The Shadow Knows What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Men

 

The Shadow was one of the first radio dramas to hook listeners with secret coded messages,

When Street and Smith, a Depression era publisher of pulp fiction, decided to boost the sagging sales of its flagship Detective Story Magazine they took a flyer on radio, which was just coming into its own as a platform for dramas.  David Chrisman of the Ruthrauff & Ryan advertising agency was hired to create a package that would frame stories from the magazine adapted by editor/publisher William Sweets.  It was decided to have the stories introduced by a mysterious, nameless narrator.  Several possibilities were tossed around until writer Harry Engman Charlot suggested the eerie and sinister sounding The Shadow.

Detective Story Hour premiered on Thursday July 31, 1930 on the CBS Radio network.  It was the first version of an American cultural phenomenon which would go on to become one of the longest running a most popular radio dramas of all time, a long running series of twice-a-month pulp novels, and spawn movie serials and features, comic books, and a TV series.  The character of The Shadow would help inspire the superhero genre in comic books, especially The BatMan and the Green Hornet on radio.  The Hornet was depicted as the modern nephew of the Lone Ranger by a Detroit radio station desperate for a mystery program to match The Shadow.

But all of that was as yet in the future.  The character and the radio show both had some growing and adapting to do.

In those early broadcasts, the eerie introduction that became famous was not yet in its full form.  The Shadow did not yet have a secret identity and was not an active participant in the stories, just a kind of omnipresent observer to the unfolding yarn.  But the narrator voiced by James LaCurto and later Frank Readick uttered the now familiar introduction “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows…” 

The Shadow Magazine eventually came out twice a month with a complete short novel in each issue plus short stories and features.  The Shadow in the magazine had a more complex back story than depicted on radio. 

Audiences were hooked from the beginning.  Smith and Street were gratified by the success of the show, but somewhat stunned by the audience reaction to The Shadow.  But being smart purveyors of popular culture, the company wasted no time in cashing in.  On April 1, 1931 the company launched a new magazine, The Shadow, a quarterly which featured a complete novel in each issue plus additional detective short stories.  The editors commissioned Walter B. Gibson, a prolific pulp writer and stage magician as the principal author of the novels which were published under the name Maxwell Grant.

Gibson fleshed out the character and invented the mythos surrounding him.  The new book was such a sensation that within months it went from a four times a year schedule to twice a month—requiring the hyperactive writer to churn out 75,000 word stories every two weeks in addition to later contributing to the radio program, comic books, and a daily syndicated comic strip.  Although eventually other writers were brought in to take up some of the slack, Gibson would go on to pen 282 of the 325 Shadow novels.  And after the pulp magazine folded he went on to write three additional longer form novels under his own name in a new series issued by Belmont Books.

Gibson fleshed out the character and invented the mythos surrounding him.  The new book was such a sensation that within months it went from a four times a year schedule to twice a month—requiring the hyperactive writer to churn out 75,000 word stories every two weeks in addition to later contributing to the radio program, comic books, and a daily syndicated comic strip.  Although eventually other writers were brought in to take up some of the slack, Gibson would go on to pen 282 of the 325 Shadow novels.  And after the pulp magazine folded he went on to write three additional longer form novels under his own name in a new series issued by Belmont Books.

In the Gibson stories The Shadow’s secret identity was Kent Allard, a World War I air ace who flew for France and was known as the Black Eagle.  After the war, Allard turned to the challenge in waging war on criminals.  He faked his death in the South American jungles, then returned to the States.  Back in New York City, he adopted numerous identities to conceal his existence, Lamont Cranston, a “wealthy young man about town,” being just one of them.  Alard blackmailed the real playboy into allowing him to assume his identity while he traveled the world.

Assuming the identity of Cranston and others the Shadow pursued villains relentlessly by night employing the skills of a cat burglar, hypnotist, magician, and master of disguise to seemingly be anywhere.  He would often torment the men—and occasional woman—he stalked them with ominous taunts from the darkness, often driving them to near insanity.  In the end either The Shadow would cut the bad guy down in a blaze of gun fire or lead him into a police trap, or even have him killed by his own accomplices or victims.  For most of the duration of the pulp series there was no hint that The Shadow possessed any supernatural powers.

                                    Lurid covers with endangered beauties and oriental villains sold magazines.

