Gladney on his covers for ‘The Shadow’

The artist examines six of the 62 covers he did for the popular pulp magazine.

In the mid-1970s, artist Graves Gladney sat down with pulp fans Terry Klasek and Kenn Thomas at his home in Clayton, Mo., just west of St. Louis, for a wide-ranging interview. [Read the complete interview.]

Gladney painted covers for Popular Publications, Fiction House, and Street & Smith Publications, but he is best remembered for the covers he did for The Shadow Magazine from 1937 to 1941, when World War II interrupted his career.

During the interview, Gladney was asked to discuss some of The Shadow covers specifically. Here are his comments.

---

By Terry Klasek and Kenn Thomas

“Masters of Death” (May 15, 1940)

Gladney: This is the last of the Shiwan Khan series. The Shadow is pitching one of the thugs Shiwan Khan employed into an open fire. This was simply done by turning the canvas upside-down. The model was sitting on a big armchair, and I just painted him with his head turned around.

Q: How many were there in the Shiwan Khan series, four?

Gladney: Four, yes. There was one called “The Golden Master,” which, incidentally, was one of the best covers I ever did. This is because I hired a Chinese [actor] who was at that time in the cast of Anything Goes playing on Broadway at that time. He had a genuine Mandarin costume, and I, through Goodwill or some similar organization, bought a great big ornate chair. He posed for me a full day, and left the robe with me to finish it. Even then, he charged me $25 a day, which was a lot of money, but I produced a cover I liked very well. It was the Sept. 15, 1939, issue. Here to the left is the true Chinese writing he told me how to do. That’s “Shiwan Khan” in Chinese.

“Scent of Death” (June 1, 1940)

Gladney: Through powers in New York, I hired a sometime model, a woman who was about 83 years old, very feeble, but I liked the bony feeling of age in her hands, which I painted very carefully. For the rest of it, I had her wear an old shawl and a sweater, turned a light on her, and it didn’t make any difference whether I painted a face in the aperture or not, so I left it black and later painted a skull in the opening. I then covered the whole thing with a cast shadow of The Shadow to give an eerie feeling. The flowers were the highest values in the picture and were the things you saw first. The flowers were poisoned.

Q: Didn’t you find some of the subject material for your covers a bit morbid?

Gladney: I’ve heard that quite a bit. When I was teaching, my students would bring me articles from Playboy and such magazines, in which they were discussing such abstractions of horror or violence. They would ask me if I wasn’t upset by subject matter. To tell you the truth, painting is painting; I’ve never had the slightest concern for the implications of the subject matter. I remember I did an absurd cover for Popular Publications once in which a mad scientist and his monster-like helper were about to cut a woman in half with an enormous paper cutter. I did the cover without thinking one way or another. A lot of those so-called intellectuals either were appealed or repelled by it. Ultimately, the original of that cover was given to an editor of Fortune, and as far as I know, he still has it. He giggled at it.

Any time you tried to get humorous with a cover, you met the violent objection of the editors who thought you were painting down to them. But once in a while, I’d try to get humorous. Popular Publication’s [Henry] Steeger, a Princetonian, who was really quite cynical, had a strong liking for figures in hoods. He said, “Let’s have more one more of these.” So, I got tired of it and told him, “Why don’t we for Terror Tales have a big goal post with all these hooded figures huddled around and a tied-up nude girl over the goal post.” I thought it was funny. They didn’t. They got absolutely furious and said they didn’t want any more of that joking because this was a sacred subject.

Another time, I tried to joke, and they took it quite seriously. I said, “Let’s have this bound girl who has a hangman’s noose around her neck that’s tied to a beam with about 10 inches of slack. A dwarf would have a blow torch fixed on the cake of ice she is standing on. When the ice melted, away she would be hanged.” I thought the stuff would hit the fan then, that they would get mad. But they said it wasn’t a bad idea; do it. I told them to get somebody else to do it, and they did.

The worst cover I have ever done was a Shadow in which I used water color. [Alex D.] Sniffen, the art editor, decided he wanted all of the artists to paint as 19th-century French painters did. So, he insisted I do this cover in water color. Boy, it was a stinker. I was prepared to get on my knees and say, “I’m sorry, let me do it over.” We agreed it was impossibly bad. Then in came [editor John L.] Nanovic, took one look at it, clutched it to his bosom, and said, “Why can’t they all be like this?” He loved it.

“The Green Terror” (Jan. 15, 1941)

Gladney: Oh, yes. Now, that one concerned a man who is carrying a great big box of radium around. Of course, radium is extremely heavy, and so I simply hired a local man named Charlie Wagner to put on an ordinary raincoat and wear a gas mask that we got from a local gas company, and he had a box in his hands in which I simply inserted a strong photo flash so that the light came upward onto his face. Since it was such a simple cover — he would pose, say, 15 minutes at a time and rest five minutes — I did the whole cover in less than three hours. They liked it; I liked it, and I thought it was very successful.

“The Wasp Returns” (Feb. 1, 1941)

Gladney: In this cover, The Shadow was supposed to have come under attack in a public place, presumably Grand Central Station, at the newsstand. He is crouched down behind this very flimsy cover. The Army defines “cover” as something that will protect you from fire; concealment is quite another thing. The Shadow has apparently taken cover behind this thing that wouldn’t stop an air rifle. The gunshots have pierced the pulp covers, but this doesn’t bother The Shadow.

That’s one of the advantages of being a fictional character — you never die.

As you can see, the magazines he is hiding behind are Street & Smith publications: The Shadow, one of my own; Love Story; Astounding; and a bit of Doc Savage.

Incidentally, my own Shadow cover brings up another point. The editors insisted that, from time to time, that I show The Shadow’s specialized equipment. He had a flashlight, a ring, etc. This time [“Gems of Doom,” July 15, 1940], they told me to show The Shadow using those big suction cups he uses to walk up and down the sides of buildings. So, I put these great big things on his hands and feet to walk up walls. How, I don’t know, but nevertheless it is there.

The man who posed as the assailant was a professional fighter named [Adolf] “Pickles” Heinz. He was glad to get extra money, because in those days, he didn’t fight regularly enough to support himself.

“The Shadow Meets The Mask” (Aug. 15, 1941)

Gladney: This is a Shadow cover and the reason I kept it because this man being shot is a self-portrait. With overwhelming difficulty using the mirror and putting the canvas at an angle, I got a pretty accurate portrait. The Shadow comes plunging through a skylight of the studio, despite the fact that such a fall would cut the Shadow to hell. This figure wearing the mask is a local boy named Al Dunn. All I did was paint a portrait of him and drew a line along his temporal and zygomatic [cheekbone] to make it look as though he was wearing a mask.

“Gems of Jeopardy” (Sept. 1, 1941)

Gladney: Here’s another little gem. Obviously, this man is applying a little torture. He is pinching the other’s hand with a pair of enormous pliers. Of course, his arms are held down with an absurd piece of tape, which is tacked to the table. And quite unnecessarily, on the other arm, there is this huge padlock, which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I just put it in there because the art directors liked the idea.

It’s interesting because the model of the man being tortured was one of the first listed casualties in the war [World War II]. Shortly after he posed for this, he enlisted in the Navy, and he was on one of the first of our naval vessels that was sunk. Most of the hands were lost, and among them, this man.

Then there is The Shadow getting ready to come in this odd door behind the torturer. And all the guy had to do was look up and see The Shadow with that gun stuck up his nose. But this didn’t bother the readers. Technically, I was only interested in the strong effect of light bearing down on the two. The hair on the one, even now, I see is quite well done. The hands are good, too. I want to tell you, to do hands this detailed is a full day’s work.