Is that Orson Welles intoning at the beginning and end of this pilot for a THE SHADOW TV pilot, "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?" He had played the role on the radio for a few years, and it sounds like him.
The story, such as it is, consists of Lamont Cranston being called down to New Orleans to deal with the death of a jazz man, only to get wrapped up in a South American revolution. He's worried about turning permanently into a shadow if he clouds men's minds too much, making himself invisible or causing a ship's pilot to imagine an iceberg dead ahead. Richard Derr makes an okay Lamont Cranston, and James Wong Howe is credited as the director, for his third movie directorial credit. He had gotten a job in Paramount's camera shop, and one day Cecil B. Demille found that he seemed to beat everyone into the studio, including him, so he promoted him. In actuality, Howe had been sleeping in the camera room rather than taking the trolley back home, to save time and money. By 1925, he was a respected cinematographer, and by the time he retired in the 1970s, was considered a genius. Which he pretty much was.
The Shadow had been invented as a character to read stories from Street & Smith's DETECTIVE STORY magazine in 1930. He quickly grew popular, so S&S created a magazine around him. He was popular on the radio and in pulp magazines, but a dozen attempts to transfer him to the movies, TV and video games failed to take. the meandering sotry line and cheesy special effects here explain why.
The story, such as it is, consists of Lamont Cranston being called down to New Orleans to deal with the death of a jazz man, only to get wrapped up in a South American revolution. He's worried about turning permanently into a shadow if he clouds men's minds too much, making himself invisible or causing a ship's pilot to imagine an iceberg dead ahead. Richard Derr makes an okay Lamont Cranston, and James Wong Howe is credited as the director, for his third movie directorial credit. He had gotten a job in Paramount's camera shop, and one day Cecil B. Demille found that he seemed to beat everyone into the studio, including him, so he promoted him. In actuality, Howe had been sleeping in the camera room rather than taking the trolley back home, to save time and money. By 1925, he was a respected cinematographer, and by the time he retired in the 1970s, was considered a genius. Which he pretty much was.
The Shadow had been invented as a character to read stories from Street & Smith's DETECTIVE STORY magazine in 1930. He quickly grew popular, so S&S created a magazine around him. He was popular on the radio and in pulp magazines, but a dozen attempts to transfer him to the movies, TV and video games failed to take. the meandering sotry line and cheesy special effects here explain why.