Title: The Brief Fame of John Cooper
Air date: March 11, 1945
Plot summary: A group of crooks, the Royal Mob, come together for a meeting—it's an oddly formal meeting, with points of order and a call of the roll and everything. Anyway, two members of the Royal Mob have not shown up for this meeting. One is dead and one is in prison, because of Lamont Cranston, amateur detective.
The boss of the Royal Mob, Robert Stone, wants to put a stop to this. Stone happens to know Lamont Cranston well, so he decides to use his knowledge of his good friend to put him in jail for murder. But Stone is hesitant to trust simple justice, since Cranston is a well-known associate of the police. So just to make sure the cops don't let Cranston off the hook, Stone will finagle things so that Cranston escapes from jail, and runs into a vigilante who always sees that justice is done: The Shadow.
Notes: The original recording of this episode is lost. It survives only in a remake, made for Australian radio, with a completely different cast of Australian actors.
Tropes:
- Disposable Vagrant: John Cooper. Miss Marsh tells Stone that Cooper is "a tramp" so Stone can do "anything you like with him."
- Dramatic Irony: Stone and Marsh have found their murder victim, John Cooper. They have conned him with a story about how they're going to play a prank on their friend Lamont Cranston and Cooper will play a part. When Cooper says he's sure the joke will be funny, Stone says "I pledge you my word, it'll kill you."
- Evil Counterpart: Probably the funniest thing about this episode is that Lamont and Margo have evil counterparts. Robert Stone is the evil Lamont, a sophisticated rich guy who is committing crimes instead of fighting crime. And much like Lamont has an adoring Girl Friday in the person of Margo, Stone has an evil Girl Friday in the person of Jean Marsh, who obviously worships him, calls him "Chief", and happily procures a homeless man for Stone to murder in the pursuit of his scheme.
- Foreign Remake: The only surviving version of this episode is the Australian remake. Besides the accents, it seems likely other edits were made for the Australian audience: there's a reference to Lamont's "flat", and the gang of crooks that Stone leads is called the Royal Mob.
- Ironic Echo: Lamont is excited to introduce Margo to his cool friend Robert Stone, saying that Stone the sophisticate is "the epitome of civilization." Cut to Stone, telling Jean that "the epitome of crime is murder."
- Resignations Not Accepted: One of Stone's minions, Happy Holland, refuses to participate in the scheme. He reasons—as it turns out, correctly—that The Shadow is just too dangerous and getting him involved is asking for trouble. Stone responds to this challenge to his leadership by shooting Happy on the spot and ordering that he be "stricken from the rolls."
- Secondary Character Title: John Cooper is the vagrant that Miss Marsh procures for Stone to murder. He appears in only one scene.
- Secret Identity: Strangely, in this version Lamont Cranston has cast aside the whole Millionaire Playboy business, and has become known, under his own real name, as an amateur detective who puts criminals in jail.
- Wicked Cultured: Robert Stone, who speaks with a plummy rich guy accent, conducts his meetings of a criminal gang like they're a formal debate society, and who is a collector of fine Chinese artworks when he isn't masterminding crime.
