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Post by Calenture on Oct 28, 2007 17:16:59 GMT
(I've had to take few liberties transfering this thread, which was originally started by Dem', with posts and quotes by Ripper, Steve and self. Quotes are in blue so that text size won't be reduced.) It's difficult working out The Shadow. He seems to inhabit some - shadowy - twilight zone, somewhere between Doc Savage and DC's Spectre. He's also got something in common with Superman, as Lamont Cranston seems to be his human guise just as Clarke Kent was Superman's. I seem to remember the adverts for the Orson Welles recordings in Famous Monsters of Filmland suggested that he had as much an affinity with wolves as Dracula. I suppose this is all grist for a Shadow thread that I think needs starting here. At the moment I'm listening to Welles' Horror in Wax - about some fiend injecting victims with serum that causes them to take on the appearance of wax figures - while the DC Shadow comic I've just put down had him battling devil worshippers. Demonik wrote: Credited to 'Maxwell Grant', over two hundred Shadow novels were written by a young magician, Walter B. Gibson, a friend of Houdini (for whom he ghost-wrote). The first, The Living Shadow, launched The Shadow magazine in April 1931. Nel reissued at least three of his adventures as stand-alone novels in 1976.
1. The Living Shadow 2. The Black Master 3. The Mobsmen on the Spot Ripper wrote I've never read any of the Shadow stories but on the 30s/40s radio series he has the ability to "cloud men's minds" so that they cannot see him. Several actors portrayed The Shadow but Orson Welles was the best in my opinion. Many of the radio shows had horror themes. Most, though, I believe turned out to have a flesh and blood mortal behind all the skullduggery rather than a true supernatural menace. I'm not sure if he qualifies as a bona-fide occult detective a la Seabury Quinn's creation, but the radio shows make for great listening. Steve:
"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!"
It's perhaps not that easy to sum up The Shadow in just a few words as he's adopted many different guises over the decades, appearing in pulps, radio and film serials, feature films and comics, being reinvented several times.
There are a number of differences between The Shadow's two best known incarnatons, the pulp magazine Shadow and the radio Shadow. The original pulp Shadow, for example, displayed certain hypnotic abilities but not quite the mysterious "power to cloud men's minds" possessed by his shadowy radio counterpart.
Like Doc Savage, The Shadow was essentially a pulp hero and his battle was against the evils of crime in all its many forms rather than the forces of darkness.
Several of his adventures do contain horror elements though, such as The Voodoo Master which features "zombies" alongside voodoo villain Dr. Rodil Mocquino (who later reappeared in other stories like Voodoo Trail).
The Ghost in the Manor concerns itself with seemingly supernatural goings on in an old dark house, and another spooky mansion is the setting of The Vampire Murders which comes complete with all the trimmings - coffins, garlic, mysterious bite marks on the victims' necks.
As Ripper suggests, there's generally a perfectly rational (in the pulp sense of the word) explanation for it all, but there's still plenty of wildly imaginative fun to be had along the way.
Maybe a new area of the board dedicated to the pulps in general (as well as the more lurid Shudder Pulps) might not be a bad idea. The Phantom Detective made an appearance not so long ago and Rog was talking about Doc Savage just the other day.
After all, if we're talking "pulp paperbacks" - which we generally are - we shouldn't overlook the origins of the form.
There was a fourth NEL Shadow reprint, by the way, Hands in the Dark (1977)
Here's a link taking you to the Old Time Radio Fans page, where you can download MP3s of the 1940's radio series: The Shadow. This link copied from Radio Horror Links, which I've been prettying up a bit.
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ghannah01
Crab On The Rampage
It's dark in here. Anyone have a match?
