robeson. Set in 1933, the story details the conflict between the two pulp magazine icons during a crime wave caused by a murderous kidnapping-extortion ring led by the mysterious criminal mastermind known as the Funeral Director.
A sequel, "Empire of Doom", was published in 2016 and takes place seven years later in 1940. The Shadow's old enemy, Shiwan Khan, attacks his hated adversary. Doc Savage joins forces with The Shadow to vanquish Khan in a Doc Savage novel written by Murray, from a concept by Dent.
In 2020, James Patterson Entertainment and Condé Nast Entertainment announced a new series written by James Patterson and Brian Sitts. The arrangement also includes potential screen adaptations of these novels. The first novel, "The Shadow", released in 2021, serves as a sequel-update with some science-fiction elements, bringing Lamont Cranston from 1937 into 2087 to battle Shiwan Khan in a futuristic New York. The second Patterson-Sitts Shadow novel, "Circle of Death", was published in 2023.
Character development.
The character and look of The Shadow gradually evolved over his lengthy fictional existence:
As depicted in the pulps, The Shadow wore a wide-brimmed black hat and a black, crimson-lined cloak with an upturned collar over a standard black business suit. In the 1940s comic books, the later comic book series, and the 1994 film starring Alec Baldwin, he wore either the black hat or a wide-brimmed, black fedora and a crimson scarf just below his nose and across his mouth and chin. Both the cloak and scarf covered either a black double-breasted trench coat or a regular black suit. As seen in some of the later comics series, The Shadow also would wear his hat and scarf with either a black Inverness coat or Inverness cape.
In the radio drama that debuted in 1937, The Shadow does not wear a costume because he is invisible when he operates as a vigilante, a feature born out of necessity. Time constraints of 1930s radio made it difficult to explain to listeners where The Shadow was hiding and how he remained concealed from criminals until he was ready to strike, so the character was given invisibility, meaning the criminals (like the radio audience) only knew him by his haunting voice. The actors used their normal voice when the hero was in his civilian identity of Lamont Cranston and effects were added when he became invisible and acted as The Shadow, his voice now having a sinister and seemingly omnipresent quality. To explain this power, radio episodes regularly said that while a young man, The Shadow traveled around the world and then through the Orient, where he learned how to read thoughts and became a master of hypnotism, granting him "the mysterious power to cloud men's minds, so they could not see him". In the episode "The Temple Bells of Neban" (1937), The Shadow said he developed these abilities in India specifically, under the guidance of a "Yogi priest" who was "Keeper of the Temple of Cobras" in Delhi. He does not wear a mask or any disguise while invisible, and so in episodes such as "The Temple Bells of Neban" he is cautious when he meets an enemy who could potentially disrupt his hypnotic abilities, exposing his true face and instantly making him a visible target for attack.
Background.
In the print adventures, The Shadow is Kent Allard, although his real name is not revealed until "The Shadow Unmasks" (1937). Early stories explain he was once a famed aviator who fought for the French during World War I, known by the alias the "Black Eagle" according to one character in "The Shadow's Shadow" (1933). Later stories revised this alias as the "Dark Eagle", beginning with "The Shadow Unmasks". After the war's conclusion, Allard finds a new challenge in waging war on criminals. Allard falsifies his death by crash landing his plane in Guatemala, encountering the indigenous "Xinca tribe" as a result, who see him as a supernatural being and provide him with two loyal aides. Allard returns to the United States and takes residence in New York City, adopting numerous identities to acquire valuable information and conceal his true nature, and recruiting a variety of agents to aid his war on crime, only a few of whom are aware of his other identities.
As the vigilante called The Shadow, Allard hunts down and often violently confronts criminals, armed with Colt .45 pistols and sometimes using magician tricks to convince his prey that he's supernatural. One such trick is “The Devil's Whisper”, a chemical compound on the thumb and forefinger, causing a flash of bright flame and sharp explosion when he snaps his fingers. The Shadow is also known for wearing a girasol ring with a purple stone (sometimes depicted as a red stone in cover artwork), given to Allard by the Czar of Russia ("The Romanoff Jewels", 1932) during World War I. The ring is later said to be one of two rings made with gemstones taken from the eyes of an idol made by the Xinca tribe ("The Shadow Unmasks," 1937).
The Shadow's best known alter ego is Lamont Cranston, a "wealthy young man-about-town". In the pulps, Cranston is a separate character, a rich playboy who travels the world while The Shadow uses his identity and resources in New York ("The Shadow Laughs", 1931). The Shadow's disguise as Cranston works well because the two men resemble each other ("Dictator of Crime", 1941). In their first meeting, The Shadow threatens Cranston, saying that unless the playboy agrees to allow the aviator to use his identity when he is abroad, then Allard will simply take over the man's identity entirely, having already made arrangements to begin the process, including switching signatures on various documents. Although alarmed at first, the real Lamont Cranston agrees, deciding that sharing his resources and identity is better than losing both entirely. The two men sometimes meet afterward in order to impersonate each other ("Crime over Miami", 1940). As Cranston, The Shadow often attends the Cobalt Club, an exclusive restaurant and lounge catering to the wealthy, and associates with New York City Police Commissioner Ralph Weston.
The Shadow's other disguises include: businessman Henry Arnaud, who like Cranston is a real person whose identity Allard simply assumes at times, as revealed in Arnaud's first appearance "The Black Master" (March 1, 1932); elderly Isaac Twambley, who first appears in "No Time for Murder" (December 1944); and Fritz, an old, seemingly slow-witted, uncommunicative janitor who works at police headquarters, listening in on conversations and examining recovered evidence, first appearing in "The Living Shadow" (April 1931).
In "Teeth of the Dragon" and later stories including "The Golden Pagoda", The Shadow is known in Chinatown as Ying Ko, often fighting the criminal Tong.
In the 2015 Altus Press novel "The Sinister Shadow" by Will Murray, The Shadow masquerades as celebrated criminologist George Clarendon of Chicago, a past member of the Cobalt Club and long-time friend of Commissioner Weston.
