5.2.25

"The War Of The Worlds" 30th October 1938 Radio Broadcast Terrifies The U.S.A.

Orson Welles and the media on the day after the "War of the Worlds" broadcast.
Image: Wikipedia. Public Domain.


The War of the Worlds: H.G. Wells and Orson Welles

How do you scare a nation in the 20th century? Convince American radio listeners that the Martians have landed in New Jersey and that the population is in peril. News bulletins interrupt a drama and the updates escalate from mildly concerning to terrifying.

No one would fall for it, or would they?

At 8 p.m. E.T. on the 30th October 1938, The Mercury Theatre On The Air radio show on the C.B.S. Network was directed by an ambitious and creative Orson Welles, then aged twenty three.

The episode, the seventeenth in the series, was based on The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, adapted by Howard E. Koch. It achieved panic, recriminations and an Oscar winning Hollywood career for Welles.

The announcer finished speaking and Orson Welles as the narrator of The War of the Worlds began his opening monologue. It was intended to create an atmosphere that made the listener receptive to what followed but no one imagined that their radio show with its modest amount of listeners would gain worldwide notoriety.

We know now that in the early years of the 20th century, this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own...

— Orson Welles Opening Monologue, The War of the Worlds 1938.

Martians Land at Grovers Hill, New Jersey

As the broadcast continued it was interrupted by ever more dramatic news bulletins. The first said that an unusual explosion had been seen on Mars. Soon the centre of the activity was Grovers Mill in New Jersey where there were reports of an unrecognisable craft landing. (H.G. Well's novel was set in England but Koch moved the invasion across the Atlantic).

A subsequent bulletin featured a reporter at Grovers Mill. He stated that the craft was opening and that aliens were disembarking. Disastrously, when police officers held up a peace flag the aliens responded by annihilating them. The reporter fell ominously silent.

Some listeners began to panic; further bulletins revealed that military efforts to take control of the situation were proving unsuccessful.

Then, arguably the most horrifying element appeared: An eye witness informed listeners that in Manhattan people were fleeing for their lives, trying to outrun huge machines that repeatedly emitted a poison. The eye witness said nothing more after coughing a few times.

"I had conceived the idea of doing a radio broadcast in such a manner that a crisis would actually seem to be happening and would be broadcast in such a dramatized form as to appear to be a real event taking place at that time, rather than a mere radio play."

— Orson Welles.

Orson Welles Makes an On Air Confession

As the Martians marauded in Manhattan the show's producer John Houseman was told by C.B.S. bosses to take the program off the air. The audience thought fiction was fact and a number of listeners switched stations during a break in a rival radio program so they hadn't heard the beginning.

The police, clearly not busy coping with an alien invasion, appeared at the New York radio studios and they attempted to stop the show but they were denied access to the actors.

As the terror rose to intolerable levels for the listeners there was a commercial break, the first one that hour. Next, Orson Welles' voice was heard again, this time portraying a man caught in the pandemonium.

After a quarter of an hour on air he delivered a revelation: The Martians were dying because they couldn't withstand the microbes on Earth. The danger level fell slowly, the audience were not ready to believe that they were safe from alien "monsters".

Orson Welles concluded with a confession. The broadcast was a radio version of "dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying 'boo!'"

The War of the Worlds Causes a Death

The show was over and the police questioned the cast and crew about what had transpired and the hysteria it was causing. The station switchboards were besieged by calls from angry listeners.

C.B.S. announcers repeated that the show was a work of fiction and that they had told listeners this before the performance. Rival radio stations were ordered to announce that there was no Martian invasion and that the public were safe.

Everyone was escorted out of the C.B.S. building's back door to escape the reporters and photographers that were entrenched outside the front entrance. Orson Welles lost his bravado and he thought that his career was over.

The news was filled with reports of outrage and admonishments from the great and the good in the US. The media ran the story as though the entire population had been scared witless. It hadn't.

There were serious consequences for some; one man was said to have died from a heart attack during the radio show and there were several suicide attempts reported in the newspapers.

Hollywood Beckons Orson Welles

Orson Welles made an apology at a news conference on the 31st October. By this time he wasn't as contrite as he might have been. He was delighted by the substantial publicity.

Within months Orson Welles was in Hollywood and his Oscar winning screen career was arguably the result of the broadcast as much as his talent.

Orson Welles and H.G. Wells met one another in 1940. Well's asked Welles "Are you sure there was such a panic in America or wasn't it your Halloween fun?"

Part of Welles response was: "I don't think anybody believes that that individual is a ghost, but we do scream and yell and rush down the hall. And that's just about what happened."

 

By Joanne Hayle
Labels:

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thanks for your comment.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)