“Those who lived during the Depression thirties, having experienced their fill of hard times, had a leaning towards the irrational and the mystical, so the radio magicians had their day,” observed Chris Steinbrunner in his essay “Kill!” Hissed the Villain As I Shuddered and Listened.
Created by Harry A. Earnshaw and Raymond R. Morgan, Chandu The Magician debuted in 1931 on KHJ in Los Angeles. The occult superhero was heard on several networks and in two different radio series, one in the 1930s and a revival in the 1940s. He also inspired a feature film and a movie serial.
“The lure of the Orient — from high Tibetan fastnesses to South Pacific coastlines and atolls — was compelling to the radio adventurers of the thirties and forties,” noted Steinbrunner. “And Eastern mysticism was a heavy influence, as well, on the radio magicians.
“Foremost among these wizards was Chandu the Magician, actually Frank Chandler to the Occidental world, who became the first white yogi after taking study courses at one of those secret monasteries that surely influenced the later Lost Horizon,” Steinbrunner wrote. “(T) settings the shows presented were so vividly authentic one was almost transported to the crowded bazaars, the cold nights out on the desert.”
“In one especially memorable program, Chandu’s sister and her offspring are in an occult temple looking at a painting of ancient Atlantis. They are hypnotically swept back into the streets of the city in the last moments before catastrophe strikes. The show’s excellent narrative power makes the horror mount before our friends are pulled out of the trance; it was a weird feeling that radio — as we shuddered and listened — was superbly equipped to convey. Alas, Chandu — although he had two successful radio series, and starred in both a fantastic feature film and a campy movie serial — never crossed over to the comics.”
Still, Chandu’s impact on comic book superheroes was probably considerable. Sworn to fight for the right, Chandu did so with an array of super powers, including invisibility, telepathy, teleportation, astral projection, mind control, precognition and the projection of illusions. He even a dual identity, if not a secret one.
Stan Lee cited Chandu as a probable influence on Dr. Strange. And King Features’ Mandrake the Magician, who first appeared in 1934, seemingly followed in Chandu’s snowy Tibetan footsteps in acquiring super powers, fighting evil and loving a beautiful, exotic princess (Mandrake’s exotic princess was “Narda,” Chandu’s “Nadji”). Lee Falk reportedly created Mandrake a decade before he saw print in America’s newspapers. But the notable success of Chandu may well have been a factor in King Features’ decision to publish Mandrake.
Former silent film star Edmund Lowe was the first visible Chandu in the 1932 film Chandu the Magician, pitted against Bela Lugosi as the death ray-wielding super villain Roxor. Lugosi had kicked off Universal’s classic horror films only the year before by starring as Dracula.
“It’s the story of a magician with superpowers who fights an evil globe-trotting villain who is pursuing a massive death ray, and you can easily see its place in the worlds of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Romancing the Stone, the remake of The Mummy and the stirrings of just about every superhero film committed to the screen,” noted Danny on the Precode.com website. “It’s a deeply silly movie, and burnishes that with pride.”
Chandu the Magician was a “pre-code” Hollywood film, meaning an early sound picture produced before the mandatory enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code in July 1934. Those films often have some eyebrow-raising surprises for later audiences.
“In the film’s most infamous scene, to induce Robert to tell him the secret of his death ray, Roxor puts Robert’s daughter, Betty Lou, on the auction block to a crowd of lip licking Egyptians. Betty Lou is clad in a skimpy negligee to boot, and not much is left to the imagination as to what the results will be.”
“Edmund Lowe, as the lead Chandu, delightfully underplays his role, making the character a charmer who seems to have just gotten mixed up in the whole yogi thing out of a belief in good rather than any devotion to Eastern ideals. (This seems especially noticeable when he makes absolutely no value judgments on his brother-in-law building a death ray. Not even a, ‘Hey, that is kind of weird, isn’t it?’ sort of pronouncement).”
Chandu came back in the 1934 movie serial The Return of Chandu, but this time the villain was the hero. Lugosi replaced Lowe in the role of Chandu, protecting Nadji from the black magic of the Cult of Ubasti.
The success of both Chandu and Mandrake swiftly conjured a virtual flood of comic-book superhero magicians who had similarly vast, ill-defined powers, among them DC’s Zatara and Dr. Fate, Fox’s Zanzibar the Magician and Yarko the Great, MLJ’s Kardak the Mystic, Columbia’s Marvelo, Monarch of Magicians, Fawcett’s Ibis the Invincible and Will Eisner’s Mr. Mystic, who appeared in the Sunday newspaper Spirit Section.
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