The lurid pulp covers gripped readers with an unforgettable image of the anti-hero. He wore a large, wide brimmed black hat pulled low over his face revealing only intense staring eyes.  Over an ordinary black business suit he wore a crimson lined black cape pulled up revealing only a hawk-like nose.

With the magazine launched, the company was still a little unsure how to use the character on the radio show.  They even tried to employ him as the narrator for another short lived series based on a Smith and Street rag, Love Story Hour, which took over the original Thursday night slot.  Detective Story Hour shifted to Sunday evenings.  In September, 1931 the program acquired a commercial sponsor and was re-named the Blue Coal Radio Revue but it remained an hour long program with Frank Readick starring as The Shadow. 

The following year the show and its sponsor jumped to NBC on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.  Readick remained the star, although LaCurto sometimes filled in.  And the program was now officially what audiences had called it all along The Shadow.

As the radio dramas began to integrate the narrator into the story lines, some of them borrowed from and adapted from the novels for the sake of simplicity some elements of character as portrayed by Gibson were dropped or altered.  First to go was any mention of Kent Allard or other assumed identities.  The Shadow was Lamont Cranston.  To avoid bringing the action to a screeching halt to explain in each episode how the Shadow seems to be everywhere, a key part of the novels, it was said simply that he “had the power to cloud men’s minds.”  This was inferred to be a form of hypnotism mastered by The Shadow in the Orient.  Later in the series  he seemed to have acquired a super power of invisibility.

                    Agnes Morehead was The Shadow's accomplice on the radio show.

One of the most important differences between the books and the show was the introduction of a female accomplice, Margo Lane, who learns Cranston’s secret, becomes his companion, possible lover, and abets him in his crusade.  The part was added to give a feminine voice to the series, and Lane sometimes stepped in as narrator explaining her part in the unfolding drama.  Gibson was resentful of this change and refused for quite a while to include Lane in his novels, finally giving in to public pressure after 1940.  In 1937 the program moved to the Mutual Network and Sunday nights where it became an institution.  And with a new Shadow, youthful wiz kid Orson Welles, and Agnes Morehead as Margo Lane the program took on the form that is most remembered, and which is still heard on old time radio programs and available in CD collections.  Although the famous introduction and the closing sinister laugh were still provided by recording of Readick,  Welles’s deep rich voice and nuanced performance built tension as never before.

                    Orson Welles became the most famous voice of The Shadow.

Welles only stayed with the show for two seasons, moving on to his own ambitious Mercury Theater of the Air and Hollywood, taking Morehead with him on both adventures, but his stamp remained on the program through the several other actors called upon to portray the mysterious crime fighter including Bill Johnstone (1938-1943), John Archer (1944-1945), and Bret Morrison (1943-1944, 1945-1954).  Lane was portrayed by Morehead through 1940 then by Majorie Anderson (1940-1944), Grace Matthews (1946-1949), and Gertrude Warner (1949-1954).

                            Bret Morison and Marjorie Anderson were a '40s pairing as The Shadow and Margo Lane.

The show remained popular and Blue Coal remained the usual sponsor on the East Coast until replaced by the U.S. Army and Air Force, and later by Wildroot Cream Oil.  After 1953 no regular single sponsor could be found and the program was sustained by the network with spot advertising.  That was writing on the wall, listeners and advertisers were abandoning long form drama radio for the glamor of television.  The Shadow aired its last original episode on December 26, 1954.

The Shadow also lived across multiple other media.  There were several film versions, mostly by minor studios, beginning with a series of two reel shorts produced by Universal Pictures during the first flush of success on the radio in 1930-31.  The first entry in the series, A Burglar to the Rescue, was filmed in New York City with the voice of The Shadow on radio, Frank Readick.  Subsequent instalments were filmed cheaply in Hollywood with different actors.  In 1937 and ’38 Rod La Rocque starred in two Grand National Pictures releases. 

Victor Jory played The Shadow in a Columbia Pictures serial.  Poverty Row B-movie studios churned out cheep bottom-of-the-Double feature films.

The Shadow was a 15 episode cliff hanging serial starring Victor Jory in probably the most memorable cinematic portrayal for Columbia in 1940.  Poverty row Monogram Pictures, best known for their westerns, made three super-low budget entries in the post war years.

In the 1958 two pilot episodes of a failed TV series were slapped together and released to theaters as Invisible Avenger.

