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The Shadow; over rated?
Topic Started: Feb 15 2006, 04:47 PM (1,650 Views)
rodney
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I just started The Shadow on Saturday (following up The Fighting Devil Dogs), and after a first chapter that I thought was really good, I found the second chapter to be a dud. Is this one of those serials that starts out great, but continues to get worse? I've heard good things about it, but overall, I'm unimpressed thus far.
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Laughing Gravy
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Well, I can only speak for myself, but I think it's the best of all the Columbia serials. Victor Jory at his best, and his very tall Chinese disguise cracks me up every time. I never enjoyed a Columbia serial as much as I did this one.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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Pa Stark
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I have not been that enthusiastic about it. Biggest problem is seven of the 14 cliffhangers end with the ceiling collapsing on the Shadow. Worst part is after one collapse, the previews for the next chapter showed another ceiling collape.
I first saw THE SHADOW at Houstoncon 75, and when it started, the room was packed, After every chapter about 20% of the remaining audience left, until just us hardcore serial fans were left, and the rest of us stayed until the end. After the screening we all hung out for a while outside the screening room and talked about serials. One of them was The Black Tiger, whom I have been friends with ever since.
Honest and Lovable Pa Stark
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mort bakaprevski
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There are a number of movies that I desperately wanted to see as a child, but didn’t get to see until I was an adult. “The Shadow” is one of them (others included “The Lone Ranger”, “The Green Hornet” & “Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein”). In almost every case, I was disappointed. Granted there were exceptions: “Captain Marvel” & “Captain America” come immediately to mind. I think this was a combination of setting ridiculously high expectations or approaching something that would basically appeal to a child with an adult sensibility. Probably both.

I had seen both the Grand National & Monogram versions of The Shadow when I was probably the right age, but didn’t particularly care for either approach. The problem was that neither seemed to capture the magic of the pulps & part of this magic was the wonderful cover art of The Man himself. Neither Rod LaRocque nor Kane Richmond projected anything remotely related to these covers or the interior stories by Maxwell Grant (Walter Gibson).

The stills I had seen of the Columbia version, however, seemed to have the right look & feel to them and Victor Jory, with his “hawk-like” nose, seemed a perfect choice for the part. Besides his voice had a somewhat nasal quality that would be quite fitting for The Shadow.

Well, I didn’t see the movie until Columbia put it out on a VCR. Without getting into the subject of what my age was at the time (fat chance), the serial somewhat disappointed me. Yeah, it could have been my age, but I saw “Captain America” (a much worse print than “The Shadow”) at about the same time & enjoyed it very much. I’m sure that part of this was the fact that I didn’t have the fascination with C.A. as a child that I did with The Shadow (who was probably my favorite fictional character when I was about 10 or 11).

Now I’ve got to admit that I read a number of the paperback reprints of The Shadow when they came out (in the 70’s?) & they didn’t particularly grab me like the originals had as a kid. I guess there are some things which truly don’t translate well from childhood to the adult state. This is one of them for me!!
"Nov Shmoz Ka Pop."
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Black Tiger
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The Shadow is my favorite James Horne serial. I think it's a hoot. Victor Jory is still the best screen version of the Shadow to date. And of course, it has one of the most outrageous villains in serial history!
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Tony Bolton
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I enjoyed The Shadow featuring a strong performance from Victor Jory. In my book it rates below several Columbia serials including The Secret Code, Batman and The Spider's Web.
Of course LG watches serials as they were meant to be seen, one chapter a week, so the ceilings drops might not be blatant in this way.
As I've gotten older I have become less thrilled with serials but this is a good one with an energetic performance by Jory plus it exists in primo condition.
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Laughing Gravy
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"Of course LG watches serials as most were meant to seen one chapter a week so the ceilings drops might not be blatant in this way."

The cliffhangers were the silliest part of any serial... would the hero and/or heroine and/or sidekick and/or hero's pal really blunder into a death trap every 13 to 18 minutes? To me, the falling ceilings that happen over and over in The Shadow are Horne's way of saying, "Look, we have to have a cliffhanger, but let's just throw something off and get it over with so we can get back to the fun of the serial."
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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Barcroft
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I agree with Black Tiger. This along with Holt of the Secret Service are my favorite Horne serials. Whether it's Darmour or Flothow of Jungle Sam Katzman producing the serials budgets were miniscule. In Horne's case he did the best he could with was provided by the producers. Evidently plaster was the way to go!!!