For the first half of The Shadow's tenure in the pulps, his past and true identity (outside of his Cranston disguise) are ambiguous. In "The Living Shadow", a thug claiming to have seen the Shadow's face recalls seeing "a piece of white that looked like a bandage". In "The Black Master" and "The Shadow's Shadow", the villains of both stories see The Shadow's true face and remark the vigilante is a man of many faces with no face of his own. It was not until the August 1937 issue, "The Shadow Unmasks", that The Shadow's real name was revealed.
In the radio drama series that premiered in 1937, the Allard secret identity and backstory were dropped for simplicity's sake. The radio incarnation of The Shadow is really and only Lamont Cranston with no other regular cover identities, though he does adopt disguises and short-term aliases during some adventures. The radio version of Cranston travels the world to "learn the old mysteries that modern science has not yet rediscovered" ("Death House Rescue" in 1937). Along with learning skills and knowledge in Europe, Africa, and Asia, he spends time training with a Yogi priest, "Keeper of the Temple of Cobras", in Delhi and learns how to read thoughts and hypnotize people enough to "cloud" their minds, making himself invisible to them (as revealed in the episode "The Temple Bells of Neban" in 1937). He explicitly states in several episodes that his talents are not magic but based on science. Returning to New York, he decides he can best aid the police and his city by operating outside the law as an invisible vigilante. He is somewhat less ruthless and more compassionate than the pulp incarnation, and without the vast network of agents and operatives. Only cab driver/chauffeur Shrevvy makes regular appearances on the radio series, but the character is different from his print counterpart. Commissioner Weston and a few other supporting characters from the print stories also are adapted to radio.
Supporting characters.
The Shadow has a network of agents who assist him in his war on crime. These include:
Though initially wanted by the police, The Shadow also works with and through them, notably gleaning information from his many chats (as Cranston) at the Cobalt Club with NYPD Commissioner Ralph Weston and later Commissioner Wainwright Barth, who is also Cranston's uncle (portrayed by Jonathan Winters in the 1994 film). Weston believes Cranston is merely a rich playboy who dabbles in detective work out of curiosity. Another police contact is Detective (later Inspector) Joseph Cardona, a key character in many Shadow novels.
In contrast to the pulps, "The Shadow" radio drama limited the cast of major characters to The Shadow, Commissioner Weston, and Margo Lane, the last of whom was created for the radio series. Along with giving The Shadow a love interest, Margo was created because it was believed that including Harry Vincent as a regular would mean an overabundance of male characters (considering the criminals in the stories were usually male, too) and could possibly make it difficult for the audience to distinguish between the voices of so many male actors. The radio script for "The Death House Rescue" (reprinted in "The Shadow Scrapbook") features Harry Vincent, but he did not appear in the actual radio broadcast or any episode of the radio drama series. Clyde Burke made occasional appearances, but not as an agent of The Shadow. Lieutenant Cardona was a minor character in several episodes. Moe Shrevnitz (identified only as "Shrevvy") made several appearances as a simple-minded acquaintance of Cranston and Lane who sometimes acted as their chauffeur, unaware Cranston was actually The Shadow.
Enemies.
The Shadow also faces a wide variety of enemies, ranging from kingpins and mad scientists to international spies.
Among his recurring foes are:
The only recurring criminal organization he fought was the Hand ("The Hand", "Murder for Sale", "Chicago Crime", "Crime Rides the Sea" and "Realm of Doom"), where he defeated one Finger of the organization in each book.
In addition, the villain King Kauger from the Shadow story "Wizard of Crime" is the unseen mastermind behind the events of "Intimidation, Inc.", and the organization known as "The Silent Seven" was referenced in the previous title "The Death Tower".
Villains Diamond Bert Farwell, Isaac Coffran, Steve Cronin, Spotter, and Birdie Crull all originated in the first two pulps and returned at least once.
The series featured a myriad of one-shot villains including: The Golden Vulture, Malmordo, The Red Blot, The Black Falcon, The Cobra, Five-Face, Li Hoang, Velma Thane, Quetzal, Judge Lawless, The Gray Ghost, The Silver Skull, Gaspard Zemba, Thade the Death Giver, Kwa the Living Joss, Mox, and The Green Terror.
In addition to The Hand and The Silent Seven, The Shadow also battled other one-shot collectives of criminals, including The Hydra, The Green Hoods, The White Skulls, The Five Chameleons, and The Salamanders.
Radio program.
In early 1930, Street & Smith hired David Chrisman and Bill Sweets to adapt the "Detective Story Magazine" to radio format. Chrisman and Sweets thought the program should be introduced by a mysterious storyteller. A young scriptwriter, Harry Charlot, suggested the name of "The Shadow". Thus, "The Shadow" premiered over CBS airwaves on July 31, 1930, as the host of the "Detective Story Hour", narrating "tales of mystery and suspense from the pages of the premier detective fiction magazine". The bulk of the radio show was written primarily by Sidney Slon. The narrator was first voiced by James La Curto, but became a national sensation when radio veteran Frank Readick, Jr. assumed the role and gave it "a hauntingly sibilant quality that thrilled radio listeners".
Early years.
Following a brief tenure as narrator of Street & Smith's "Detective Story Hour", "The Shadow" character was used to host segments of "The Blue Coal Radio Revue", airing on Sundays at 5:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. This marked the beginning of a long association between the radio persona and sponsor Blue Coal.
While functioning as a narrator of "The Blue Coal Radio Revue", the character was recycled by Street & Smith in October 1931, for its newly created "Love Story Hour". Contrary to dozens of encyclopedias, published reference guides, and even Walter Gibson himself, The Shadow never served as narrator of "Love Story Hour". He appeared only in advertisements for "The Shadow Magazine" at the end of each episode.
