The Shadow was an American pulp magazine that was published by Street & Smith from 1931 to 1949. Each issue contained a novel about the Shadow, a mysterious crime-fighting figure who had been invented to narrate the introductions to radio broadcasts of stories from Street & Smith's Detective Story Magazine. A line from the introduction, "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows", prompted listeners to ask at newsstands for the "Shadow magazine", which convinced the publisher that a magazine based around a single character could be successful. Walter Gibson persuaded the magazine's editor, Frank Blackwell, to let him write the first novel, The Living Shadow, which appeared in the first issue, dated April 1931.
Sales were strong, and Street & Smith quickly moved it from quarterly to monthly publication, and then to twice-monthly. John Nanovic was hired as editor in 1932, and the lead stories were outlined in meetings between Nanovic, Gibson, and Henry W. Ralston, Street & Smith's business manager. Gibson wrote every Shadow story for several years; from the mid-1930s he was assisted by Theodore Tinsley, who wrote almost thirty of the novels. Paper shortages during World War II forced Street & Smith to reduce the magazine's format from pulp to digest-sized. Pulp historians consider the quality of the fiction to have dropped after the 1930s. Gibson stopped writing the novels in 1946 over a contract dispute with Street & Smith, and the novels were written in his stead by Bruce Elliott; these stories, in which the Shadow is mostly a background figure, are held in low esteem by fans. Gibson returned to Street & Smith in 1948, but in 1949 Street & Smith ceased publication of their remaining pulp titles, including The Shadow. The final issue was dated Fall 1949.
The success of The Shadow made it very influential, and many other single-character pulps soon appeared, featuring a lead novel in every issue about the magazine's main character. Street & Smith quickly followed up with Doc Savage, and other publishers launched The Spider, The Phantom Detective, and titles in other genres such as Westerns and science fiction.
Publication history
In 1915, New York City publishers Street & Smith began publication of Detective Story Magazine, the first specialist genre pulp magazine. In 1930, CBS began The Detective Story Hour (actually a half-hour), a radio program that used scripts based on stories from the magazine. The scriptwriter, Harry Engman Charlot, suggested that the show should be introduced by a mysterious character. In the first episode, at 9:30 p.m. on July 31, 1930, James La Curto spoke the line: "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows." La Curto left after a few weeks for a role in a Broadway play, and was replaced in the role by Frank Readick Jr. The show only lasted for a year, but listeners started asking at newsstands for a copy of "the Shadow magazine", and though they were actually asking for Detective Story Magazine, Street & Smith realized there was a demand waiting to be filled.
Henry W. Ralston, Street & Smith's business manager, decided that this was an opportunity to revive the idea of a magazine based around a single character. This had been done in the days of the dime novels, with characters such as Nick Carter and Frank Merriwell, but had never been tried with pulp magazines. Ralston was also concerned that other publishers might try to cash in on the demand by creating magazines with similar characters. He asked Frank Blackwell, the editor of Detective Story Magazine, to launch The Shadow, and provided him with an old manuscript of a Nick Carter novel that had never been published. Walter Gibson, a professional magician who had done ghostwriting and worked as a reporter, happened to be visiting Blackwell's office one day in December 1930, and persuaded Blackwell to give him the job of rewriting the novel; Gibson was told that if the first issue did well, the magazine would continue publication and he would be commissioned to write three more novels. The publication date was only two months distant, so Gibson began work that night while on a train to Philadelphia.