The Shadow (Character)

The Shadow is a character originally devised as a narrator for Detective Story Hour on US radio, for pulp magazine publishers Street & Smith. When audiences began asking news vendors for "That Shadow magazine" the publishers hired freelance writer Walter Gibson to flesh out the character and put him in a series of novels, initially quarterly, then monthly and soon after, the frequency became an unprecedented fortnightly. Gibson's version was "a cross between Dracula and Sherlock Holmes."

In the pulp stories, no one knew who The Shadow was. He mostly appeared as Lamont Cranston, but there was a real Lamont Cranston somewhere and The Shadow was merely an impersonator. In the early stories, The Shadow would also appear as business man Henry Arnaud, or if he needed to eavesdrop on Commissioner Weston's conversations, as police HQ janitor Fritz. And in a few stories, The Shadow appeared in the guise of querulous pensioner Isaac Twambey.

For most of the pulp run, it wasn't even clear whether The Shadow was human or not. While he was occasionally wounded in his battles against crime, he displayed uncanny intuition, and often had fore-knowledge of crime that bordered on psychic. He also had the ability to remain unseen in gloomy surroundings, even though his enemies were looking straight at him. This obscurity was the intriguing aspect that kept pulp audiences enthralled for over 20 years. Later in the pulp run, Gibson was pressured by the publishers to write more about The Shadow's history, and it was revealed that The Shadow was really famed aviator and explorer Kent Allard, lost in the South American jungles for years. But once the editors weren't looking, Gibson back-pedalled on this and hinted that even Allard was a false identity.

Once the character returned to the radio in his full black-cloak-and-slouch-hat persona, the concept was much simplified and The Shadow was just a disguise worn by Lamont Cranston, rather than the other way round. To get round the problem of presenting a largely male cast of characters on radio, the producers added Cranston's girlfriend Margot Lane to the mix (when Gibson reluctantly added her to the pulp cast, she became Margo Lane). This was so there would be some contrast between the voices of the main players.

It's this radio format that most screen versions of The Shadow have followed. Perhaps one day, someone will do The Shadow in his full pulp glory, eyes blazing, Colt .45s smoking and multiple identities intact.