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February 9, 2005
Shadows among shadows...
"The Shadow", was both
a radio show and a pulp
magazine.
I'd often wondered Here it's hard to play
"which came first?", the game of declaring
but that turns out that the original is
to be a question more authentic.
without an answer.
Where the Shadow is
concerned there's no
place to point to.
In the beginning was
"Street and Smith
Detective Magazine"
Then there was a
promotional radio show The goal was to
of the same name. promote printed
media sales with
This was an anthology of broadcast
one-off short stories advertisements.
featuring different
characters (ala
"Suspense"), and as a
gimmick, they added a
spooky narrator (ala "The If you don't get this
Whistler") called "The "Whistler/Suspense" Some confusion
Shadow". reference, think "Rod on my part:
Serling/Twilight Zone". "The Whistler"
The Shadow introduced and "Suspense"
and commented on, but were two
did not appear in the different
stories themselves. "The Shadow shows. And
Knows" "The Whistler"
He was a name is an imitation
and a voice, of "The Shadow"
without character not the other
or narrative. way around.
Framing narratives
Listeners remembered "The Shadow", weren't unusual
but not "Street and Smith Detective"; in fiction back
it was quickly realized that they then... but
needed to put out a "Shadow Magazine". An alternate I wonder if the
version of Shadow was the
the story: invention of this
it was just particular style...
a maneuver
to sew up
the trademark.
They then commissioned some
stories *about* the Shadow. SHROUDED_IN_SHADOW
In one of the first novels, "The Shadow Laughs"
(October, 1931) it is revealed that beyond the
Lamont Cranston identity, there's another
secret identity... SHADOW_LAUGH
The Shadow essentially
stole Cranston's identity,
then pressured him to
allow The Shadow to There's an attempt at
continue using it. softening this particularly
nasty business -- after
The Shadow makes his threats,
there's a suggestion that
Cranston decides he's a good
guy after all (?!). He laughs
it all off, wishes him good
luck, and bows out.
I suspect (but am not
sure, at the moment)
that the Cranston
character was later
played up as a willing
collaborator.
People who like to
think of themselves
as hip insiders, like
to declare that the
Shadow was *really*
Kent Allard, a pilot Which exact locale?
who crashed in some Guatemala. That's the
exotic locale. 1937 version of the story.
But that particular fillip But the radio show
to the story appears to be places the source
a much later addition (or of his mystic knowledge
retcon?). (which didn't yet exist
in the 1937 version) There's a
It's attributed (Retcon: as Tibet. recurrent
to the August retroactive obsession
1937 story "The continuity So the 90s film in pulp
Shadow change. version has him with Tibet
Unmasked". Jargon spend years "going as a source
from the native" in a more of mystic
I haven't comics oriental locale... knowledge,
read this world.) presumably Tibet.
story yet, I wonder
but by all MUTATION Was the idea that if the
accounts it he crashed there? source of
sounds like But in the film, the that is
a mess... name is Cranston, of the radio
course, there is no show...
The Shadow Allard.
can't use
Cranston's
name for SHROUDED_IN_SHADOW
awhile, and
reverts to
Allard for
no apparent
reason, an
identity that
he's destroyed Though the first time,
*twice* with he was destroying his
two different WWI ace identity:
faked plane "The Dark Eagle".
crashes.
Allard's name does
reappears after
this, e.g. the I've heard that there
1938 story "Face are later suggestions
of Doom" that the Allard story
may be yet another blind.
The radio series simplified
the story using Lamont ((And did
Cranston as the one "real" the pulps
identity. follow
suit
later?))
In the earliest shadow pulps that I've
read, the Shadow does not appear to have The author Walter
any mystical powers. He's a guy who goes Gibson (aka
skulking around at night, dressed in Maxwell Grant)
black, with a lot of cash for toys like was supposedly
an autogyro, and a network of assistants thinking of an
("The Eyes of the Shadow") that work on illusion by
his problems during the day. Blackstone, where
a man walks away
The Shadow takes and leaves his
the night shift. shadow behind.
Something like
I don't know whether the power this is visibile
to "cloud men's minds" came even in the first
into existance via pulp or via story "The Living
radio. Shadow", but it's
a pretty crazy
Certainly I've never heard a notion: The Shadow
radio show where the Shadow somehow succeeds in
didn't have such powers. moving a stage
illusion out into
And in some of the radio the world without
shows (I would guess the detection.
earliest ones), he appeared to
be even more powerful. He can He crawls in open
read the surface thoughts from windows, and the
someone's mind, and project only sign of this No wonder
other illusions besides his is that someone's the radio
own invisibility. shadow lengthens show
strangely. preferred
a psychic
power.
In this light, the
1994 film version of
the Shadow is an Played by Alec
impressive job: they Baldwin.
tried to deal with
the material Written by:
seriously, blending David Koepp
together the various
The one elements. It deals Directed by:
real with the implications Russell Mulcahy
problem in a new way, without
being contradicting the
the spirit of the old...
actress
playing In this version, the Shadow does
Margot indeed have a "gang" of sorts:
Lane. a legion of people who's lives
he has saved.
The cab driver "Shrievie" is
on hand, but rather than
She looks being the preternaturally
good in stupid comic relief figure of
a 40s the radio shows he's a
gown. competent member of the gang.
At a The villian of the piece is a
distance. man like the Shadow himself, Ted Rall complains about
himself, trained in the same the overuse of the cliche
discipline, but turned toward "we are alike you and I".
The Dark Side, if you will.
It's a point.
That the Shadow *has* a dark
side is obvious at a glance: DARK_SIDES
for a "hero" he comes on an
awful lot like a villain, with
that sinister laugh... What were they
thinking back then?
The Shadow is not merely
chummy with the Commisioner One answer lies in
he's a family relation, and his evolution from
he uses mind control tricks a "spooky narrator"
to extract the information figure.
he needs from him.
But that's not
the only answer:
the superhero
and the monster
are strongly
related figures.
The Shadow is just
one of the better
Under the gaze of the light... examples of an
watch the shadows transform. ambiguous hero with
more than a little
touch of darkness...
NAME_OF_THE_SAINT
"If they're are ghosts
involved here, perhaps
the Shadow can bring
them to light."
"The Ghost Wore A Silver Slipper"
(Broadcast April 7, 1946)
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