Sunday, July 14, 2024

Crossover of the Week

Summer 1940

WALKING ON FOREIGN GROUND, LIKE A SHADOW 

Judex travels to New York at the request of Kent Allard, the Shadow, whose parents were friends with Judex’s mother, Julia Orsini. A gangster named Tony Rico has learned the Shadow possesses the twin jewels of the Russian Czar. Rico received information on the Shadow from his old foe Benedict Stark. The Shadow asks Judex to impersonate him, with Mary Gillespie, the owner of the Gillespie Circus and the daughter of Colonel Gillespie, posing as Margo Lane. Rico is chauffeured by a man named Otero. Learning about Stanford Marshall, aka the Black Tiger, Rico killed him and stole his invisibility belt, invented by a pair of scientists named Stanford and Van Dorn. Rico also targeted Professor Adam Strang, who read Reggie Ogden novels, and was involved in a caper with a criminal engineer called Sparks who created a machine to kill people by radio control, based on television technology invented by a Dr. Houghland. Judex meets with Mary Gillespie at Rusterman’s. Mary has an ex-husband named Jim. “Rainbow” Benny Loomis likes to hang out at Rusterman’s. Loomis tells Judex and Mary that Rico thinks he’s the new Enrico Bandello, and his birth name is Chris Jorgenson. A wounded Mary says her uncle Leonard will treat her. The Shadow saw Judex with his wife Jacqueline, and felt his loneliness deepen. 

Short story by Atom Mudman Bezecny in Tales of the Shadowmen Volume 17: Noblesse Oblige, Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier, eds., Black Coat Press, 2020; reprinted in French in Les Compagnons de l’Ombre (Tome 29), Jean-Marc Lofficier, ed., Rivière Blanche, 2022. Judex and his wife, the former Jacqueline Aubry, are from Louis Feuillade’s film serial Judex. Arthur Bernède’s novelization of the serial identified Judex’s mother, the Comtesse de Tremeuse, as the former Julia Orsini. The shadowy pulp hero and his companion need no introduction. The vigilante battled Stark, the so-called “Prince of Evil,” in four novels by Theodore Tinsley. Tony Rico is from the 1933 film The Shadow Laughs. Bezecny identifies Rico with Chris Jorgenson from Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man; in the film adaptation, Jorgenson was played by Cesar Romero, the same actor who played Tony Rico. Mary Gillespie, her father the Colonel, her ex-husband Jim Quinn, and the Gillespie Circus are from the 1937 film The Shadow. Otero and Enrico Bandello are from the movie Little Caesar. The Black Tiger is from the 1940 serial The Shadow. Stanley Stanfield and Professor Carl Van Dorn are from the serial The Vanishing Shadow. Professor Adam Anton Strang and Sparks are from the serial The Whispering Shadow. Reggie Ogden is from the 1933 movie The Shadow. Dr. James Houghland is from the movie Murder by Television. Rusterman’s is from Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels. “Rainbow” Benny Loomis is from the movie Shadow of the Thin Man. Except for the 1940 serial, none of the films with “Shadow” in the title involve Walter Gibson’s pulp hero. Dr. Leonard Gillespie is from Max Brand’s Dr. Kildare stories. Although this case is dated to 1928, the shadowy hero began his crimefighting career in 1929, and his four battles with Stark took place in 1939, and so I would place it in the early 1940s instead. 

This crossover writeup is one of over a thousand appearing in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, coming this summer from Meteor House! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

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