Gothic Revival

Prepare yourself, Miss Lane. I have the branding iron ready now.

(Voice) Drop that iron, Mr. Darrow!

Who are you?

(Voice) Huh! Huh! Huh! I am the Shadow!

Nichols and May? Huh! Huh! The Shadow is the real McCabre. His actual name is Lamont Cranston; he is "a man of wealth, a student of science and a master of other people's minds, who devotes his life to righting wrongs, protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty." Back in the dark ages before television, his weekly right-wronging rescue of Margo Lane held families in quivering suspense before the midget Gothic table set.

Now radio stations in 110 cities across the U.S. are broadcasting tapes taken from Shadow transcriptions of the '40s. Fan mail--from newly hooked kids as well as nostalgic oldtimers--is pouring in, and advertisers are asking for more.

Labor of Love. They are getting it. Manhattan's Charles Michelson, Inc., which resurrected The Shadow, is also releasing eight other favorites in 52-week packages, including Dangerous Assignment, Famous Jury Trials and The Green Hornet. Detroit's Fred Flowerday, a former sound-effects expert, has acquired the licensing rights to two other oldtimers, The Lone Ranger ("Hi-Ho, Silver") and Sergeant Preston of the Yukon ("On, King, on, you huskies . . ."). To Flowerday, putting the Ranger back in the saddle is a particular labor of love: it was he who used to clomp a pair of rubber plumber's friends in a box of gravel at Detroit's Station WXYZ whenever Silver galloped off in a cloud of dust. For radio listeners surfeited with news and music and music and news, Shadow, Ranger and Hornet are a welcome relief from the prevailing tedium of the medium. Nor does one need a 21-in. screen to visualize Margo Lane as she weathers perils that make Pauline's seem like playschool.

Wasp Power. For the generation of Americans that grew up hi-ho-ing with Silver, the show's theme music, the galloping part of the William Tell Overture, will always be more Ranger than Rossini. And Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee inevitably conjures up visions of Brit Reed, alias the Green Hornet, who when adventure-bound was trailed by a string orchestra playing his tune. Do-Gooder Brit also had the only automobile on radio that ran on wasp power. The Hornet is one of the few oldies to show his age. "Sufferin' snakes!" he blurts, "that's real white of you." One mystery for modern listeners is why Kato, his faithful valet, starts out as a Japanese and winds up as a Filipino. Simple: the change of citizenship was made on Pearl Harbor day.

In the heyday of the radio serial, roughly from 1933 to 1956, the heroes changed actors dozens of times. There were three Lone Rangers, two of whom are still alive and collecting royalties. Unfortunately for scores of actors who might otherwise be cashing in on the reruns, no one ever bothered to keep recordings of such microphone memorabilia as Buck Rogers, Jack Armstrong, or even Little Orphan Annie; if any exist, there are not enough to put together a series.

If there were, stations such as WJRZ in Newark, which devote three full hours every Sunday night to vintage drama, would use even more oldies. As it is, a station that starts broadcasting The Lone Ranger weekly can count on enough 30-min. installments of the Silver saga to last 50 years.

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