Discover Top Posts Tagged with #graves gladney

The Shadow magazine, dated January 15, 1941. Cover by Graves Gladney.

#Graves Gladney #the shadow #1941

The Shadow, June 1, 1940 (Shadow Magazine #199): “The Scent of Death.” Graves Gladney cover art.

Info from Fandom wiki.

#the shadow #street & smith #1940s #pulps #pulp magazines #magazines #mysteries #shadow magazine #shadow magazine 199 #the scent of death #graves gladney #cover art #magazine covers #skulls #macabre

Graves Gladney's cover for the March 15, 1941 issue of The Shadow.

While it certainly looks like The Shadow is battling members of the KKK, in the story they are actually part of an evil organization known as The White Column.

#The Shadow #The White Column #Lamont Cranston #Kent Allard #Street & Smith #pulp heroes #pulp magazines #Maxwell Grant #Walter B. Gibson #Graves Gladney

Dime Mystery Magazine - April 1938 (Popular)

Cover art by Graves Gladney

#dime mystery magazine #graves gladney #arms of the flame goddes #pulp art #horror art #pulp covers #pulp magazine #shudder pulps

So here’s a bit of trivia I just found: Graves Gladney, cover artist for The Shadow Magazine for half of it’s run, had a talk with Will Murray that was published in his book about The Shadow called Master of Mystery. In it, he talks a bit about the cover he did for The Golden Master, Shiwan Khan’s first appearence, one he considers to be his personal favorite along with the portrait of Hawkeye he did for Wizard of Crime. According to him, the Chinese characters in the bottom of the image spell out “Shiwan Khan”, and were written for him by the same model who posed for the painting. According to him, he was an actor who performed in the movie “Anything Goes”. He didn’t name said model.

Doing some digging in said movie shows that there’s only two male Asian-American performers in the film: Keye Luke and Phillip Ahn, with Keye Luke being the clearer candidate due to the greater resemblance and the fact that Luke already had a career as an illustrator prior to debuting in film (plus Ahn was Korean, but he always played Chinese characters and Gladney likely didn’t care about the distinction so, there’s still a chance it could be him. If anyone happens to know more about this, I’d be delighted to learn more and correct this post ).

Keye Luke made his big break in acting by playing Lee Chan, Charlie Chan’s “Number One Son”, in the serials, eventually becoming the first Chinese-American performer to play Chan himself in the Hanna-Barbera cartoon. He also played Kato in the first Green Hornet serials, and is currently more known for his role as Mr.Wing in the Gremlins films. If he was the uncredited model for Gladney’s painting, he’s never been acknowledged in any capacity as the model for The Shadow’s arch-enemy, so I’m making this post to put it on record (again, as far as I can identify).

Additionally, Gladney also states also that, while he used to have the original painting for The Golden Master, he gave away to a fellow painting teacher in St.Louis, whose widow refused to part with it after he passed away. It’s unknown if it’s still intact today.