Box Office Bomb: Budget, $40 million. Box office, $48 million. Audiences just had toomanyotherbetteroptions that summer and weren't interested in a relatively obscure pulp hero movie.
Follow the Leader: Came out after the giant success of Batman (1989), which inspired a wave of similar noir-esque styled, pulpy superhero adventure films. Ironic given that the character of Shadow was a source of inspiration for the creation of Batman himself and how Alec Baldwin had been considered for the other role.
The Merch: Like Batman before it, The Shadow had a Kenner toyline. Unique among the figurines were the mail-in premium "Electronic Bulletproof Shadow," which featured the Shadow's iconic laugh, and Dr. Mocquino, the Voodoo Master. Yes, that's right: Kenner resurrected an almost-unknown character from the pulps for their toyline. He got his own Batmobile (the Mirage SX-100) and Batcycle (the Nightmist Cycle), too.
Prop Recycling: The Phurba is the same knife from The Golden Child. Replicas of the Phurba have been made as tie-ins to The Shadow.
Saved from Development Hell: The film rights were purchased by producer Martin Bregman in 1982. Robert Zemeckis had been involved with a film adaptation in the 1980s, while Sam Raimi's pitch was ignored. David Koepp was hired to write a draft in 1990 and was able to find the right tone that the studio liked.
The shooting script had a longer chase scene in the Hall of Mirrors, including flashbacks and banter. However, an earthquake destroyed some of the mirrors, making the full scene too expensive.
Sam Raimi wanted to follow up Evil Dead 2 with this but was unable to get the rights. Instead, he directed Darkman, using some of the ideas he had for his version of the story.
A tie-in beat-em-up video game was planned for the SNES, but was never released. It would eventually be leaked online.
Pinball:
The Other Darrin: Tim Kitzrow provides the voice for Lamont Cranston/The Shadow, though Baldwin's speech from the film itself appears as well.
Pulps and Radio:
Accidentally-Correct Writing: One episode had a Death Ray that worked by killing all the target's white blood cells, leading to massive infections. This is one of the ways radiation can kill you, although it still takes a while, rather than the minute it takes in the episode, and you're just as likely to die from the genetic damage.
Defictionalization: The Shadow actually began as just the host character of a radio adaptation of the Detective Story magazine. When people kept asking for his nonexistent magazine, Street and Smith ended up creating one with Walter Gibson as the main writer.
Enforced Method Acting: Orson Welles never read the scripts before recording, so whenever Lamont sounds surprised, you can be sure it's genuine.
Worried that the character was getting too powerful and too difficult to challenge, the writers were ordered to scale back the character's powers to just invisibility (and that they add in weaknesses to even that) and restrict Cranston to using invisibility only twice an episode (at the halfway mark and right at the end).
John Nanovic, longtime editor for the magazine, handed down a number of edicts to Walter Gibson to help broaden the readership base of the magazine. Among the requests were an end to most Ethnic Scrappy villains, toning down Asian characters using You No Take Candle and Asian Speekee Engrish, and including minority characters as heroes, such as Roy Tam and Jericho Druke.
A radio series called The Avenger was an obvious attempt to copy the success of the Shadow series, right down to the hero, Jim Brandon, being a mind-reader with the power to turn invisible, though he used electronic gadgets and chemicals rather than the Shadow's hypnotism and telepathy.
The Batman began as basically the Shadow in a bat suit before developing his own style; in particular, his 1939 debut "The Case of the Chemical Syndicate" bears a striking resemblance to a 1936 story from The Shadow magazine called "Partners of Peril".
Darkwing Duck is a more recent example of a homage (bordering on parody).
Missing Episode: The radio dramas ran from 1937 until 1954 and totaled over 650 episodes. For various reasons, only about one-third of those episodes have survived and are still available, including several that only exist as incomplete recordings. Some of the surviving episodes also only exist as adaptations produced in Australia. Somewhat counterintuitively, the majority of the episodes that survive are earlier ones instead of the episodes from the late 40s and early 50s when recording mediums such as magnetic tape would've been more readily available. All but 11 episodes of Orson Welles' 52-episode run to begin the series are still intact, but every single episode from season 13 (1949-50) through to the series' conclusion in season 18 (1954) is gone forever, save one (Season 17's The Vengeance of Angela Nolan). Why, you ask? The producers in the latter run saved money by simply recording over the same master tape every week.
The Other Darrin: The radio Shadow was played by several different actors. Same with the radio Margo.