In October 1932, the radio persona temporarily moved to NBC. Frank Readick Jr. again played the role of the sinister-voiced host on Mondays and Wednesdays, both at 6:30 p.m., with La Curto taking occasional turns as the title character.
Readick returned as The Shadow to host a final CBS mystery anthology that fall. The series disappeared from CBS airwaves on March 27, 1935, due to Street & Smith's insistence that the radio storyteller be completely replaced by the master crime-fighter described in Walter B. Gibson's ongoing pulps.
Radio drama.
Street & Smith entered into a new broadcasting agreement with Blue Coal in 1937, and that summer Gibson teamed with scriptwriter Edward Hale Bierstadt to develop the new series. "The Shadow" returned to network airwaves with the episode "The Death House Rescue" on September 26, 1937, over the Mutual Broadcasting System. Thus began the "official" radio drama, with 22-year-old Orson Welles starring as Lamont Cranston, a "wealthy young man about town." Once "The Shadow" joined Mutual as a half-hour series on Sunday evenings, the program was broadcast by Mutual until December 26, 1954.
Welles did not speak the signature line, "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?" Instead, Readick did, using a water glass next to his mouth for the echo effect. The famous catchphrase was accompanied by the strains of an excerpt from Opus 31 of the Camille Saint-Saëns classical composition, "Le Rouet d'Omphale."
In the debut episode "The Death House Rescue," Cranston explains he spent years studying in London, Paris, Vienna, Egypt, China, and India, learning different fields of science as well as "the old mysteries that modern science has not yet rediscovered, the natural magic that modern psychology is beginning to understand." He states his hypnotic and seemingly telepathic abilities are not magic but based on scientific secrets most of the world has forgotten or does not yet understand. In "The Temple Bells of Neban" in 1937, he specifies that a Yogi priest, "Keeper of the Temple of Cobras" in Delhi, taught him how to be invisible by "clouding" peoples' minds. He indicates in "The Death House Rescue" that he always intended to use his acquired knowledge to secretly fight evil forces that evaded conventional authorities. In the same episode, when his companion Margo Lane suggests he work openly with the police, Cranston implies the police and general public would not understand or approve of his strange methods and abilities, concluding he is only effective by working outside of the law. The radio version of The Shadow is less ruthless than his pulp counterpart, preferring to capture his foes more often than gun them down. He sometimes openly shows compassion for his enemies, even at time criticizing society for creating circumstances that lead to certain crimes and cause some people to lose hope and support.
After Welles departed the show in 1938, Bill Johnstone was chosen to replace him and voiced the character for five seasons. Following Johnstone's departure, The Shadow was portrayed by such actors as Bret Morrison (the longest tenure, with 10 years total in two separate runs), John Archer, and Steven Courtleigh (the actors were rarely credited).
"The Shadow" also inspired another radio hit, "The Whistler", with a similarly mysterious narrator.
In "The Talking Magpies" (1946), the cartoon film debut of the precursors who would become Heckle and Jeckle, The Shadow radio program is referenced in a scene.
Margo Lane.
The radio drama also introduced Margo Lane (played by Agnes Moorehead, among others) as Cranston's love interest, crime-solving partner, and the only person who knows his identity as The Shadow. Described as Cranston's "friend and companion" in many episodes, the exact nature of their relationship was not explicitly stated, but Margo mentions in the first episode that she loves him and hopes he will retire The Shadow identity and operate without secrecy if the police really need his help. Four years after the radio show began, the character was introduced into the pulp novels as one of The Shadow's agents. Her sudden, unexplained appearance in the pulps annoyed readers and generated a flurry of hate mail printed on "The Shadow Magazine's" letters page.
In early scripts of the radio drama, the character's name was spelled "Margot." The name itself was originally inspired by Margot Stevenson, the Broadway ingénue who would later be chosen to voice Lane opposite Welles's The Shadow during "the 1938 Goodrich summer season of the radio drama." In the 1994 film in which Penelope Ann Miller played the character, Margo is portrayed as telepathic, making her aware of and able to counter The Shadow's mental abilities.
Radio drama LPs and CDs.
In 1968, Metro Record's "Leo the Lion" label released an LP titled "The Official Adventures of The Shadow" (CH-1048) with two original 15-minute radio-style productions written by John Fleming: "The Computer Calculates, but The Shadow Knows" and "Air Freight Fracas." Bret Morrison, Grace Matthews, and Santos Ortega reprised their roles as Cranston/The Shadow, Margo Lane, and Commissioner Weston. Ken Roberts also returned as the announcer.
Throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, dozens of LPs appeared in print from other record labels featuring recordings taken from the original broadcast Shadow radio show dramas. With the advent of the compact disc, more of the radio shows were commercially released.
Comic strip.
"The Shadow" has been adapted for comics a number of times during his long history; his first was on June 17, 1940, as a syndicated daily newspaper comic strip offered through the Ledger Syndicate. The strip's story continuity was written by Walter B. Gibson, with plot lines adapted from the Shadow pulps, and the strip was illustrated by Vernon Greene.
The comic strip, which ran until June 20, 1942, comprised 14 stories, the last of which was left uncompleted when the strip was canceled:
"The Shadow" daily strip was collected decades later in two comic book series from two different publishers (see below), first in 1988 and then again in 1999.
Comic books.
History.
1940s-1960s.
To both cross-promote "The Shadow" and attract a younger audience to its other pulp magazines, Street & Smith published 101 issues of the comic book "Shadow Comics" from Vol. 1, #1 – Vol. 9, #5 (March 1940 – Sept. 1949). A Shadow story led off each issue, with the remainder of the stories being strips based on other Street & Smith pulp heroes.
In "Mad" #4 (April–May 1953), "The Shadow" was spoofed by Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder with a character called "The Shadow'" (with an apostrophe), which is short for "Lamont Shadowskeedeeboomboom". This story was reprinted in "The Brothers Mad" (ibooks, New York, 2002, ). The charcer returned in "Mad" #14 (August 1954) to guest-star in "Manduck the Magician", a spoof by Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder of the "Mandrake the Magician" comic strip. This story was reprinted in "Mad Strikes Back!" (ibooks, New York, 2002, ).