Posts: 28
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Post by ghannah01 on Jan 25, 2008 8:34:41 GMT
Love the Shadow! The Radio show was a lot of fun and there are several sites on the net that post the old shows. Google "OTR" or Old Time Radio. The pulp stories are a rip roaring read. The one's I've read have had good intricate plots and lots of gun play and action. Tremendous character. Glen
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Post by Michael Connolly on Feb 17, 2018 14:22:44 GMT
I've just finished reading this. The bulk of it is a good history and analysis of The Shadow's original pulp magazine appearances. I once had my hands on a copy of this but did not buy it. damn.
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Post by frightengale on Feb 18, 2018 20:05:58 GMT
I own copies of both, and they are, indeed, excellent volumes.
BTW, harkening back to the older posts in this thread, I can think of two episodes of the Shadow radio series that had great horror elements. "The Ghost Wore a Silver Slipper" is a wonderful twist on the old phantom hitchhiker urban legend. And "The Return of Carnation Charlie" concerns an executed killer who comes back from the grave to exact revenge on the jury that convicted him.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Feb 19, 2018 14:10:39 GMT
The reasonably good but slightly low-camp 1994 film of The Shadow is on the Sony Film Channel at 18.45 today. It's a pity that the film Orson Welles, who played the Shadow from 1937-38 , planned in the late 1940s came to nothing.
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Post by frightengale on Feb 20, 2018 2:22:52 GMT
Would have been interesting to see what Welles had in mind. But, of course, many of his projects over the years failed to come to fruition.
Any number of Shadow films were done in the 1930s, 40s and 50s (including a failed television pilot), but none of them really captured the essence of the character. The 1994 film directed by Russell Mulcahey was interesting, but a bit too unfocused in its portrayal of the character. Couldn't decide between Walter Gibson's vision of The Shadow in the novels or the more widely recognized radio version of the character (with the power of invisibility). So Mulcahey's film chose to present a somewhat uneasy amalgamation of both. It definitely has its fun moments, but it could have been so much more. About a decade ago, Sam Raimi announced that he had optioned the character for an upcoming project, but apparently the effort fizzled. That would have been interesting.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Feb 21, 2018 14:03:24 GMT
If Welles had made the film I assume it would have followed the radio version and he would have reprised his original role. There is another book about the Shadow's original magazine adventures. While Robert Sampson's THE NIGHT MASTER (Chicago, Pulp Press, 1982) is grammatically very dubious, it is an interesting read about the business of pulp writing. My copy does not have the dust-wrapper so this is the first time that I have seen this:
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Post by mcannon on Feb 22, 2018 2:36:48 GMT
If Welles had made the film I assume it would have followed the radio version and he would have reprised his original role. There is another book about the Shadow's original magazine adventures. While Robert Sampson's THE NIGHT MASTER (Chicago, Pulp Press, 1982) is grammatically very dubious, it is an interesting read about the business of pulp writing. My copy does not have the dust-wrapper so this is the first time that I have seen this: I have a copy of that one - albeit with the very nice Hamilton dustjacket. Robert Sampson wrote a hell of a lot on the pulps, including a similar book-length study of the Spider. His masterwork was probably "Yesterday's Faces", a six-volume study of literally hundreds of pulp series, grouped roughly by genre; one volume had a quite lengthy article on Jules de Grandin. I always found his writing a joy to read, even when he was dealing with characters and genres in which I had no interest; he had the knack of writing in a quite light-hearted, often humorous style while still managing to convey a lot of information about his subject. Given the breadth of material on which he wrote, I've sometimes wondered if he had read more pulp fiction than any other person. Mark
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Post by frightengale on Feb 22, 2018 14:13:48 GMT
You may be correct about Robert Sampson having read more pulp fiction than anyone else on the planet. His collection was certainly vast enough. He lived only a couple of hours from my home, but unfortunately I never had the pleasure of meeting him. But after he passed away, I was lucky enough to meet his son Sam, and was invited to come look through the remaining pulps they were trying to liquidate from his estate. The magazines were all in his garage, and it was jam-packed. I commented on the sheer enormity of the collection, and Sam said, "Oh, this is just what's left. We've already sold the bulk of it." I couldn't afford to acquire much of it, but was thrilled to pick up a dozen or so issues of THE SHADOW MAGAZINE, and the 1919 issue of ALL-STORY WEEKLY featuring the first appearance of Zorro.
