Harry Vincent's Hometown

A few days ago I was reading The Shadow story, "The Crime Cult" (this story was originally published on July 1, 1932.  I was reading the Pyramid paperback edition.) and ran across one little sentence that got me started on an investigation into Harry Vincent's hometown!  

On the bottom of page 25 I read the following:  "Matters had been quiet during the past month, and Harry had been considering a short trip to his Michigan home in the little town of Colon."  When I first read that, I thought Colon, Michigan must be a made up town.  Then I thought, if it is a real town in Michigan, why would Walter B. Gibson (Maxwell Grant) use it as Harry's hometown?  With Harry's hometown clew, I began to investigate if it was a real town or not!

To my surprise, Colon, Michigan is in fact a real town - more accurately, it is a village!  It is in southern Michigan and was incorporated as a village in 1904.  The village of Colon takes up only 1.75 square miles and according to the 2010 census has a population of 1,173 people.  That answered my first question as to whether or not Colon, Michigan was a real place.  

Undated photo - but I'm guessing from the 1930s.
This must be what it looked like when Harry Vincent lived there!

Now I had to press on to answer my next question - why would Walter B. Gibson use a small village in Michigan as Harry Vincent's hometown?  My investigation revealed that Colon, Michigan is known as "The Magic Capital of the World!"  In 1925, the magician Harry Blackstone, Sr moved to the little village and it became the base of operations for him and his crew.  Colon is also the home of the Abbott Magic Company and several other magic companies.  Blackstone is buried in the Colon cemetery.

Magician Harry Blackstone, Sr was a personal friend of Walter B. Gibson and Gibson himself was a magician of renown!  Gibson was Blackstone's ghost writer on several books and Gibson himself wrote many books on magic and even invented several magic tricks.  I believe it is that magical connection that led Gibson to pick Colon, Michigan as Harry Vincent's hometown.  It makes me wonder if Gibson and Blackstone had a good chuckle together when this story published and if any of The Shadow's readers made the connection between Colon, Michigan and Gibson!

With that one clew of Colon, Michigan I was able to unravel the mystery behind Harry Vincent's hometown!

The Shadow: Historical Background 1929 - 1931

This past week I learned that the Dick Tracy comic strip was first published on October 4, 1931 - that's just 6 months after the first issue of The Shadow was published (April 1, 1931).  As I thought about these two fictional crime fighters, I started digging into what was happening in the US at this time that made The Shadow and Dick Tracy so popular.  In my opinion, part of their appeal and popularity can be attributed to real life crime stories that were ever present in the headlines.  Maybe the American public had enough of gangsters and wanted to read about crime fighters putting an end to them and their nefarious ways.

In this article I wanted to put a spotlight on what was happening in the years from 1929 through 1931.  I want to paint a background picture of what was going on when The Shadow pulp magazine began to be published in 1931.  What newsworthy events captured the headlines and the attention of Americans in those years?  Here are some of the events and facts!

1929

• Herbert Hoover is President, having beaten Alfred E. Smith in the election of 1928.
• February 14, 1929:  The St Valentine's Day Massacre happens in Chicago when 7 members of the Northside gang are gunned down by henchmen of mobster Al Capone.
• October 29, 1929:  The US stock market crashed and this marked the beginning of the Great Depression which lasted for 12 years.  Both the US and Europe were impacted.
• The Broadway Melody was the top money-making movie in 1929 and also won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

1930

• The planet Pluto is discovered.
• The Castellammarese War erupts in New York City to see who will control the Italian-American mafia
• Mahatma Gandhi begins his campaign of civil disobedience in India.
• Birds Eye frozen food products are introduced in 18 retail stores in Springfield, MA.
• Gang wars continue in Chicago between rival factions including Al Capone's.
• Cartoon character Betty Boop makes her debut.
• All Quiet On The Western Front won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Betty Boop

1931

• US unemployment reaches over 16%.
• Droughts, soil erosion and dust storms in the mid-west create the beginning of the Dust Bowl.
• The Empire State Building is completed and opens for business.
• The Star Spangled Banner becomes our national anthem.
• Eliot Ness and his agents ("The Untouchables") begin raids against illegal breweries and stills (impacting the pockets of Al Capone!).
• Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi and Frankenstein, starring Boris Karloff premier in US theaters.
• Dick Tracy comic strip begins.
• April 1, 1931 - The Shadow magazine publishes its first issue!

These are just a few of the events that happened between 1929 and 1931.  Wow, what a time it was.  I hope this brief article helps you frame a backdrop of the world that The Shadow magazine entered in 1931.  

The Romanoff Jewels? Not Quite!!!

This weekend my family and I went to an International Festival held in Raleigh, NC.  We really enjoyed it and we will definitely go back.  As we were walking around the different booths, we came across the one for Russia.  I immediately began to wonder if they would have anything about Tsar Nicholas from The Shadow stories The Red Menace and The Romanoff Jewels.  I began searching for a clew among the items they had for sale!

Then I found it!  Nestled among the Russian nesting dolls was a nesting doll featuring the Romanoffs!  It featured Tsar Nicholas, Empress Alexandra and their son Alexei.  When you opened it up, inside were paintings of Nicholas' daughters.  I found it sitting between nesting dolls of Putin and Lenin!

Here is a picture of the Romanoff nesting doll with a partial view of Putin on the left and Lenin on the right and various other nesting dolls around it.  The second picture I cropped out some of the other dolls to exclusively look at the Romanoffs.  I wish I had taken more pictures, especially of the inside dolls.  

