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 ust when the first radio mystery series aired is probably lost in the aether. There certainly were programs with mysterious themes aired at the end of the second decade. By 1930, however, "thriller" radio was providing lots of chills with some well-written and strongly produced tales of mystery and the macabre. One mystery series had already premiered in 1929. True Detective Mysteries was based on stories from the pulp magazine of the same name. The host was John Shuttleworth, editor-in-chief, portrayed by the actor Richard Keith. Its beginnings are sketchy, but the program featured case histories of actual crimes always ending with the criminal getting his come-uppance. Usually told from the criminal's point-of-view, the plays were rough, lacking the depth and character development of later series-to-come. The turn of the decade would prove a maturing in radio scripts. |
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"that Shadow Magazine" |
1930 was not only the beginning of the new decade after the stock market crash and the on-set of the Great Depression, but it was also the premier of two series that appealed to one's sense of suspense and mystery. The first was called Detective Story which was designed as a promotion for the magazine of the same name published by Street and
Smith, one of the leading pulp publishers of the time. The series premiered on July 31, 1930 and caught the fancy of listeners. The opening featured a disembodied voice with a macabre laugh who introduced the day's drama. In the beginning the voice had no name, but as fans of the series wrote-in asking about the narrator, the writer-director Bill Sweets decided to give the voice a name. At the suggestion of Harry Charlot, Sweets' assistant, the narrator was called the Shadow. Eventually, Street & Smith found that people were asking for the magazine by describing it as "that Shadow Magazine." The publishers needed someone who could quickly create stories centered around the Shadow character and which would be published in a new magazine called The Shadow Magazine. To do this, they hired a young |
newspaperman whose name was Walter Gibson who moonlighted writing books about magic. He agreed on the condition that the magazine would become a regular quarterly providing on-going work for the young writer. It was Gibson, writing under the pen name Maxwell Grant, who fleshed out the character of the Shadow. Creating the alter-ego, Lamont Cranston, Gibson later explained that Cranston was only a substitute for the Shadow to step into when Cranston was out of the country. Gibson said that the actual person of the Shadow was Kent Allard.