The shadow was amateur criminologist Lamont Cranston. He had learned “the hypnotic power to cloud men’s minds so that they cannot see him”. The opening to the show, “Who knows … what evil … lllllurks … in the heart of men? … The Shadow knows! His “friend and companion, the lovely Margo Lane, is the only person who knows to whom the voice of the invisible Shadow belongs”. Together they confront the maddest assortment of lunatics, sadists, ghosts and werewolves ever heard on the air.
Fred Allen's script writer Herman Wouk later wrote the bestsellers The Caine Mutniy and The Winds of War.