Today In History: Orson Welles Scares The Crap Out Of America With Famous "War of the Worlds" Radio Broadcat
In my opinion this was one of the most interesting events in human history. It's hard for us today to understand how a radio broadcast of the H.G. Wells classic science fiction novel War of the Worlds by Orson Welles and his Mercury Theater players could cause a nation-wide panic by people believing that Earth was really being invaded by Martians.
But it really happened.
In the late 1930s everyone got their breaking news from the radio and Welles's adaption of Wells's story of an alien invasion (which sounded like an actual news broadcast) coupled with the fear of the war in Europe spreading onto American shores was all that was needed to push otherwise rational people into a panic.
From History.com
Welles was only 23 years old when his Mercury Theater company decided to update H.G. Wells’s 19th-century science fiction novel The War of the Worlds for national radio. Despite his age, Welles had been in radio for several years, most notably as the voice of “The Shadow” in the hit mystery program of the same name. “War of the Worlds” was not planned as a radio hoax, and Welles had little idea of how legendary it would eventually become.The show began on Sunday, October 30, at 8 p.m. A voice announced: “The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater on the air in ‘War of the Worlds’ by H.G. Wells.”
Sunday evening in 1938 was prime-time in the golden age of radio, and millions of Americans had their radios turned on. But most of these Americans were listening to ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy “Charlie McCarthy” on NBC and only turned to CBS at 8:12 p.m. after the comedy sketch ended and a little-known singer went on. By then, the story of the Martian invasion was well underway.
Welles introduced his radio play with a spoken introduction, followed by an announcer reading a weather report. Then, seemingly abandoning the storyline, the announcer took listeners to “the Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza in downtown New York, where you will be entertained by the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra.” Putrid dance music played for some time, and then the scare began. An announcer broke in to report that “Professor Farrell of the Mount Jenning Observatory” had detected explosions on the planet Mars. Then the dance music came back on, followed by another interruption in which listeners were informed that a large meteor had crashed into a farmer’s field in Grovers Mills, New Jersey.
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Terri and I listened to the broadcast tonight to celebrate it's anniversary and we just loved it! What an amazing piece of work, so well conceived and acted out. I urge you all to give it a listen.
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