Old Time Radio Favorites: The Shadow

Last month I discussed The Adventures of Superman now it’s time to tackle yet another old time radio show that featured a hero…

The Shadow

1937-1954
Mutual

The Shadow featured a superhero of a different breed. The character wasn’t all smiles and handshakes like Superman and his show wasn’t really for young listeners either. It was detective/mystery, thriller and horror all rolled into one. My first introduction to the Shadow was with 1994′s live action film starring Alec Baldwin and Penelope Anne Miller. I wasn’t sure who this Shadow guy was, but he appeared to be a superhero so that was enough to hook me to watch the movie. Well, the movie sucks. Looking back, having become familiar with the original incarnation of the Shadow, they really screwed things up. The Shadow just doesn’t fit into the summer blockbuster mold.

Sam Raimi currently holds the rights for a Shadow film (rumored to see light in 2012) and I can only imagine given his work on Spider-Man, Darkman and the success of The Dark Knight that once this movie gets made it will stay dark and true to the source material. Hopefully there won’t be any goofy casting like the Green Hornet movie has. Seth Rogen as Britt Reid? Please.

The show was based around Lamont Cranston (the Shadow) and his “companion” Margo Lane who would often help him solve whatever mysteries there were to be solving. Though you could technically call the Shadow a superhero (his power to “cloud men’s mind” made him invisible), he was really more a detective than anything who was always getting involved in really strange cases. The Lamont Cranton/Shadow dynamic was the same as Clark Kent/Superman: a lot of sleuthing done by Lamont (and his Lois Lane — Margo) then in the final moments of the show his superhero persona would make an appearance to wrap the case up.

At times, the show was downright creepy. Just tons of weird tales were told like the doctor who was smuggling jewels inside sick soldiers he was treating, some evil scientist who was splicing animal genes (I’ll never forget those haunting howls of the dogs with cat vocal chords), the guy with such a fear of people and germs that he just wanted to blow everyone up, and good ol’ voodoo down on the bayou. Some tales weren’t as eccentric, sometimes it was as simple as a prison break or a whodunit murder mystery.

During my years of OTR, I’ve never had much interest in mystery shows but somehow this show really clicked me for. I probably still wouldn’t enjoy a straight up detective/mystery show but The Shadow always featured the right amount of horror, thrills and action to keep things interesting for me.

“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men…? THE SHADOW knows!”

My Shadow Collection

(as you’ll be able to tell from these few tapes, “death” was used often the titles)

The Shadow (1994, Great American Audio Corp.)

The Shadow (1994, Great American Audio Corp.)

The Shadow: Volume I (1994, Great American Audio Corporation)

The Shadow: Volume III (1994, Great American Audio Corp.)

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