Barcroft
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rodney
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4 chapters in and this one is growing on me. I don't think it'll make my top list of serials, but it's fun. The Black Tiger is a fantastic villian!
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Pa Stark
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What do you mean The Black Tiger is a fantastic villain :o ???? He had a totally incompedent gang to boot. If you want a really great villain, watch DICK TRACY RETURNS. :D
I watched chapter one with Victor Jory and he claimed everything they did was in the script. I find it hard to believe, because this silliness pretty much started and ended with Horne. Jory also said that Horne was nuts. Someone I used to know was friends with Nell O'Day, who was the heroine of PERILS OF THE ROYAL MOUNTED, and she said the same thing. When Horne would tell the cast how he wanted the scene done, he would be runing up a hill, then back down. After he finished a serial, he would spend a month in a sanitarium to recover.
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greenhornet1
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Don't give up on THE SHADOW. Jory certainly has the right look. I don't like the repetitive ceiling falls either, but that isn't only with this serial. What I do miss is the darkness that the character requires to operate in; there's too much daylight. I know that's a bum complaint, so don't bother knocking me for it. This Shadow is supposed to be the pulp character but isn't; he isn't the radio character either, but falls somewhere between the two. Anyway, it's an enjoyable serial. It's not my favorite Horne; I'll buck all the conventional wisdom here and say that since it's Horne, my favorite is THE GREEN ARCHER. I'm a sucker for old dark house stuff. By the way, the reprints of the Shadow pulps that came out in the '70s were not the originals as written but were reedited to reflect more the character of the radio/movie image that had become so popular. I have this on the authority of a good friend who is a life-long collector/maven of pulps and all things pulp-related. He oughta know.
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Z Man
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I don't know how many of you guys are old enough to have seen many of these serials at the Saturday matinee as I did. First I have to say that I myself never saw ALL the 12 or 15 chapters that were to a serial. I didn't always have the 12 cents, I was sick some Saturdays or my parents took me somewhere else some times. If I saw half of them I was lucky so I never saw all the repeat cliffhangers. Also I was so happy when they showed those "previous' sections I missed. It was a lot different back then instead of being sure you would see all the episodes made.
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mort bakaprevski
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Quote:
 
I have this on the authority of a good friend who is a life-long collector/maven of pulps and all things pulp-related. He oughta know.

Well, far be it for me to dispute anyone as knowledgeable as your friend, but I do have a few questions:

1) There were some NEW Shadow stories written in the 60’s which did combine elements of the pulp version & the radio version. I think they were published by Pyramid. Are these the stories he was referring to??
2) There were a number of different reprints of the Shadow pulps, starting in the late sixties. Grossett & Dunlap (I think) had a hard-cover edition of two or three of these. There were other one-shots that I frankly don’t remember at this juncture. Was he referring to these?
3) Bantam (publishers of the Doc Savage reprints) started reprinting The Shadow in the late sixties. I believe they only published 3 or 4. Is he referring to these?
4) Jove did the most extensive reprint series (with covers by Jim Steranko). Is he referring to these?
5) Since some of the Jove reprints were exact duplicates of the Bantam reprints, does he mean that both of these were re-written?
6) Since none of these reprints contained invisibility or Margo Lane, just what aspects of the radio show WERE incorporated into these “re-writes?”
"Nov Shmoz Ka Pop."
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riddlerider
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Let's see if we can't straighten this out....

I'm afraid greenhornet's pulp-maven friend is mistaken. The hero-pulp novels that were partially rewritten for updating purposes were Pocket Books' four Spider reprints of the '70s. None of the reprinted Shadow novels -- from Bantam, Tempo, Pyramid, or Jove -- was rewritten to combine elements from the radio show with the traditional pulp version. These were reprinted as they originally appeared, with the exception of Tempo's paperback edition of THE GROVE OF DOOM, which was cut by nearly 40 per cent but not otherwise altered.

The Belmont Shadow novels of the mid '60s -- beginning with THE SHADOW STRIKES -- were newly written by the late Dennis Lynds (but published under the Maxwell Grant byline) and reflected more current influences, such as the James Bond movies and the Man from U.N.C.L.E TV show. In his eight Shadow novels Lynds did indeed incorporate elements from the radio show, such as The Shadow's power to cloud men's minds. But these were all original stories written in the '60s, not reprints.

Interestingly, the Belmont series was intended to reprint the older yarns. To get it off to the right start, preeminent Shadow scribe Walter B. Gibson in 1963 wrote an original novel, RETURN OF THE SHADOW, which was intended to acquaint new readers with the pulp Shadow's agents: Harry Vincent, Clyde Burke, Cliff Marsland, Miles Crofton, etc. They were included so that readers of the reprinted pulp stories -- in which these agents often appeared prominently -- would know who they were and how they were connected to The Shadow. Margo Lane did NOT appear in RETURN OF THE SHADOW because Belmont was only to have reprinted pulp stories from the '30s. (Margo didn't appear in the pulp until 1941, although she became The Shadow's chief agent in short order.) Gibson wrote RETURN in the old style, and although it took place in the present day it could just as easily have been set in 1949, when the last Shadow pulps were published.

For some reason the reprint deal fell through. Having already promised and pre-sold a Shadow series to their distributors, Belmont elected to have new novels written. But they wouldn't meet Gibson's price, and he walked away from the project. At that point Lynds was hired and the new, updated approach to the character was agreed upon.

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mort bakaprevski
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I’m always glad to see riddlerider’s imprimatur on any post as he always seems to know what he is talking about. Yeah, I mistakenly labeled the Belmont’s as Pyramid’s.

I did not know about Mr. Lynds. I DID know that Gibson did not write these. Does anyone know of Mr. Lynds’ other writing endeavors???
"Nov Shmoz Ka Pop."
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