The Shadow (1940) was the ninth serial released by Columbia Pictures. It was based upon the classic radio series and pulp magazine superhero character with the same name.

Plot
The Shadow battles a villain known as The Black Tiger, who has the power to make himself invisible and is attempting domination of major financial and business concerns.

Victor Jory’s Shadow is faithful to the radio character, especially the radio show’s signature: the sinister chuckle of the invisible Shadow as he confronts a villain. Columbia, however, relied on fistfights, chases, and headlong action in its serials, and disliked the prospect of a 15-chapter adventure where the audience wouldn’t see much of the heroics, because the leading character was supposed to be invisible. By basing the serial character more on the pulp fiction version and turning the mysterious Shadow into a flesh-and-blood figure, plainly visible in hat and cloak, Columbia patterned the serial after its wildly successful serial of 1938, The Spider’s Web, itself based on a masked hero of pulp fiction. The Spider was the respectable Richard Wentworth, who terrorized the underworld as the mysterious Spider and infiltrated gangland under a third identity, small-time crook Blinky McQuade. Columbia copied the triple-role format for The Shadow, with the stalwart Lamont Cranston baffling the enemies of justice as The Shadow (in a Spider-esque disguise) and moving among them as Oriental confederate Lin Chang.

Cast
Victor Jory as Lamont Cranston alias The Shadow. In the serial, Cranston is portrayed more as a research scientist than the playboy from the pulp fiction and radio series. Victor Jory “visually and audibly conveyed the required image of Cranston (and the ‘man of mystery’) more credibly than any other actor of that time that can be brought to mind.”[1]
Veda Ann Borg as Margo Lane, Cranston’s laboratory assistant. Borg played Margo Lane as brash and slightly cynical, in a departure from her urbane sophistication in the radio show and pulp magazines.[2]
Roger Moore as Harry Vincent. In the serial, Vincent combines the characters of the pulp fiction Harry Vincent and the pulp fiction/radio series character Moe “Shrevy” Shrevnitz.
Robert Fiske as Stanford Marshall
J. Paul Jones as Mr. Turner, business leader
Jack Ingram as Flint, The Black Tiger’s chief thug
Edward Peil Sr. as Inspector Joe Cardona
Philip Ahn as Wu Yung
Charles King as Henchman Russell
Tom London as Driver of Hi-jacked Truck