During the superhero revival of the 1960s, Archie Comics published an eight-issue series, "The Shadow" (Aug. 1964 – Sept. 1965), under the company's Mighty Comics imprint. In the first issue, The Shadow was loosely based on the radio version, but with blond hair. In issue #2 (Sept. 1964), the character changed into a campy, heavily muscled superhero in a green and blue costume by writer Robert Bernstein and artist John Rosenberger. Later issues of this eight-issue series were written by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel. The change was not well received. "Totally at odds with everything that personified the classic Shadow," "American Comic Book Chronicles" says, "Archie's incarnation is still regarded in many quarters as one of the greatest comic book misfires of the 1960s."
1970s.
Starting in 1973, DC Comics published an "atmospheric interpretation" of the character by writer Dennis O'Neil and artist Michael Kaluta in a 12-issue series (Nov. 1973 – Sept. 1975) attempting to be faithful to both the pulp-magazine character and radio-drama character. Kaluta drew issues 1–4 and 6 and was followed by Frank Robbins and then E. R. Cruz. Fellow pulp fiction hero the Avenger guest-starred in issue #11. The Shadow also appeared in DC's "Batman" #253 (Nov. 1973), in which Batman teams with an aging Shadow and calls the famous crime fighter his "biggest inspiration." In "Batman" #259 (Nov.–Dec. 1974), Batman again meets The Shadow, and we learn that, in the past, The Shadow had saved Bruce Wayne's life when the latter was a boy and that The Shadow knows Batman's secret identity (he assures Batman, however, that his secret is safe with him). The Shadow is also referenced in DC's "Detective Comics" #446 (1975), page 4, panel 2: Batman, out of costume and in disguise as an older night janitor, makes a crime fighting acknowledgement, in a thought balloon, to the Shadow.
1980s.
In 1986, another DC adaptation was developed by Howard Chaykin. This four-issue miniseries, "The Shadow: Blood and Judgement", brought The Shadow to modern-day New York. While initially successful, this version proved unpopular with traditional Shadow fans because it depicted The Shadow using two Uzi submachine guns, as well as featuring a strong strain of black comedy and extreme violence throughout.
"The Shadow", set in the then-current day, was continued in 1987 as a monthly DC comics series by writer Andy Helfer (editor of the miniseries); it was drawn primarily by artists Bill Sienkiewicz (issues 1–6) and Kyle Baker (issues 8–19 and the second of two "Shadow Annual"s, the first having been drawn by Joe Orlando).
In 1988, O'Neil and Kaluta, with inker Russ Heath, returned to The Shadow with the Marvel Comics graphic novel "The Shadow: Hitler's Astrologer", set during World War II. This one-shot appeared in both hardcover and trade paperback editions.
The Vernon Greene/Walter Gibson Shadow newspaper comic strip from the early 1940s was collected by Malibu Graphics (Malibu Comics) under its Eternity Comics imprint, beginning with the first issue of "Crime Classics" dated July 1988. Each cover was illustrated by Greene and colored by one of Eternity's colorists. A total of 13 issues appeared featuring just the black-and-white daily until the final issue, dated November 1989. Some of the Shadow storylines were contained in one issue, while others were continued over into the next. When a Shadow story ended, another tale would begin in the same issue. This back-to-back format continued until the final issue (#13).
Crime Classics
1 and 2, "Riddle of the Sealed Box";
2 and 3, "Mystery of the Sleeping Gas";
3 and 4, "The Shadow vs. Hoang Hu";
4, 5 and 6, "Danger on Shark Island";
6, 7 and 8, "The Shadow vs. the Bund";
8, 9 and 10, "The Shadow vs. Shiwan Khan";
10, 11 and 12, "The Shadow vs. the Swindlers";
12 and 13, "The Shadow and the Adele Varne Mystery";
13, "Robberies at Lake Calada".
Dave Stevens' nostalgic comics series "The Rocketeer" contains a number of pop culture references to the 1930s. Various characters from the Shadow pulps make appearances in the storyline published in the "Rocketeer Adventure Magazine", including The Shadow's famous alter ego Lamont Cranston. Two issues were published by in 1988 and 1989, but the third and final installment did not appear until years later, finally appearing in 1995 from Dark Horse Comics. All three issues were then collected by Dark Horse into a slick trade paperback titled "The Rocketeer: Cliff's New York Adventure" ().
In 1989, DC released a hardcover graphic collection reprinting five issues (#1–4 and 6 by Dennis O'Neil and Michael Kaluta) of their 1970s series as "The Private Files of The Shadow". The volume also featured "In the Toils of Wing Fat", a new Shadow adventure drawn by Kaluta.
1990s.
From 1989 to 1992, DC published a new Shadow comic book series, "The Shadow Strikes!", written by Gerard Jones and Eduardo Barreto. This series was set in the 1930s and returned The Shadow to his pulp origins. During its run, it featured The Shadow's first-ever team-up with Doc Savage, another popular hero of the pulp magazine era. The two characters appeared together in a four-issue story that crossed back and forth between each character's DC comic book series. "The Shadow Strikes" 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 #7, The Shadow meets 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 small town where the Martians land in Welles's 1938 radio broadcast of "The War of the Worlds." When Shadow rights holder Condé Nast increased its licensing fee, DC concluded the series after 31 issues and one "Annual"; it became the longest-running Shadow comic book series since Street & Smith's original 1940s series.
