Press Release
Icebox Radio Theater (IBRT) will present a live dramatic radio-style reading of “The Shadow” on Friday, March 16 at 7 p.m. at the Backus Community Center in International Falls.
The reading will be presented with live actors and sound effects, along with music in the “old-time radio” style.
The program will include IBRT’s recreation of the classic Shadow episode, “A Blind Beggar Dies,” along with original comedy and science fiction skits featuring the iconic crime-fighting character and others.
Following the radio show, the audience is invited to join in a conversation with area media leaders on the subject, “Local Media in the Internet Age.”
Admission to the event is a free-will donation, and there will be a cash bar.
The event will cap a day-long fundraiser for the IBRT. Normally an on-demand podcast, it will spend 12 hours of March 16 broadcasting on the internet and Facebook as “Radio Icebox,” a fictitious community radio station in the mysterious northern Minnesota town of Icebox (which is not International Falls).
The IBRT will take donations and pledges, and also run a GoFundMe campaign as part of the fundraiser.
For information on the event, and to listen live, visit www.iceboxradio.org/sos
First appearing on radio in 1930, “The Shadow” began life as the mysterious narrator of the Street and Smith radio program “Detective Story Hour,” which was developed in an effort to boost sales of Detective Story Magazine.
When listeners of the program began asking at newsstands for copies of “That Shadow detective magazine,” Street & Smith decided to create a magazine based around The Shadow and hired writer William Gibson to create a character concept to fit the name and voice.
The first issue of “The Shadow” magazine went on sale on April 1, 1931.
On Sept. 26, 1937, “The Shadow” radio drama, a new radio series based on the character as created by Gibson for the pulp magazine, premiered with the story “The Death House Rescue,” in which The Shadow was characterized as having “the power to cloud men’s minds so they cannot see him.”
As in the magazine stories, The Shadow was not given the literal ability to become invisible.
For the first year, The Shadow was played by the legendary Orson Welles.
“The Blind Beggar Dies,” which starred Welles, originally aired on April 17, 1938.
