“Who knows what evil, lurks in the hearts of men?”
If you’re familiar enough with this quote to know what follows, then either a) you’re a little dorky like myself, or b) you might be our obstetrician.
On a recent visit to the office to see if our little one was going to be making their entrance to the world anytime soon, the doctor was ‘feeling around’ for lack of a better term, to see if Meg had started effacing. We were asking questions, and at one point, jokingly, the doc responded “who knows? The Shadow knows…” followed quickly by a “nobody gets that reference today.”
But, I did!!! 🙂
After the who and the what and the when about the baby taking it’s sweet time to arrive, it led to a nice conversation with the doctor about not just The Shadow, but several other old-time radio shows from the 1930s and 1940s. It seems our doctor (who looks like he walked right out of a Norman Rockwell painting, and I love it), used to listen to recordings that his father had of the old radio shows (back when our doctor’s father was a kid). We talked about Jack Benny, Dragnet, Little Orphan Annie, and, of course, The Shadow.
In case you don’t know, The Shadow is a character from ‘pulp magazines’ way back in the day. Usually filled with some type of bizarre crime story, kids and adults could pick up the dime novel and read a thrilling, noir-ish adventure.
On the radio, The Shadow was really Lamont Crantson (or Kent Allard if you read the novels), wealthy man about town, who, along with girlfrend Margo Lane, would often solve crimes in 1930s/1940s New York City. The Shadow possessed “the powers of mesmerism” which he learned in “The Orient,” and allowed him to ‘cloud men’s minds,’ making himself invisible to their sight and able to tap into the minds of evil doers everywhere. For my money, some of the best radio adventures of The Shadow were the ones from the late 1930s voiced by the great Orson Welles. Even now, if you can get your hands on one of the old recordings, it’s pretty exciting stuff to listen to.
Theatre of the mind – the stuff you see on television and movies will never compare.
Hopefully the doctor realizes it’s more of a (dorky) daddy interest and not a mommy interest. Wouldn’t want her to have to deal with questions about radio crime fighting while in the delivery room. 🙂
The Dorky Daddy 