During the early-to-mid-1990s, Dark Horse Comics acquired the rights to The Shadow from Condé Nast. It published the Shadow miniseries "The Shadow: In the Coils of Leviathan" (four issues) in 1993, and "The Shadow: Hell's Heat Wave" (three issues) in 1995. "In the Coils of Leviathan" was later collected by Dark Horse in 1994 as a trade paperback. Both series were written by Joel Goss and Michael Kaluta and drawn by Gary Gianni. A one-shot issue, "The Shadow and the Mysterious Three", was published by Dark Horse in 1994, again written by Joel Goss and Michael Kaluta, with Stan Manoukian and Vince Roucher taking over the illustration duties but working from Kaluta's layouts. A comics adaptation of the 1994 film "The Shadow" was published in two issues by Dark Horse as part of the movie's merchandising campaign. The script was by Goss and Kaluta and drawn by Kaluta. It was collected and published in England by Boxtree as a graphic novel tie-in for the film's British release. Emulating DC's earlier team-up, Dark Horse also published a two-issue miniseries in 1995 called "The Shadow and Doc Savage: The Case of the Shrieking Skeletons". It was written by Steve Vance and illustrated by Manoukian and Roucher. Both issues' covers were drawn by Rocketeer creator Dave Stevens. A final Dark Horse Shadow team-up was published in 1995: another one-shot issue, "Ghost and The Shadow", written by Doug Moench, pencilled by H. M. Baker, and inked by Bernard Kolle. It was set in modern times.
The Shadow made an uncredited cameo in issue #2 of DC's 1996 four-issue miniseries "Kingdom Come", re-released as a trade paperback in 1997. The Shadow appears in the nightclub scene standing in the background next to the Question and Rorschach.
The early 1940s Shadow newspaper daily strip was reprinted by Avalon Communications under its ACG Classix imprint. The Shadow daily began appearing in the first issue of "Pulp Action" comics. It carried no monthly date or issue number on the cover, only a 1999 copyright and a "Pulp Action" #1 notation at the bottom of the inside cover. Each issue's cover is a colorized panel blow-up, taken from one of the reprinted strips. The eighth issue uses for its cover a Shadow serial black-and-white film still, with several hand-drawn alterations. The first issue of "Pulp Action" is devoted entirely to reprinting the Shadow daily, but subsequent issues began offering back-up stories not involving The Shadow in every issue. These Shadow strip reprints stopped with "Pulp Action"'s eighth issue, before the story was complete. Here are the strip's reprinted storylines (the last issue carries a 2000 copyright date):
Pulp Action'
1, "Riddle of the Sealed Box";
2, "Mystery of the Sleeping Gas";
3 and 4, "The Shadow vs. the Swindlers";
5 and 6, "The Shadow and the Adele Varne Mystery";
7 and 8, "The Shadow and the Darvin Fortune".
21st century.
In August 2011, Dynamite licensed "The Shadow" from Condé Nast for an ongoing comic book series and several miniseries. Its first on-going series was written by Garth Ennis and illustrated by Aaron Campbell; it debuted on April 19, 2012. This series ran for 26 issues; the regular series ended in May 2014, but a prologue issue #0 was published in July 2014. Dynamite followed with the release of an eight-issue miniseries, "Masks", teaming the 1930s Shadow with Dynamite's other pulp hero comic book adaptations, the Spider, the Green Hornet and Kato, and a 1930s Zorro, plus four other heroes of the pulp era from Dynamite's comics lineup. Dynamite offered a 10-issue Shadow miniseries, "The Shadow: Year One", followed by the team-up five-issue miniseries, "The Shadow/Green Hornet: Dark Nights", and a Shadow six-issue miniseries set in the modern era, "The Shadow: Now". In August 2015, Dynamite Entertainment launched volume 2 of "The Shadow", a new ongoing series written by Cullen Bunn and drawn by Giovanni Timpano.
Films.
The Shadow character has been adapted for film shorts and films.
Shadow film shorts (1931–1932).
In 1931 and 1932, Bryan Foy Productions created and Universal Pictures distributed a series of six film shorts based on the popular "Detective Story Hour" radio program, narrated by The Shadow. The shorts featured the voice of Frank Readick Jr., who portrayed The Shadow on the radio program. The six films are: "A Burglar to the Rescue" (© July 22, 1931), "Trapped" (© Sep. 21, 1931), "Sealed Lips" (© Oct. 30, 1931), "House of Mystery" (© Dec. 11, 1931), "The Red Shadow" (© Jan. 12, 1932), and "The Circus Show-Up" (© Jan. 27, 1932).
"The Shadow Strikes" (1937).
The film "The Shadow Strikes" was released in 1937, starring Rod La Rocque in the title role. Lamont Granston (as his name was spelled in both opening credits and a newspaper article) assumes the secret identity of "The Shadow" in order to thwart an attempted robbery at an attorney's office. Both "The Shadow Strikes" (1937) and its sequel, "International Crime" (1938), were released by Grand National Pictures.
"International Crime" (1938).
La Rocque returned the following year in "International Crime". In this version, reporter Lamont Cranston (despite being spelled Granston in the previous film) is an amateur criminologist and detective who uses the name of "The Shadow" as a radio gimmick. Thomas Jackson portrayed Police Commissioner Weston, and Astrid Allwyn was cast as Phoebe Lane, Cranston's assistant.
"The Shadow" (1940).
"The Shadow", a 15-chapter movie serial, produced by Columbia Pictures and starring Victor Jory, premiered in theaters in 1940. The serial's villain, The Black Tiger, is a criminal mastermind who sabotages rail lines and factories across the United States. Lamont Cranston must become his shadowy alter ego in order to unmask the criminal and halt his fiendish crime spree. As The Shadow, Jory wears an all-black suit and cloak, as well as a black bandana that helps conceal his facial features.
"The Shadow Returns", "Behind the Mask", and "Missing Lady" (1946).
Low-budget motion picture studio Monogram Pictures produced a trio of quickie Shadow B-movie features in 1946 starring Kane Richmond: "The Shadow Returns" (© Jan. 31, 1946), "Behind the Mask" (© April 1, 1946) and "The Missing Lady" (© July 20, 1946). Richmond's Shadow wore all black, including a trench coat, a wide-brimmed fedora, and a full face-mask similar to the type worn by movie serial hero The Masked Marvel, instead of the character's signature black cape with red lining and red scarf.