The character did not get a first class film presentation until 1994 when Alec Baldwin and Penelope Ann Miller appeared in The Shadow in what Universal Pictures hoped would be a blockbuster.  The film feature John Lone as an Asian supervillain working to develop an atomic bomb, and a supporting cast of Peter Boyle, Jonathon Winters, Ian McKellan, and Tim Curry.  Although the film made money, it was not warmly greeted by critics and failed to become a mega-hit.

The Shadow finally got a big budget production in 1994 when Alec Baldwin played the lead and Penelope Ann Miller played Margo Lane.  It was supposed to set up a movie franchise for Universal Pictures, but failed to become a blockbuster.

The Shadow fared better in illustrated print.  Walter Gibson participated in a daily strip drawn by Vernon Greene which ran for two years, 1940-42 and covered six adventures adapted from his novels until it was cancelled along with many other strips to preserve paper during the war years.  The strips were assembled and released as two comic books.

Publishers Street and Smith published their own comic book series, Shadow Comics for 101 issues between 1940 and 1949 based on the magazine version of the hero.  Archie Comics tried to cash in on the super hero craze in 1964 with a new series based on the radio show.  In the second issue of an eight book arc, a blond Lamont Cranston and The Shadow was transformed into a muscular superhero in green and blue tights.  Loyal Shadow fans were not amused and neither was the intended teen age audience.

                                Street and Smith issued the first comic book which ran for 101 issues through the 1940s.

D.C. Comics produced four Shadow series—a 12-issue series (Nov. 1973 - Sept. 1975) drawing heavily on the atmosphere of the novels and the graphic content of their covers; a 1986 mini-series, Shadow: Blood and Judgment that brought the old hero to modern New York; and in 1987 a new a monthly series by writer Andy Helfer and drawn primarily by artists Bill Sienkiewicz and Kyle Baker continuing the modern universe of the mini-series.  During this period The Shadow also made cross appearances in other DC Comics, particularly Detective Comics where Batman acknowledges the now elderly Shadow as his inspiration and we learn that the character had once saved the lives of Bruce Wayne’s parents.

From 1989 to 1992, DC published a new Shadow series, The Shadow Strikes, written by Gerard Jones and Eduardo Barreto set in the ‘30s and returning The Shadow to his pulp origins.

At DC Comics The Shadow had his own book and showed up with the company's superheroes, notably Batman in other books.

Marvel Comics also had a crack at The Shadow with a graphic novel, The Shadow 1941: Hitler’s Astrologer by writer Dennis O’Neil and artist Michael Kaluta who had worked together on D.C.’s first series.

Dark Horse Comics acquired the rights to The Shadow and published the mini-series In The Coils of Leviathan in 1993, Hell’s Heat Wave, and The Shadow and Doc Savage both in 1995 as well as two single issue specials.

In 2012 Dynamite Entertainment began yet another new series written by Garth Ennis and illustrated by Aaron Campbell and a mini-series Masks, teaming the 1930 era Shadow with the Spider, The Green Hornet and Kato, and a 1930s version of Zorro. 

It seems that after all of these years pop culture fans still can’t get enough of The Shadow.

 

A Warm Bucket of Spit—The Tale of the American Vice Presidency— Part IV How We Got Here

2008 Democratic Presidential hopefuls at a debate early in the primary season.  They fell one after another until it was down to two.  Losers go on VP short lists.  Left to right--Senator Joe Biden, Sen. Christopher Todd, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, Sen. Barack Obama, former Sen. John Edwards, Representative Dennis Kucinich, Sen. Hillary Clinton, and former Sen. Mike Gravel.

Note—Bringing the story up to date.

The election of 2008 shaped up as a referendum on unceasingly unpopular George W. Bush presidency, Democrats were favored to take back the White House after already reclaiming majorities in the House and Senate two years earlier.  After Al Gore a gaggle of candidates entered the race, but conventional wisdom declared that the nomination was Hilary Clinton’s to lose.  Minor candidates quickly went by the wayside or remained in the race only symbolically.   Pretty boy Senator John Edwards of North Carolina and running mate of John Kerry in 2004 showed early strength running as a progressive populist but quickly faded. 