While this was nowhere near a great discovery like the Romanoff jewels, it was still a small connection to history and a connection to two of my favorite Shadow stories!

Historical Background - The Lunch Wagon

One thing I really enjoy is digging into the history from a Shadow story.  From learning some of the slang from the times or other aspects of life in the 1930s and 1940s it is always a lot of fun and I end up learning a lot.  This article will look at a small part of the very first Shadow story, "The Living Shadow" that published in April of 1931.

In "The Living Shadow" we have a villain named English Johnny who is also in the lunch wagon business.  Not only does English Johnny play a part in the story, there's also some great action that takes place in one of English Johnny's lunch wagons that involves The Shadow!  What in the world is a lunch wagon?  That's what I wondered as I read the story so I had to investigate!

To some degree, lunch wagons started out as the food trucks of the late 1800s and early 1900s.  In 1872, Walter Scott parked a covered wagon in front of a newspaper office in Providence, Rhode Island and sold food items out of it to reporters and others.  In New York City in 1893, the Church Temperance Society operated a lunch wagon from 7:30pm to 4:30am and offered warm food and beverages to workers in the hopes of keeping them out of the saloons.  

1893 magazine cover featuring a lunch wagon

A lunch wagon complaint from 1907

Lunch wagons began to be massed produced and started including stoves, sinks, refrigerators and places for customers to sit.  Several manufacturers built them and an enterprising person could purchase one and go into the lunch wagon business for themselves!

As time went on, lunch wagons became less mobile and more stationary.  Based on the action that takes place in The Shadow story, the picture below is what I imagine English Johnny's lunch wagon looked like!

That's just a brief look at the history of the lunch wagon!  I hope it adds some background perspective whenever you read about them in the pages of The Shadow!!

The History Behind the Mystery: The Red Menace and The Romanoff Jewels

This year I read "The Red Menace" and "The Romanoff Jewels."  Both of these stories are fantastic Shadow adventures!  But when I finished reading them, I felt like I was missing something in my understanding of the stories.  That led me to start digging into the background of both adventures and a study of Russian history.  The more I studied and learned, the more I began to appreciate these two Shadow stories.  Let me share some of that background with you!  Please note that some of what I share is in general terms to try and simplify some of the complexities I discovered.

Up until 1917, Russia was ruled by powerful Tsars from the Romanoff (Romanov) dynasty.  The last Tsar of Russia was Tsar Nicholas II who began to reign on November 1, 1894.  In the early 1900s there was a lot of unrest in Russia and missteps by Tsar Nicholas didn't help endear him to the people.  For example, his handling of Russian involvement in World War I was a fiasco leading to the deaths of approximately 2 million ill-equipped Russian soldiers.  

Tsar Nicholas II

In February of 1917, the first of two revolutions began.  The February revolution began when workers refused to work and started rioting.  Troops were sent in to suppress the riots, but many soldiers refused and much of the army eventually turned against the Tsar.  As a result, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated his monarchy on March 15, 1917.  Shortly after his abdication, Nicholas and his family were imprisoned.  Two factions began to run the Russian government; the Petrograd Soviet (also known as Bolsheviks - which represented workers, soldiers) and the Provisional Government (which supported the Tsar and the monarchy).   In October of 1917, the second revolution began as the Petrograd Soviet led an armed insurrection that deposed the Provisional Government and assumed all command and authority in Russia.  Shortly after the October revolution, a civil war broke out in Russian between Red armies (Bolsheviks, socialists, communists) and the White armies (Russians who supported the Tsar and the monarchy).  The Red army defeated the White army and in 1922 Russia officially became the Union of Soviet Socialists of Russia (USSR).

On July 17, 1918, Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family were murdered by Bolshevik soldiers in the basement of a home in Yekaterinburg, Russia.  

Here's a brief summary to try and sum all of this up:

• The Romanoff dynasty ruled over Russia as a monarchy for over 300 years
• Tsar Nicholas II was the last Tsar of Russia and was killed on July 17, 1918
• Russians that supported Tsar Nicholas and the monarchy were called "Tsarists" or "White" Russians
• Russians that opposed the Tsar/monarchy were called "Bolsheviks" or "Red" Russians
• Tsarists who remained in Russia had their wealth confiscated by the Reds, this led to many Russians of nobility fleeing Russia (with their wealth) for other nations, including the United States

Now let me try and fold all this background into The Shadow stories!  In "The Red Menace" we learn that The Shadow was inducted into a secret society of Royalist (Tsarist) Russia called the Seventh Star.  The Shadow tells us, "I was in Russia during the first months of the War.  As an agent of another government, I became a member of the Seventh Star."  Under the stone of The Shadow's girasol ring is engraved a seven pointed star, which is the symbol of this elite organization!

In "The Romanoff Jewels" we learn a little more about The Shadow's connection with Russia.  The Shadow shows his girasol ring and tells us that the fire opal was given to him as a gift from the Tsar and it is one of the jewels of the Romanoffs.  "Gaze upon the stone that gleams from my finger.  That priceless girasol was once owned by the Tsars of Russia...The girasol was a gift, which I accepted as a memento of friendship from the man who owned it..."

From these two stories we learn that The Shadow had known and assisted in some way Tsar Nicholas II.  For his actions, he became a member of the Seventh Star and was given a priceless girasol ring.  If you go on to read these stories, try to keep in mind the different factions in Russia (Reds, Whites) as it leads to the intrigue and plotting that happens in these stories.

It was exciting and educational to do this investigation and research on the background of these two Shadow adventures.  I hope you've enjoyed the history behind the mystery!