"Invisible Avenger" (1958).
Episodes of a television pilot shot in 1957 were edited into the 1958 theatrical feature "Invisible Avenger", rereleased in 1962 as "Bourbon Street Shadows".
"The Shadow" (1994).
In 1994 the character was adapted once again into a feature film, "The Shadow," starring Alec Baldwin as Lamont Cranston and Penelope Ann Miller as Margo Lane, with John Lone playing the recurring Asian villain from the pulp series Shiwan Khan, who claims to be a direct descendant of Genghis Khan. As the film opens, Cranston has become the evil and corrupt Yin-Ko (literally "Dark Eagle"), a brutal warlord and opium smuggler in early 1930s Mongolia. Yin-Ko is kidnapped by agents of the mysterious holy man Tulku, who knows the warlord is really Lamont Cranston of New York. He says he is determined to reform the man, that since Cranston knows the evil that lurks in his own heart he will be effective in knowing and fighting such evil in other men, and will learn how to tap into his latent psychic power. Resistant at first, Cranston accepts that is now under the Tulku's control. Over time, he reforms and learns how to read thoughts, as well as how to "cloud men's minds" to alter their perception and make himself invisible. Cranston eventually returns to his native New York City and takes up the guise of the mysterious crime fighter "The Shadow," in payment to humanity for his past evil misdeeds: "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow "knows" ..."
The Shadow has a network of agents, each of whom now wears a ring similar to his own, and is then joined by Margo Lane, a socialite born with the gift of telepathy herself who quickly discovers Cranston's identity. In the film, the evil Shiwan Khan is an admirer of Ying-Ko who later also becomes a student of the Tulku, learning the same powers of illusion and telepathy but never reforming or regretting his murderous ways. He seeks to finish his ancestor's legacy of conquering the world by first destroying New York City, using a newly developed atomic bomb as a show of his power. Khan nearly succeeds, but is thwarted by The Shadow. In a final psychic duel, the hero telekinetically hurls a shattered piece of mirror directly into the villain's forehead, instantly rendering him unconscious. Shiwan Khan is not killed and wakes up in an unidentified asylum where he is now under the care of a doctor who is secretly one of The Shadow's agents. Due to his head injury, surgery was performed on his frontal lobe, removing his telepathic powers and forcing him to remain imprisoned in the asylum.
The film combines elements from The Shadow pulp novels and comic books with the aforementioned ability to cloud minds described only on the radio show. In the film Alec Baldwin, as The Shadow, wears a black cloak and a long red scarf that covers his mouth and chin; he also wears a black, double-breasted trench coat and a wide-brimmed, black slouch hat. Contrarily to pulp novels, he is armed with a pair of modified M1911 .45-caliber semi-automatic pistols that for the film have longer barrels, are nickel plated, and have ivory grips. In reality, the prop guns were modified LAR Grizzly Win Mags nicknamed "Silver Heat." The film also displays a first: Cranston's ability to conjure the illusion of a false face whenever he is in his guise as The Shadow, giving him an appearance similar to the character's physical portrayal in the pulp magazines and comics.
The film was financially and critically unsuccessful.
Unmade Sam Raimi "Shadow" feature film.
On December 11, 2006, the website SuperHero Hype reported that director Sam Raimi and Michael Uslan would co-produce a new "Shadow" film for Columbia Pictures. It was rumored to also be a film involving several Street and Smith pulp heroes, including The Shadow, the Avenger, and Doc Savage. This screenplay was supposedly written by Siavash Farahani.
On October 16, 2007, Raimi stated, "I don't have any news on "The Shadow" at this time, except that the company that I have with Josh Donen, my producing partner, we've got the rights to "The Shadow." I love the character very much and we're trying to work on a story that'll do justice to the character".
On August 23, 2012, the website ShadowFan reported that during a Q&A session at the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con, director Sam Raimi, when asked about the status of his Shadow film project, stated they had not been able to develop a good script and the film would not be produced as planned.
Game adaptations.
Ocean Software developed a video game version of "The Shadow" to tie in with the 1994 film. The game was supposed to be published on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, but after the low box office gross of the film, the game was never released despite being completed. Since then, a ROM of the game has been leaked online.
Bally released a pinball machine based on "The Shadow" in 1994. The game was designed by Brian Eddy, and maintains modern popularity due to its clever use of mechanical features like the Phurba diverters, satisfying shot design, and unique upper playfield feature.
There is also a Tiger handheld game as well.
Television.
Two attempts were made to adapt the character to television. The first, in 1954, was titled "The Shadow" and starred Tom Helmore as Lamont Cranston.
The second attempt in 1958 was titled "The Invisible Avenger"; it never aired. The two episodes produced were compiled into a theatrical film and released with the same title. It was re-released with additional footage in 1962 as "Bourbon Street Shadows". Starring Richard Derr as The Shadow, the film depicts Lamont Cranston investigating the murder of a New Orleans bandleader. The film is notable as the second directorial effort of James Wong Howe, who directed only one of the two unaired episodes.
Influence on superheroes and other media.
When Bob Kane and Bill Finger first developed Batman, they patterned the character after pulp mystery men such as The Shadow. Finger then used "Partners of Peril" – a Shadow pulp written by Theodore Tinsley – as the basis for Batman's debut story, "The Case of the Chemical Syndicate". Finger later publicly acknowledged that "my first Batman script was a takeoff on a Shadow story" and that "Batman was originally written in the style of the pulps." This influence was further evident with Batman showing little remorse over killing or maiming criminals and not above using firearms. Decades later, noted comic book writer Dennis O'Neil would have Batman and The Shadow meet in "Batman" #253 (November 1973) and "Batman" #259 (December 1974) to solve crimes. In the former, Batman acknowledged that The Shadow was his biggest influence and in the latter, The Shadow reveals to Batman that he knows his true identity of Bruce Wayne but assures him that his secret is safe with him.