The race narrowed down to a contest between Clinton and the very junior Senator from Illinois, Barak Obama who had rocketed to the national spotlight on the basis of his memorable Keynote speech to the 2004 Democratic Convention.  A long and sometimes bitter primary season see-sawed between the two leading candidates.  But by early summer the charismatic Obama, buoyed by heavy registration of young and minority voters surged ahead to what looked like an insurmountable lead.   But Clinton vowed to stay in the race to the convention and her supporters mocked calls for party unity. After Obama became inevitable there was a noisy flurry of Clintonistas—mostly women—vowing never to support Obama in November no matter the consequences.  But it turned out many of those stirring that pot were Republican plants and shills in a classic dirty tricks operation re-tooled for an era of bloggers.  Most resentful Democratic women quickly got over it and showed up in droves to support Obama in November.   

Joe Biden and Barack Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Obama’s Vice Presidential choice surprised many.   Delaware Senator Joe Biden was a longtime Democratic fixture who had made an abortive run for the nomination way back in 1988 and was one of the tribe of contenders quickly eliminated twenty years later.  Avuncular and folksy he strongly connected to White ethnic working class voters whose security even then was being threatened by an out-migration of jobs from older industrial communities.  He had endured unimaginable loss when between his upset victory in his first Senate race and his swearing into office when his young wife Neilia and one year old daughter Naomi were killed and young sons Beau and Hunter were injured in an automobile accident in 1972.  A shaken Biden turned to his Catholic faith for support and became a dedicated single parent.    To maintain a stable life for his sons with a network of family support, he kept his full time residence in the Wilmington suburbs and commuted each day to Washington via a 1 ½ hour Amtrak ride.  

In 1977 Biden married teacher Jill Jacobs and began to build a new strong family as both pursued their careers.  Jill went on to get a Ph.D. in education while teaching in high schools, a psychiatric hospital, and at the college level.  In 1981 the Biden welcomed daughter Ashley.  The unusual attention given here to the Vice Presidential candidates wife is because she quickly became the fourth member of a tightly bonded team with her husband, Barack and Michelle Obama.  Their relationship on the campaign trail and continuing into office were even closer than that of the Clintons and Gore.  Michelle and Dr.  Jill, who became the first spouse of a President or Vice President to hold a paying job as an  adjunct professor at Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA),  worked closely together in high profile support of children’s literacy and in support of veterans.  

Sarah Palin was more than outmatched by Joe Biden in the Vice Presidential debat

On the other side, Arizona Senator John McCain, the former Navy pilot and prisoner of war in North Vietnam, finally secured the Republican nomination despite the opposition of the parties growing ultra-right who regarded his occasional departures from conservative orthodoxy as a self-described maverick made him a traitor.   To shore up his shaky right wing and to appeal to those largely fictional feminists who would not support Obama shortly before the convention he made what looked like an impulsive, but dramatic choice of a running mate—Alaska Governor Sara Palin.  She certainly roused the red-meat right, but her bizarre   pronouncements, fractured syntax, and seemingly willful ignorance quickly made her a national laughing stock.   In the end McCain’s choice called into question the basic soundness of his judgement.   The rock-steady Biden, by contrast, did much to boost his Black running mate with the white working class.

Biden was an exceptional engaged and involved partner with President Obama especially on foreign policy.  In the Oval Office in 2013 meeting with Palestinian and Israeli negotiators.

In office, Biden maintained the close relationship.  As an experienced foreign policy expert he was included in all of the highest level national security discussions and was a close collaborator with the President and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  Obama and Biden continued the recent tradition of regular meeting and easy access to the Oval Office.  The President entrusted him with numerous special projects and commissions, including as coordinator for a national push to cure cancer.   

In 2012 Biden was once again an energetic and effective campaigner in the successful re-election campaign against Mitt Romney and Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, an architect of an unpopular government shutdown in a refusal to raise the debt limit.  Despite predictions of a close race the Obama/Biden ticket won 332 Electoral College votes to Romney/Ryan’s 206 and had a 51–47 percent edge in the nationwide popular vote.

Biden was often mentioned as a potential 2016 presidential candidate, especially if Hillary Clinton, who delayed tipping her hand well into 2015, decided not to run.  When his son Beau, then serving as Delaware Attorney General, was on his deathbed with cancer, he appealed to his father to run, and emotional Biden would later reveal.  In the end he declined to run and spoke kindly of both Clinton and Bernie Sanders.  But some Party leaders who became nervous that Clinton would falter or even be indicted in a minor but persistent e-mail server scandal, considered Biden a possible fall back to keep the nomination falling to left socialist/populist Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.  He apparently did nothing to encourage the idea.

