Back When Theater Of The Mind Was King
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows.
How many geezers out there remember The Shadow? That was the old radio show of the 30s and 40s that featured Lamont Cranston and his girlfriend, Margo Lane? Actually, I don’t know if Margo was his girlfriend. I don’t know what their relationship really was but she must have been more than just his secretary or his cleaning lady, otherwise, ‘Who knows what evil lurks ‘neath the skirts of Margo Lane?’ would still be a mystery.And The Shadow knew.
I can remember saying that when I was ten. As you can tell, my mind was a bit warped even as a kid and it hasn’t got much better.
I’ve forgotten much about The Shadow that ran from 1937 to 1954, but I know Lamont was one of the good guys, a crime fighter just like The Phantom in the serials at the movies. You must remember the Phantom, he wore black long underwear right to the top of his head with his face peeking out of the trap door, not exactly a model featured in GQ fashion magazine.
The Shadow had the ability to cloud men’s minds so he became invisible to the bad guys. It’s somewhat like the strange power Donald Trump has over the MAGA folks and evangelicals across the border. I can almost guarantee if Margo has something lurking up there today, Donald will know what it is or at least make it his business to find out.
There was another good guy on radio, Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons which was immediately changed to ‘Mr. Trace, Keener than most persons’ (i.e. us, the simple-minded). That show ran from October 12, 1937 to April 19, 1955. There was of course, Inner Sanctum a horror show I was too chicken to listen to then, and if the truth were known, I still would be today. (One thing Mary insists on, if you have a scary dream and wet the bed in the middle of the night, you sleep on the veranda forever and do your own laundry.)
When we were kids we lived for the radio shows every evening and the Saturday afternoons matinees at the old Oxford theatre on Danforth Avenue. Once in a while we would go over to the Palace if a Hopalong Cassidy movie was playing. The Palace was on the Danforth too, but a few blocks away at Pape. The Palace was special because it had a balcony. If a kid was lucky enough to get a bag of water all the way up the stairs from the washroom without it breaking or leaking out, he could drop it on to the kids below. I am a little vague on this part, but I am pretty sure popcorn was ten cents a box and when it was finished we could flatten it out and swoosh it out over the audience. That was fun unless you took some kid’s eye out and the manager had to come out in front of the curtain and threaten us with expulsion or worse. Worse being one less cartoon the following week. We didn’t care we just went back to the Oxford. It didn’t have a balcony, but at least you didn’t have to walk home with wet pants.
Back then parents wouldn’t think twice about letting their kids head off by themselves or with three or four others from the neighbourhood for the afternoon. There were no perverts around to bother us in those days. Not only that, it gave the parents a chance to stay home and make more kids. Nine months to the day after an all-afternoon cartoon fest at the Oxford the population of East York rose 27 percent.
Coincidence? I don’t think so.
I believe I was running on about radio shows. Of course we were kids and had to be in bed by nine, so we would miss Lux Radio Theatre or Suspense and the other radio classics.
I know this may sound stupid, but I think the radio shows of the 30s, 40s and 50s were far better for kids and infinitely better than anything on TV, the movies, and the internet. We never saw anyone get shot, blown up, or disemboweled. We got just as frightened listening to a hurricane howling around the living room on the radio than actually watching some bad guy get blown away or a truckload of zombies staggering out of a swamp looking for brains on TV. The world would be a much better place if the zombies ate the brains of the bozos who make zombie movies – wait a minute! Maybe that is the problem, they already did.
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