Linking the Shadow to Lights Out!

Recently I was listening to a few episodes of the old-time radio series The Shadow which I hadn't heard before. The earliest episode I hadn't heard was called "Fountain of Death" and first aired in 1938, pretty early in the series! The early Shadow episodes have always been my favourites and this one, with Bill Johnstone in the lead, was a very good one with an unusual science fiction plot. You can hear the episode on the Internet Archive here.

The strange thing is, this episode of the Shadow is partially recycled from the horror program Lights Out! "Fountain of Death" concerns a female scientist who has created a formula to restore people's youth. She demonstrates its power by restoring youth to a dying woman. Thereafter, an agent from a foreign power kills the scientist and takes the formula, but while returning to his homeland by plane, the Shadow catches up to him. The Shadow makes the agent think he's consumed the youth formula; afraid to die by regressing into nothingness, he jumps from the plane to his doom. As it turns out, the Shadow merely bluffed the agent into thinking he'd taken the formula; he didn't even have to use his mental powers! His hard and relentless fight against the forces of evil is certainly aided by the credulity of those evil forces.

Much of this is quite similar to Arch Oboler's Lights Out episode "Nobody Died", which debuted two years earlier in 1936. Again, the plot is about a female scientist who creates a youth potion and restores a dying woman to life. Then a dictator comes for the formula and kills the scientist. He schemes to youthen his entire army so he has an unstoppable force forever in their prime, but the formula keeps rejuvenating people and because the dictator took the most, he regresses into infancy and then, apparent nothingness. You can hear it on Youtube here.

"Fountain of Death" does not credit it's author, but I'm pretty sure it must have been Arch Oboler. He had been writing scripts for the Shadow around that time and, according to the Library of Congress, their Arch Oboler Collection contains a script titled "Fountain of Death" (the library listing doesn't indicate what series the script belongs to). The scenes in which the female scientist saves the dying woman and where the foreigner kills the scientist are virtually identical to those in "Nobody Died". They differ primarily where the Shadow himself is concerned and especially in how the villain is defeated not by consuming the formula but by being made to think he had. Certainly that has something to do with the differences between Lights Out and the Shadow; Lights Out was a late night program for adults, while the Shadow was an afternoon program for juveniles. If the villain in the Shadow had regressed into nothingness it would have been a bit too disturbing for children. Much better that the villain jumps to his death from an airplane, that's not disturbing at all!