William Johnson (Bill Johnstone) Collection

Bill Johnstone
(1908 – 1996)

"Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of men?" The character of "The Shadow" was one of the first and one of the most successful to make the transition from the seamy world of the pulps to radio. Many people do not realize that the character was created on the radio as a mystery host for Street and Smith's program, Detective Story Hour in 1930. The character was so popular that he was fleshed out in a comic book series and a magazine with his name.

By 1937, Street and Smith were ready to make another foray into radio, this time on the fledgling Mutual Network. The obvious choice to play The Shadow was an exciting young actor who was turning the theater world on its collective ear, 22-year-old Orson Welles. In the very first broadcast of The Shadow, September 26, 1937, he uses his powers to save an innocent man, played by William Johnstone, from being executed.

Although The Shadow became a popular show, Welles had bigger fish to fry. He quit The Shadow after the September 18, 1938, episode, Professor X (just a few weeks before his infamous War of the Worlds broadcast). Street and Smith had too good of a thing going to let The Shadow go from the radio, so Bill Johnstone was tapped to continue the part. The program remained on the air until December 26, 1954, and although Welles was the original, the five years that Johnstone had the part are considered the most formative.

William Llewellyn "Bill" Johnstone was born in New York, 1908. Before The Shadow, Bill worked on Welles' series Les Misérables. Due to an incredible lack of self-promotion, little is recorded about Johnstone's background beyond the fact that he was married to Georgia Bailey Johnstone. However, from looking at Johnstone's radio resume, we can see that he could have been the mayor of Radio Row in both New York and Hollywood.

He appeared in more than one hundred episodes of The Cavalcade of America between 1940 and 1947 (and once in 1952). In addition to The Shadow, Johnstone also starred as Lt. Ben Guthrie in The Line-Up from 1950 to 1953. The detective genre was as good to Johnstone as it was to the radio industry as a whole, and he played on most of the great detective programs at one time or another, including Pursuit, Tales of the Texas Rangers, Crime Classics, The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe, Broadway is My Beat, Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, The FBI in Peace and War, Nightbeat, The Mysterious Traveler, This is Your FBI, ABC Mystery Time, Gangbusters, and Richard Diamond Private Detective, just to name a few.

Johnstone appeared as part of the cast on nearly 180 episodes of Lux Radio Theatre and 142 editions of Suspense as an actor, announcer, and spokesman with Harlow Wilcox for Auto-Lite Spark Plugs. Dragnet gave Johnstone one of the most poignant roles of the entire series as the father of a young boy who is accidentally killed by a friend in ".22 Rifle for Christmas" in 1949 and 1952. He also played the part on the TV series. From 1956 to 1979, he was Judge Lowell on TV's As The World Turns.

William Johnstone passed away on November 1, 1996, in New York City. He was 88.