Alan Moore has credited The Shadow as one of the key influences for the creation of V, the title character in his DC Comics miniseries "V for Vendetta", which later became a Warner Bros. feature film released in 2006.
The Shadow is also one of the inspirations for Disney's 1991–1992 cartoon series "Darkwing Duck".
The 2015 video game "Fallout 4" includes a quest series centered on a character called "the Silver Shroud," a crime-fighting detective from old-world radio shows.
The Lamont Cranston Band takes its name from The Shadow's alter ego.
References.
Notes.
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The Shadow (magazine)
1931–49 American hero pulp magazine
The Shadow was an American pulp magazine that was published by Street & Smith from 1931 to 1949. Each issue contained a novel about the Shadow, a mysterious crime-fighting figure who had been invented to narrate the introductions to radio broadcasts of stories from Street & Smith's "Detective Story Magazine". A line from the introduction, "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows", prompted listeners to ask at newsstands for the "Shadow magazine", which convinced the publisher that a magazine based around a single character could be successful. Walter Gibson persuaded the magazine's editor, Frank Blackwell, to let him write the first novel, "The Living Shadow", which appeared in the first issue, dated April 1931.
Sales were strong, and Street & Smith quickly moved it from quarterly to monthly publication, and then to twice-monthly. John Nanovic was hired as editor in 1932, and the lead stories were outlined in meetings between Nanovic, Gibson, and Henry W. Ralston, Street & Smith's business manager. Gibson wrote every Shadow story for several years; from the mid-1930s he was assisted by Theodore Tinsley, who wrote almost thirty of the novels. Paper shortages during World War II forced Street & Smith to reduce the magazine's format from pulp to digest-sized. Pulp historians consider the quality of the fiction to have dropped after the 1930s. Gibson stopped writing the novels in 1946 over a contract dispute with Street & Smith, and the novels were written in his stead by Bruce Elliott; these stories, in which the Shadow is mostly a background figure, are held in low esteem by fans. Gibson returned to Street & Smith in 1948, but in 1949 Street & Smith ceased publication of their remaining pulp titles, including "The Shadow". The final issue was dated Fall 1949.
The success of "The Shadow" made it very influential, and many other single-character pulps soon appeared, featuring a lead novel in every issue about the magazine's main character. Street & Smith quickly followed up with "Doc Savage", and other publishers launched "The Spider", "The Phantom Detective", and titles in other genres such as Westerns and science fiction.
Publication history.
In 1915, New York City publishers Street & Smith began publication of "Detective Story Magazine", the first specialist genre pulp magazine. In 1930, CBS began "The Detective Story Hour" (actually a half-hour), a radio program that used scripts based on stories from the magazine. The scriptwriter, Harry Engman Charlot, suggested that the show should be introduced by a mysterious character. In the first episode, at 9:30 p.m. on July 31, 1930, James La Curto spoke the line: "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows." La Curto left after a few weeks for a role in a Broadway play, and was replaced in the role by Frank Readick Jr. The show only lasted for a year, but listeners started asking at newsstands for a copy of "the Shadow magazine", and though they were actually asking for "Detective Story Magazine", Street & Smith realized there was a demand waiting to be filled.
Henry W. Ralston, Street & Smith's business manager, decided that this was an opportunity to revive the idea of a magazine based around a single character. This had been done in the days of the dime novels, with characters such as Nick Carter and Frank Merriwell, but had never been tried with pulp magazines. Ralston was also concerned that other publishers might try to cash in on the demand by creating magazines with similar characters. He asked Frank Blackwell, the editor of "Detective Story Magazine", to launch "The Shadow", and provided him with an old manuscript of a Nick Carter novel that had never been published. Walter Gibson, a professional magician who had done ghostwriting and worked as a reporter, happened to be visiting Blackwell's office one day in December 1930, and persuaded Blackwell to give him the job of rewriting the novel; Gibson was told that if the first issue did well, the magazine would continue publication and he would be commissioned to write three more novels. The publication date was only two months distant, so Gibson began work that night while on a train to Philadelphia.
Pulp historians Will Murray and Robert Weinberg suggest that Street & Smith's expectations for the magazine must have been low, because they reused old cover art, rather than commissioning something new. The cover showed a Chinese man, with his dark shadow visible behind him; according to pulp historian Ron Goulart it was the only cover art the Street & Smith staff had been able to find with a shadow, but in fact the original artwork had a dark background, rather than a clearly outlined shadow. Gibson had to quickly change the manuscript to add a Chinese character to the plot.
The first issue was dated April 1931, with the lead novel appearing under the byline "Maxwell Grant", a name invented by Gibson, but which Street & Smith owned; it was used as the byline for all the Shadow novels, including those by other writers. The schedule was initially quarterly, with the second issue dated July–September 1931, but both issues sold out and Street & Smith moved "The Shadow" to a monthly schedule starting with the third issue, dated October 1931. This lasted for a year, and in October 1932 a twice-monthly schedule began, with the issues dated on the 1st and 15th of each month. This meant Gibson had to write two complete novels each month. Starting with the April 1932 issue, Street & Smith assigned John Nanovic as the editor of "The Shadow", and he, Ralston, and Gibson met regularly to plot the stories. Gibson would provide a detailed outline, and the three would agree on changes that Gibson would incorporate in the final draft. The pace that Gibson had to write at was so fast that his fingers sometimes bled.
Circulation rose quickly, reaching 300,000, a figure achieved by very few pulps. In 1935 Ralston and Nanovic began to vary the style of the novels, asking Gibson to write action-oriented rather than plot-centric fiction, and at the same time decided to bring in another author to write some of the novels and reduce Gibson's workload. The new author was Theodore Tinsley, whose first contribution appeared in the November 1, 1936 issue, titled "Partners of Peril". Tinsley wrote nearly thirty of the lead novels over the next seven years.
