Regular readers know that I’m a big mark for THE SHADOW, the character and, by extension, the radio series that ran from 1930 (or 1937, if one counts only those broadcasts wherein The Shadow was the star of the program, as before that the character had served as merely a narrator) to 1954. Those same readers already know that The Shadow was inspired in part by Count Dracula, and that he in turn served as partial inspiration for Batman. (Now newbie readers know it, too.)
When I happen across an episode of the series that I particularly enjoy on my satellite radio, I tend to later look it up online and then download it to enjoy again at some point in the future, at a time of my choosing. Last night I listened to an episode called “The Return of Anatole Chevanic.” The program became unintentionally hilarious in that so many of the characters insisted on repeating the name of the villain, over and over. (It would make for a fun drinking game, if one were an imbiber, to take a drink every time in the episode someone says “Anatole Chevenic.”) Later last night, when I tried to find the program online, I found instead that my web searches led me to an episode of CBS RADIO MYSTERY THEATER entitled–you guessed it–“The Return of Anatole Chevenic.” One can but assume that the writer of the latter program, which aired in 1974 and bears no resemblance in terms of plot to the Shadow program, took the name and title from the earlier effort as a sort of tribute. I didn’t even know there were still radio dramas being broadcast in 1974!
It took me some time to find the episode of THE SHADOW that I wanted. All I could find was mentions of the CBS broadcast. Curiously, when I went to type up this article and looked for the latter program to verify some facts–I couldn’t find it. Did my computer manage to figure out which of the two it THOUGHT I was interested in? Or is there some kind of weird Mandela Effect thing going on? The Shadow probably knows, but I don’t.