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The Shadow had two different types of shows. First there was two different radio shows and then the television shows.

The first radio show to star The Shadow was called Detective Story Hour and it began on July 31, 1930. In this radio show series The Shadow was just the narrartor. Then due to fan response The Shadow starred in his own radio show called The Shadow which started on September 26, 1937 and ended in 1954. The Shadow radio show was the most succesful radio show ever! Voice actors were replaced many times over all those seasons for all different reasons. Most went seeking another career.

In 1955, a television pilot was written by Peter Barry and produced by former Shadow director Wilson Tuttle called Case of the Cotton Kimono. Two years later another Shadow television series was attempted, which the pilot episodes was called The Invisible Avenger. In this series director James Wong Howe created intersting special effects as Cranston's invisible altar-ego became a real "Living Shadow."

Recently (1990's to be specific), The Shadow had come very close to seeing the light of day in his own animated TV series! Nothing is known as to what company tried to make this series, but these two clips below have given us a glimse as to what the series could have been like...Clip 1, Clip 2. This series was supposed to be a computer generated project with a comic book look, very moody and noir, and not for kids, for adults...with all the violence. This series may also still be in the works....

If you would like to listen to The Shadow radio show you can buy buying them here.

You can also see the list of the entire radio show series here.

As well as The Shadow being on two different types of shows, scenes from other TV series sometimes had shadow slogans used in them as seen below:

Earthworm Jim

Episode Title: The Upholstered Peril
Season #: 1, Episode #: 6
Aired: October 14, 1995
Synopsis: The phrase "The weed of crime bears bitter fruit" was uttered by Jim.

Pinky and the Brain

Episode Title: Pinky and The Fog
Season #: 1, Episode #: 4
Aired: ?
Synopsis:
Attempting to take over the world by "fogging" everyone's minds, Pinky tries to take control of the fictional radio show, The Mist, featuring the Shadow-like character, The Fog (complete with slouch hat and cloak).

Muppet Babies

Episode Title: The Muppet Broadcasting Company
Season #: 3, Episode #: 31
Aired: ?
Synopsis:
"The younger versions of the most popular muppets are in the playroom and the lights go out. Nanny brings down from the attic several old tapes of radio plays, and an episode of The Shadow is among them. Gonzo actually dons the cape and hat in one of their "pretends". That show bowed it's head to a lot of cultural icons, almost ignoring the fact that it's characters were icons in their own right."

The Family Guy

Episode Title: Death Lives
Season #: 3, Episode #: 6
Aired: August 15, 2001
View Clip: Right Click here and hit Save Target as to save this clip onto your harddrive
Synopsis: One of the characters, Peter Griffin, quotes a line from the radio show. In this episode, Peter ditches his wife, Lois, on their Anniversary to go play golf. At the golf course, Peter is struck by lighting and "dies" and is visited by Death himself, who informs Peter that he is in Limbo.
Death takes Peter on an out-of-body journey through his life and his courtship with his wife. In one scene, journeying across some clouds, Death informs Peter that he can't go back to living until he has a revelation. In one flash of a "revelation" Peter quotes,"The Shadow is, in reality, Lamont Cranston, wealthy young man-about-town".

Darkwing Duck

Episode Title: Dances with Bigfoot
Season #: ?, Episode #: ?
Aired: ?
Synopsis: An animated T.V. series from Disney that premiered in the fall of 1991 and ran for a few years. It is interesting to note that the title character fought crime and wore a slouch hat and cape just like The Shadow (view the picture here). Some of Darkwing's dialogue seems to be a parody of Orson Welles's dialogue in some of the Shadow radio shows. In an episode entitled "Dances with Bigfoot" (episode date and season unknown), we find yet another similarity between Darkwing and The Shadow: Darkwing mentions that he was trained by Tibetian monks. But in Darkwing's case, they taught him his mantra "a-e-i-o-u-and-sometimes-y". Here's more information about Darkwing. Read the episode synopsis.

The Cosby Show

Episode Title: ?
Season #: ?, Episode #: ?

Aired: ?
Synopsis: Theo was sitting alone in the dark because he was depressed or something; Cliff (played by Bill Cosby) walked in, took a look around, looked at Theo and said, "Lamont Cranston."

M*A*S*H

Episode Title: ?
Season #: ?, Episode #: ?
Aired: ?

Synopsis 1: Radar is in the chow line to get lunch and asks Klinger "What's under that brown gravy?" Klinger's response is a pretty good evil laugh and he says "Only The Shadow knows!"
Episode Title: ?
Season #: ?,
Episode #: ?
Aired: ?

Synopsis 2: Another time the characters had been remeniscing about old radio shows like Tom Mix and Klinger again brings up The Shadow. Radar tries to hum some of the old radio theme song also.
Episode Title: ?
Season #: ?, Episode #: ?
Aired: ?

Synopsis 3: In an episode called "Adam's Ribs", Hawkeye is fixated on ordering spareribs from a restaurant in Chicago. He finally puts a call in to the States, and tries to get the operator in Chicago to help connect him to the restaurant. Trying to convince her into helping, he identifies himself as "Cranston Lamont", a newspaper reporter doing a human interest story about a soldier from Chicago.

Sanford & Son

Episode Title: A Little Extra Security
Season #: ?, Episode #: 065
Aired: ?

Synopsis: Grady accidentally receives duplicate Social Security checks and despite Lamont's advice, refuses to report the error. Later, Grady and Otis return from Las Vegas after spending all the money. When the social security worker calls, Grady goes into a panic, but ends up getting another check. Unluckily for Grady, Lamont is too honest in the end.

