26 September
No. 1
1937
Death House Rescue
57 min
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”;

