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To anyone who is in love with magic tricks, magicians and the sense of theater that goes along with it, Walter B Gibson is a known and beloved person. WALTER B GIBSON AND THE SHADOW is a biography of the man who was a champion of magicians and their acts in the early 20th century and also was the creator and writer of The Shadow series, a very popular radio program in the golden age of radio and still is a recognizable name today. In every library in the United States you will find him as an author on books on magic. Thomas Shimeld, the writer of this book, found out he was a fan of Walter B Gibson before he even knew the name. As a young boy, a budding magician, he had gone to the library and gotten a magic book that inspired him. When he and his young buddy ventured into their first magic shop, they met the owner, magician Wendell Gibson and found out that he was the nephew of the man whose name appeared on so many of the library books they studied. That started a life long interest in Walter . Gibson and when he got the chance to look at the man's papers, Shimeld knew he had a rare opportunity to write a book that would appeal to anyone interested in magic tricks. Walter B Gibson was a prolific writer who was published under his name and 79 pseudonyms. He always insisted that that he didn't want to be famous, just busy He wrote 187 books, 283 full-length novels of The Shadow magazine, 48 separate syndicated feature columns, and 147 radio scripts. He was the first person to make a living man into a comic strip hero when he wrote of The Adventures of Blackstone The Magician and The Shadow in 394 comics and newspaper strips. The rooms of the last home he owned was divided up into different libraries, for horror, magic, the occult, The Shadow, and so on. Though this book is filled with information about Gibson's life and his dedication to magic and writing, it is also a wonderful piece about the 20th century and its taste for entertainment during the different decades. The subjects of the pictures of the book will ring a bell with everyone who has any knowledge of the radio years and it's a wonderful reminder of the times in which Gibson lived, of radio and films, of penny novels and the quieter personal popular entertainment tastes of the American public of that time. I liked it.
Reviewed by Sharon Katz, October 2005
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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