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Post by frightengale on Feb 22, 2018 16:22:14 GMT
Orson Welles is a minor character in Paul Malmont's pulp-inspired novel THE CHINATOWN DEATH CLOUD PERIL, and during his appearance he expounds on his thoughts for a Shadow movie. While I doubt that the words Malmont puts into Welles' mouth have any basis in reality, it's a fun little sequence, and I'd love to see the film that it describes. But it doesn't sound anything like the Shadow radio series.
Also of note is that a much more prominent character in CHINATOWN DEATH CLOUD PERIL is H.P. Lovecraft (along with Walter Gibson, Lester Dent, Louis L'Amour, Robert Heinlein, and others).
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Post by andydecker on Feb 22, 2018 21:31:54 GMT
I am a big fan of some of the Spider novels, but I could never work up much enthusiasm for The Shadow. I read the comics, even saw the much maligned movie, but the original novels left me rather cold. Or maybe I got a few real dull ones.
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Post by frightengale on Feb 22, 2018 22:26:43 GMT
I like The Spider, too, but his novels are radically different in tone from The Shadow's. The Spider's adventures are far more frenetic, with more outlandish plots and often higher body counts. The Shadow is generally less fanciful (the masked avenger / master of darkness element notwithstanding). Both characters battle gangsters and organized crime, but The Spider wouldn't be out of his element facing a maniac who has resurrected a horde of neanderthals to overrun Manhattan. A glance at the titles from the two series gives a pretty clear indication of the differences in tone. A typical Shadow title would be "The Shadow Laughs" or "Mobsmen on the Spot." Typical Spider titles include "Death Reign of the Vampire King" and "Hordes of the Red Butcher."
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Post by mcannon on Feb 23, 2018 13:09:38 GMT
You may be correct about Robert Sampson having read more pulp fiction than anyone else on the planet. His collection was certainly vast enough. He lived only a couple of hours from my home, but unfortunately I never had the pleasure of meeting him. But after he passed away, I was lucky enough to meet his son Sam, and was invited to come look through the remaining pulps they were trying to liquidate from his estate. The magazines were all in his garage, and it was jam-packed. I commented on the sheer enormity of the collection, and Sam said, "Oh, this is just what's left. We've already sold the bulk of it." I couldn't afford to acquire much of it, but was thrilled to pick up a dozen or so issues of THE SHADOW MAGAZINE, and the 1919 issue of ALL-STORY WEEKLY featuring the first appearance of Zorro. That is a bloody amazing anecdote, generating equal parts of awe and envy! Mark (hoping to die amidst 20 tonnes of rotting pulp newsprint)
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Post by Michael Connolly on Feb 23, 2018 14:33:34 GMT
I am a big fan of some of the Spider novels, but I could never work up much enthusiasm for The Shadow. I read the comics, even saw the much maligned movie, but the original novels left me rather cold. Or maybe I got a few real dull ones. My own interest in The Shadow really lies with him being a key part of the pulp-fiction origin of crime fiction. He is the most-mentioned character. The radio version has been cited or quoted in episodes of M*A*S*H etc. Some of the original covers are very striking. And this episode of The Radio Detectives ("The Shadow Knows") is worth listening to if it's repeated again on Radio 4 Extra: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jp87
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Post by frightengale on Feb 23, 2018 15:09:45 GMT
The magazine that I'm kicking myself for NOT buying from Sampson's estate was the first appearance of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter, published in ALL-STORY as "Under the Moons of Mars" (under the pseudonym Norman Bean). Sampson's copy was missing its cover, but its still quite a rare magazine. I passed it up in favor of the first appearance of Zorro, but in retrospect I was an idiot not to grab BOTH. Sadly, I was a lowly file clerk at the time, and money was tight.
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