Mystery Friday: The Shadow: Murder By The Dead (10/17/1937)

<p>The Shadow is the name of a collection of serialized dramas, originally in 1930s pulp novels, and then in a wide variety of media. Its title character has been featured on the radio, in a long-running pulp magazine series, in American comic books, comic strips, television, serials, video games, and at least five feature films. The radio drama included episodes voiced by Orson Welles.</p> <p>Originally created to be a mysterious radio-show narrator, The Shadow was developed into a distinctive literary character in 1931 by writer Walter B. Gibson.</p> <p>The Shadow debuted on July 31, 1930, as the mysterious narrator of the radio program Detective Story Hour, which was developed to boost sales of Street &amp; Smith&#39;s monthly pulp Detective Story Magazine. When listeners of the program began asking at newsstands for copies of &quot;that Shadow detective magazine,&quot; Street &amp; Smith decided to create a magazine based on a character called The Shadow and hired Gibson to create a character concept to fit the name and voice and write a story featuring him. The first issue of The Shadow Magazine went on sale on April 1, 1931, a pulp series.</p> <p>On September 26, 1937, The Shadow radio drama, a new radio series based on the character as created by Gibson for the pulp magazine, premiered with the story &quot;The Death House Rescue,&quot; in which The Shadow was characterized as having &quot;the power to cloud men&#39;s minds so they cannot see him.&quot; In the magazine stories, The Shadow was not given the literal ability to become invisible.</p> <p>The introduction from The Shadow radio program &quot;Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!,&quot; spoken by actor Frank Readick, has earned a place in the American idiom. These words were accompanied by an ominous laugh and a musical theme, Camille Saint-Saëns&#39; Le Rouet d&#39;Omphale (&quot;Omphale&#39;s Spinning Wheel,&quot; composed in 1872). At the end of each episode, The Shadow reminded listeners that &quot;The weed of crime