In 1943 wartime paper shortages forced Street & Smith to reduce "The Shadow" from pulp format to digest size. Nanovic left at the end of the year, and his place was taken by Babette Rosmond in June 1944. Tinsley also left, and Gibson took over writing all the lead novels once again, but because of a contract dispute between him and Street & Smith, the task of writing the novels was turned over to Bruce Elliott starting with the August 1946 issue. The schedule changed to bimonthly during Elliott's tenure as writer, but the change did not help sales. Gibson finally returned for the August–September 1948 issue, with the dispute resolved. Rosmond was replaced at the end of 1948 by Daisy Bacon, who persuaded Ralston to return to the old pulp format for the next issue, now on a quarterly schedule, dated Winter 1948. Bacon claimed to a friend that circulation rose by a quarter for that issue, but only three more appeared. The last issue was dated Summer 1949: that year Street & Smith cancelled most of their remaining pulp magazines, including "Detective Story", "Western Story", and "Doc Savage", as well as "The Shadow", having decided that the future lay in their slick magazines such as "Mademoiselle". The announcement came in April 1949. Bacon was let go, and her half-sister and editorial assistant, Esther Ford Robinson, was kept on to manage the final issues of Bacon's magazines, including "The Shadow".
Contents and reception.
"The Shadow" established the format for the single-character pulps that followed it: every issue featured a novel about the main character, though the additional short stories accompanying it did not. The first novel, titled "The Living Shadow", begins with a young man being saved from suicide by a stranger whose "face was entirely obscured by a broad-brimmed felt hat bent downward over the features". The young man swears allegiance to the mysterious crime fighter, and becomes the Shadow's assistant in his crusade. The second novel, "Eyes of the Shadow", reveals that the Shadow's real identity is a millionaire, Lamont Cranston, but Street & Smith decided to retain the air of mystery that came with not knowing who the Shadow was, and in the third novel, "The Shadow Laughs", the reader discovers that the Shadow impersonates Cranston at times, but keeps his true name secret. Over the succeeding novels Gibson provided the occasional hint to the Shadow's past, including a role as a spy during World War I, and eventually, in 1937, the Shadow's true name is revealed as Kent Allard. The Shadow's abilities included stage magic, hypnosis, marksmanship, and brilliant deductive powers. In the earlier novels, Gibson gave the Shadow supernatural abilities: for example, criminals who saw his face would die, but these capabilities disappeared after the revelation of the Shadow's identity. The Shadow's opponents were criminals too powerful to be effectively opposed by the police, and in some cases their powers were science fictional as well as criminal, with death rays appearing in more than one story, and robots and even supernatural forces as antagonists. Murray and Weinberg estimate that about 25 of the novels were science fiction—a small proportion of Gibson's output, but a remarkably high number of science fiction novels for a single author to have written.
The Shadow had a group of regular associates who were featured in many of the novels: Harry Vincent, a young man who acted as the Shadow's aide; Rutledge Mann, an investment broker; Cliff Marsland, a wrongly-imprisoned innocent man; Clyde Burke, a reporter; and Joe Cardona, a police detective.
Murray considers that Gibson's ability to vary the plots from novel to novel, with a wide range of backdrops, characters, and plot devices, was the key to attracting and retaining readers. Gibson's work varied in quality over the years: in Murray's view, after 1941 the novels became "repetitious, sometimes lifeless...even becoming inadvertent parodies of their former selves". According to pulp historian Ed Hulse, fans of the Shadow regard the magazine's best period as beginning in 1934, and Hulse himself considers 1935 the best year, singling out "Zemba", from the December 1 issue, as a favorite of many readers, and identifying "Lingo", in the April 1 issue, as his own candidate for Gibson's best work. Hulse agrees with Murray that the early 1940s saw the quality of the novels drop off, but identifies 1937, when the Shadow's identity is revealed, as the start of the decline. Another pulp historian, Lee Server, argues that Gibson was the perfect writer for "The Shadow" novels, because of his knowledge of magic and the history of magic: "The stories were the literary equivalent of a master illusionist's stage act, full of tricks, threats of sudden death, and mysterious atmosphere". Goulart suggests that initially Gibson took this too far, with the early Shadow stories containing too much in the way of tricks and surprises, and not enough of the Shadow himself: "The effect is something like a magic show with lots of tricks and no star magician".
Tinsley's work included more violence and more sexually oriented material than Gibson's, though Murray comments that Tinsley's first Shadow novels were essentially imitations of Gibson's style. One of Tinsley's novels, "Satan's Signature", is described by Murray as having been too much of a "taboo-breaker" for Street & Smith to publish it in "The Shadow"; it eventually appeared in "Clues", another Street & Smith magazine, after Tinsley rewrote it to eliminate the Shadow from the plot. Elliott's fifteen Shadow novels in the 1940s are "held in low esteem by pulp devotees, and not entirely without reason", according to Hulse. They featured Lamont Cranston as the main character, rather than the Shadow himself, and were short, and relegated to the back of the magazine by the editor, Rosmond, who was "not a fan of the hero pulps", in Hulse's words. Goulart is less critical of Elliott, describing his work as "less melodramatic...clearly an attempt to update the character".
Each issue included short stories, all in the detective genre, by writers such as Frank Gruber, Norman Daniels, and John D. MacDonald. There were also nonfiction departments such as a regular letter column and a club column. The first four covers for "The Shadow" (not including the reused art by Modest Stein pressed into service for the first issue) were painted by Jerome Rozen; with the January 1932 issue, Jerome's brother, George Rozen, took over, and became the magazine's best-known cover artist. Street & Smith's associate art editor, Bill Lawlor, is reputed to be the model for depictions of the Shadow: Lawlor is supposed to have kept a suitable cape and hat in his office. Graves Gladney became a frequent cover artist between 1938 and 1941, painting seventy covers. The interior art was often by Tom Lovell in the early years; he was followed by Edd Cartier and Earl Mayan, and then during the war by Paul Orban. Cartier returned as an illustrator after the war, as did Orban for the final few issues.
"The Shadow" was the