RKO Orson Welles - The Shadow - radio recordings
Mutual
Mutual · 1940–1950
32 EpisodesWeeklyPGSince 1940
The run
- Network
- Mutual
- Years active
- 1940–1950
- Surviving broadcasts
- 32
- Genre
- detective
33 radio recordings of RKO's The Shadow, recorded as main character by Orson Welles between 1937 and 1938 It doesn't happen that often that a cultural icon plays a \"genre\" role, and in the 1930's it probably happened even less. But before a certain well-documented Martian Invasion rocketed him to fame and a contract with RKO, a 22 year-old Orson Welles funded his theatrical productions with radio work, including a year on the Mutual Network's now-legendary \"superhero\" radio program The Shadow. The program, loosely adapted from the popular pulp magazine series, told the story of Lamont Cranston, a wealthy young man-about-town who used his hypnotic powers to cloud men's minds so that they could not see him, fighting crime as an Invisible Avenger known only as The Shadow. Digitised by the Old Time Radio Researchers and streamed from the Internet Archive item “RkoOrsonWelles-TheShadow-RadioRecodings”; these recordings are in the public domain.
Source collection
Internet Archive audio collections
Rights
Public domain — no renewed US copyright
Cataloguing
Air dates and notes from the Archive item record
The shape of the run
What survives, year by year
0 dated broadcasts across 11 years on the air, with 11 years where nothing is known to survive. Brightness is transfer quality; empty cells are months lost to time.
Episodes
Start here
Listen to the run in order
Restored broadcasts from NaN, in original transmission order.
- 1. The Shadow 37-09-26 Death House Rescue · Date unknown
- 2. The Shadow 38-02-13 The House of Horror · Date unknown
- 3. The Shadow 38-06-05 The Hypnotized Audience · Date unknown
The Shadow 37-09-26 Death House Rescue
Date unknown · 57 min
Broadcast on Mutual. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
The Shadow 38-02-13 The House of Horror
Date unknown · 24 min
Broadcast on Mutual. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
The Shadow 38-06-05 The Hypnotized Audience
Date unknown · 26 min
Broadcast on Mutual. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
The Shadow 38-07-10 White God
Date unknown · 29 min
Broadcast on Mutual. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
The Shadow 38-08-07 The Creeper
Date unknown · 27 min
Broadcast on Mutual. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
The Shadow 38-09-11 The Caverns of Death
Date unknown · 25 min
Broadcast on Mutual. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
The Shadow 38-01-09 The League of Terror
Date unknown · 31 min
Broadcast on Mutual. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
The Shadow 38-01-30 The Poison Death
Date unknown · 28 min
Broadcast on Mutual. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
Also on Mutual
Mutual in 1940–1950
Other series the network carried while RKO Orson Welles - The Shadow - radio recordings was on the air.
Same seasons
detective on the air then
Series in the same genre whose runs overlapped this one.
What it became
The private eye at the microphone
First-person narration, a case that walks in the door, and a city that talks back. Marlowe, Sam Spade and Johnny Dollar turned detection into a listening form.
Lineage is written by our editors, not inferred from listening data.
Descendants
Working in the tradition of RKO Orson Welles - The Shadow - radio recordings
Modern series carrying this form forward.
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