Clinton secured the nomination but faced an irreconcilable Sanders base.  Burdened by a bitterly divided party, Clinton lost, to everyone’s amazement, to a slimy real estate mogul and TV celebrity.  She won the popular vote but once again narrowly lost the Electoral College.

Before it all fell apart--Donald Trump and Mike Pence, the Whitest man in America.

Donald Trump tapped colorless in more ways than one Indian Governor Mike Pence as running mate to shore up his credentials with evangelical right and Christians not convinced that the twice divorced and sexually scandalous candidate was truly righteous.  Mission accomplished.  In office Pence became a point man against abortion rights, marriage equality, and the transgender.  He also was an effective Trump surrogate loyally supporting his boss through every new scandal or word hash eruption.  Although he preferred the guidance and confidence of his personal circle including daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner and his press secretary Hope Hicks over that of his official Cabinet, many of whom he distrusted, he did regularly meet with Pence and was happy enough to keep him on the ticket for his re-election campaign in 2020.

Former Veep Joe Biden finally eliminated his rivals and secured the Democratic nomination.  He  picked former California Attorney General and Senator Kamala Harris because he had promised to choose a woman, to shore up Black support, and because of her vigorous, prosecutorial examination of Trump officials and insiders in Congressional testimony. 

Despite an unwavering base, most voters were tired of his serial outrages and antics, and swept Trump out of office on narrow wins in a handful of contested states for a comfortable Electoral College majority.  Trump went into an unprecedented fit and began charging the election had been stolen and that he had been cheated.  He not only refused to concede defeat he had his associates, minions, and loyal dupes launch attempt after attempt to overturn the results in swing states and made increasingly desperate suggestions that his supporters might need to rise up, possibly violently, to prevent Biden from taking office.  Republicans in some states tried to avoid certifying their Electors and to substitute slates of hand-picked loyalists.  One by one state and Federal courts dismissed wild law suits.  Through it all Pence loyally stood by his boss until the game was almost up.

Congress was set to officially accept the December vote of lawful Electors on January 6, 2021.  Trump pressured Pence for days to refuse to sign-off on the certification vote.  Famously, that was a line the Vice President would not cross.  He announced that he would follow the law.  Trump went on the attack immediately.  At a Washington street rally that day, Trump excoriated Pence and the crowd took up the chant “Hang Mike Pence!”  They marched on the Capitol and laid siege to it, eventually breaking in sending Senators and Congressmen scattering to safety.  The mob had brought their own gallows outside the building supposedly to hang him.  Pence barely escaped to a “secure location.”

 

On January 6, 2021 supposedly spontaneous marchers besieging the Captiol brought a scaffold with them to hang Mike Pence.  Inside the Vice President had to be whisked to a "safe location" as mobs surged through the building.

The official certification was conducted that night.  Biden and Harris were inaugurated under tight security on January 20.

In office Harris did not enjoy the same close relationship that Biden had with Obama.  Although always in the loop, the President did not seem to rely on her for critical decisions.  She was given a more limited portfolio including the hot potato issues of border security and refugee rights.  She was used as a mostly ceremonial stand in for the President internationally.  She carved out her own space as the administration’s most fierce defender of reproductive rights and women’s equality.

Despite reservations by some in the Party, Harris remained on the ticket with Biden for his apparent rematch against Trump, a political vampire who wouldn’t stay dead.  Outside of a loyal, but perhaps unenthusiastic base  many voters were unhappy with the choices at the top of both tickets, especially as Biden’s health and fitness came increasingly into question.  After a disastrous debate, the pressure built ever stronger among powerful Democrats and the public for Biden to withdraw from the race.  Which he reluctantly did endorsing Harris.  

Kamala Harris--Veep one day, presumptive Democratic Presidential  nominee the next already on the stump re-energizing voters.

Her emergence as the candidate has been met with great enthusiasm especially among women and African-Americans.  Record donations poured into the campaign from megadonors and in small individual gifts.  Voter registration has soared, and polls show a narrowing race with Harris showing momentum in critical swing states.

Now Harris turns to selecting her own running mate before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.