Lamont Sanford(Lamont Sanford picked up the phone)
"Hello Social Security Department? Mr. Winford please! It's Lamont San..."

(the operator)
"one moment please"

(grady fawns over his checks)
"You know Lamont if I keep getting two check every month think of all the extra money it will bring in... thats's about $6,000 a year. $3,000 for me and $3,000 for you.. just think about it."

(Mr. Winford gets on the phone)
"Hello. Lamont who?"

(Lamont Sanfrd eyes glaze over with though of all that free money)
"Ah.. It's Lamont... Lamont Cranston.. the shadow know... (Click) (Lamont hangs up abruptly)

Carnivale

Episode Title: Milfay
Season #: 1, Episode #: 001
Aired: 09/14/03
View Clip: Right Click here and hit Save Target as to save this clip onto your harddrive
Synopsis: The episode of The Shadow OTR show that they played was Silent Avenger. They actually got the episode to go along with the pilot episode of Carnivale which I thought was pretty cool. The part that they played was during minutes 7:40-8:18. In Carnivale the clip was played when Brother Justin (the priest) had just woken up from some freaky dream. His sister was there listening to their radio in the room that he was sleeping in. He then gets up and walks away and the next scenes comes about, with the episode ending.

Now according to my source who had first contacted me about where to find the rights to The Shadow so that HBO could use this clip, she says that voiceover was reacted and is not from the original radio program. Now this could be seems true, as the clip played was very clean and had no streaking sounds in it.

NFL Football

Episode Title: Pittsburgh vs. Arizona
Aired: November 9, 2003
Synopsis: On November 9, 2003 at the Pittsburgh vs. Arizona game an announcer said "Who knows? The Shadow knows."

Now this is just a guess as the guy who told me this bit of information wasn't sure as to why the announcer said this because he really wasn't paying attention to the game, but I think the announcer said this because Pittsburgh finally knows what it is like to win a game as they haven't won in 7 weeks and Pittsburgh won this game….If anyone watched this game and knows who the announcers are please do tell me. (Get it now, The Shadow knows what it is like to win a football game...I think that's what the announcer meant by his statement).

X-Play

Episode Title: "The Suffering"; "Naval Ops Commander".
Season #: 1 (I believe), Episode #: Unknown
Aired:5/1/04 (Re-run airdate)

View Clip: Right Click here and hit Save Target as to save this clip onto your harddrive
Synopsis: At the end of most X-Play shows they have a segment dedicated to viewer mail. In this episode a viewer asks if A The Punisher video game will be made based off the movie. Well the hosts Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb got into a discussion as to what other heroes should be made into a video. Adam suggests The Shadow and does his own rendition of "The Shadow knows" saying "The Adam knows!".

Star Trek Enterprise

Episode Title: Storm Front - Part 1.
Season #: 4, Episode #: 1 [production code 077]
Aired: 10/08/04

Synopsis: To put things into perspective, at the end of the last season Cpt. Archer and the Enterprise we're flung back in time to 1944. In the beginning of the episode Hoshi Sato [linguistics & communications officer] has been detailing the numerous odd military transmissions about from Earth [with out going into details, the world is not as it should be, the war has taken a turn for the worse] The only non-war/military radio broadcast to get a mention is the The Shadow.


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The Shadow also was talked about on talkshows as well as in biographies:

Entertainment Tonight

Synopsis: This T.V. news show focusing on the movie, T.V. and music industries, did a behind-the-scenes profile on the 1994 Shadow movie in the same year.

Movie Magic

Episode Title: Big Shots
Episode #: 29

Synopsis:
This documentary series about special effects ran on the Discovery Channel for a few years. On this particular episode, staff from Matte World Digital explained the process behind the Temple of the Cobras scene.
View Clip: Right Click here and hit Save Target as to save this clip onto your harddrive

The Incurable Collector

Synopsis: This series on the A&E Channel about people who collect anything and everything featured Robert Lesser, the author of "Pulp Art". In this episode, Robert showed off his collection of canvas paintings of pulp covers, including The Shadow. More information about this series.

Biography

Synopsis: This series on the A&E Channel, about the lives of the famous and infamous, featured actor/writer/director Orson Welles. There is a brief mention of his role as The Shadow on the radio, complete with famous tagline ("The Shadow Knows!") and laugh.

The Tonight Show with Jay Leno

Synopsis: Featured interviews with Penelope Ann Miller and Jonathan Winters during the opening week of the 1994 movie.

News Special: Super Heroes The Blessing. The Curse.

Synopsis: This series on the E! Channel, about any major news in the entertainment industry, featured a clip about The Shadow. This episode was created to discuss the success and failures of super heroes. Based around the recent success of Spider-Man 2, the show included a segment of how Alec Baldwin and his role in The Shadow failed to make audiences floak to see it.
Aired: Early July 2004

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The Shadow has also been starred on the radio in recent years as well:

Listerine® Pocket Packs® (2001)

In the radio commerical for Listerine® Pocket Packs® (2001), there is a spoof of Orson Welles's version of the radio Shadow.

WKYS 93.9 FM radio

Around 6:45am the DJs on the WKYS 93.9 FM radio morning show in Potomac, Maryland, were discussing hilarious fictional horoscopes when The Master of Darkness popped up (2003).

They got into this conversation which I forgot what it was even about, but one of the hosts actually said "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!" and that just made my day already! Then the other host says "What you talkin' about!?" and he replies "Good times good times."

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