The Shadow

Publication history Chrisman and Sweets thought the upcoming series should be narrated by a mysterious storyteller with a sinister voice and began searching for a suitable name. One of their scriptwriters, Harry Engman Charlot, suggested various possibilities, such as "The Inspector" or "The Sleuth". Charlot then proposed the ideal name for the phantom announcer: "The Shadow". Thus, beginning on July 31, 1930, "The Shadow" was the name given to the mysterious narrator of the Detective Story Hour radio program.

The narrator was initially voiced by James LaCurto, who was replaced after four months by prolific character actor Frank Readick Jr. The episodes were drawn from the Detective Story Magazine issued by Street & Smith, the nation's oldest and largest publisher of pulp magazines at the time. Although the latter company had hoped the radio broadcasts would boost the declining sales of Detective Story Magazine , the result was quite different. Listeners found the sinister announcer much more compelling than the unrelated stories.

They soon began asking newsdealers for copies of "that Shadow detective magazine", even though it did not exist.