He Knew. The Man in Black. The Shadow.
The Shadow first saw life in 1930 as the narrator for the Detective Story Hour, a radio show that was devised to boost sales for the pulp magazines printed by Street and Smith Publications.
The narrator, voiced first by James LaCurto, and later by Frank Readick, possessed a sinister, dark persona crafted to foster a feeling of suspense and anticipation. The names “the Inspector,” and “the Sleuth” were proposed, but is was scriptwriter Harry Engman Charlot who struck gold.
The Shadow.
Though Street and Smith planned to use the mysterious figure to boost sales to its miscellaneous detective stories, the opposite proved to be true. Legions of the radio shows’ fans turned up at newsstands asking for nonexistent issues of “The Shadow” magazine.
It behooved them to create one.
Street and Smith commissioned professional writer and magician Walter B. Gibson, working under the pen name of Maxwell Grant, to usher the mysterious figure from ambiguity to create a new and complete character, with a history, determination, and agenda as dark as the mysterious voice on the air.
He delivered in a big way, not only once, but twice a month, in novel-length stories, that in total came to over 300 tales. To satisfy the rabid demand for the dark figure who knew all, he regularly put down somewhere in the area of 10,000 words a day.
The story of the Shadow was a mixed bag. In the radio show, the Shadow is Lamont Cranston, wealthy man-about-town who in reality was the Shadow, mysterious figure in black who could render himself invisible and had the ability to cloud men’s minds.
He also possessed the ability to hypnotize the weak-willed. Pretty straight-forward for a mysterious figure. In print, it was much more complicated.
The pulp stories of the 30’s and 40’s recalled a man named Kent Allard, a World War I flying ace, known as the Black Eagle. After the war, Allard faked his own death in South America and went on to wage a one-man war on crime.
Arriving in New York, he took on many different aliases to hide his identity and continue his war. One of these aliases was that of a wealthy young man-about-town whose identity he stole and forced to leave the western world, trading the name of Lamont Cranston with Kent Allard.
In both radio and pulps, the Shadow gained a supporting cast. In the pulp stories, he grew a network of those whose lives or fortunes he saved, such as reporters, lawyers, and even a radio operator who maintained communications between the operatives and the mystery man.
In the radio version, his cast was markedly smaller, with only socialite Margo Lane knowing the Shadow’s identity.
In addition to a robust supporting cast, he also battled a wide variety of villains. While his rogues gallery was in no way the equal of Dick Tracy’s or Batman’s, the Shadow waged war on the likes of the Voodoo Master, the Murder Genius, and the Wasp.
His nemesis was Shiwan Khan, who appeared regularly, and was even cast as the villain in the 1994 Alec Baldwin film.
The Shadow was produced as a radio show for over fifteen years, with the words “Who Knows What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Men?” spoke over a background of “Le Rouet d’Omphale.” He was most famously tied to the actor Orson Wells, but was portrayed by Bret Morrison for over ten years.
The Man in Black also appeared in newspaper strips, movie serials, comic books, and even feature films. In the last few years, however, despite much rumor and talk, the Shadow has yet to be cast.
