After the appearance of Zorro, other pulp character debuted but it wasn’t until the 1930s that new influential characters emerged, most notably The Shadow, Doc Savage, and Conan.
The Shadow
The Shadow was the name of a collection of serialized dramas, originally in 1930s pulp novels, and then in a wide variety of media. Its title character had been featured on the radio, in a long-running pulp magazine series, in American comic books, comic strips, television, serials, video games, and at least five feature films. The radio drama included episodes voiced by Orson Welles.
Originally created to be a mysterious radio show narrator, the Shadow was developed into a distinctive literary character in 1931 by writer Walter B. Gibson.
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 decided to create a magazine based on a character called The Shadow, and hired Gibson to create a character concept to fit the name and voice and write a story featuring him. The first issue of The Shadow Magazine went on sale on April 1, 1931, a pulp series.
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 power to cloud men’s minds so they cannot see him’. In the magazine stories, The Shadow was not given the literal ability to become 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). At the end of each episode, The Shadow reminded listeners that ‘The weed of crime bears bitter fruit! Crime does not pay. The Shadow knows!’ (However, some early episodes used the alternate statement, ‘As you sow evil, so shall you reap evil! Crime does not pay... The Shadow knows!’)
Background
In order 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.” 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 news dealers for copies of “that Shadow detective magazine,” even though it did not exist.
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 rather similar to The Shadow’s. French comics historian Xavier Fournier noted other similarities with another silent serial, The Shielding Shadow, whose protagonist had a power of invisibility, and considered 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. Richard Wormser, a reader for Street & Smith, wrote two Shadow stories.
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 updated Shadow novels from Belmont Books, starting with Return of The Shadow under his own name. The remaining eight—The Shadow Strikes, Beware Shadow, 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. In these novels, The Shadow is given psychic powers, including the radio character’s ability “to cloud men’s minds,” so that he effectively became invisible; he is more of a spymaster than crime fighter in these eight updated novels.
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, 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 did not wear a costume because he was invisible when he operated 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 actor 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 did not wear a mask or any disguise while invisible, and so in episodes such as “The Temple Bells of Neban” (1937) he was cautious when he met an enemy who could potentially disrupt his hypnotic abilities, exposing his true face and instantly making him a visible target for attack.
In the print adventures, The Shadow was Kent Allard, although his real name was not revealed until The Shadow Unmasks (1937). Early stories explained 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 found a new challenge in waging war on criminals. Allard falsified his death by crash landing his plane in Guatemala, encountering the indigenous “Xinca tribe” as a result, who saw him as a supernatural being and provided him with two loyal aides. Allard returned to the United States and took 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 hunted 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 was The Devil’s Whisper, a chemical compound on the thumb and forefinger, causing a flash of bright flame and sharp explosion when he snapped his fingers. The Shadow was also known for wearing a ring with a purple stone (sometimes depicted as a red stone in cover artwork), gifted to Kent Allard from the Czar of Russia during World War I. The ring was 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 was Lamont Cranston, a “wealthy young man-about-town.” In the pulps, Cranston was a separate character, a rich playboy who traveled the world while The Shadow used his identity and resources in New York (The Shadow Laughs, 1931). The Shadow’s disguise as Cranston worked well because the two men resemble each other (Dictator of Crime, 1941). In their first meeting, The Shadow threatened Cranston, saying that unless the playboy agreed to allow the aviator to use his identity when he was abroad, then Allard would 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 agreed, deciding that sharing his resources and identity was better than losing both entirely. The two men sometimes met afterward in order to impersonate each other (Crime over Miami, 1940). As Cranston, The Shadow often attended 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 included: businessman Henry Arnaud, who like Cranston was a real person whose identity Allard simply assumed at times, as revealed in Arnaud’s first appearance The Black Master (March 1, 1932); elderly Isaac Twambley, who first appeared in No Time For Murder (December 1944); and Fritz, an old, seemingly slow-witted, uncommunicative janitor who worked at police headquarters, listening in on conversations and examining recovered evidence, first appearing in The Living Shadow (April 1931).
For the first half of The Shadow’s tenure in the pulps, his past and true identity (outside of his Cranston disguise) were 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 saw The Shadow’s true face and remarked the vigilante was 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 was really and only Lamont Cranston with no other regular cover identities, though he did adopt disguises and short-term aliases during some adventures. The radio version of Cranston traveled 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 spent time training with a Yogi priest, “Keeper of the Temple of Cobras,” in Delhi and learned 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 stated in several episodes that his talents were not magic but based on science. Returning to New York, he decided he could best aid the police and his city by operating outside the law as an invisible vigilante. He was somewhat less ruthless and more compassionate than the pulp incarnation.
Though initially wanted by the police, The Shadow also worked 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 was also Cranston’s uncle (portrayed by Jonathan Winters in the 1994 film). Weston believed Cranston was merely a rich playboy who dabbled in detective work out of curiosity. Another police contact was 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) featured 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.
Comic Strip
The Shadow has been adapted for the comics several times during his long history; his first comics appearance 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 ran until June 20, 1942.
Comic book
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.
Impact
When Bob Kane and Bill Finger first developed Kane’s “Bat- Man,” 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.
The Shadow was mentioned by science fiction author Philip José Farmer as being a member of his widespread and hero-filled Wold Newton family.
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 protagonist of the 1990s Disney cartoon Darkwing Duck has a striking resemblance to The Shadow.
The Shadow also appears to have been a major inspiration behind the comic book crime-fighting hero The Silver Shroud in Bethesda’s post-apocalyptic video game Fallout 4.
