ON THIS DATE (75 YEARS AGO) October 30, 1938 - Orson Welles presented his famous dramatization of H.G. Wells The War of the Worlds on CBS Radio’s Mercury Theater. It was reported to have caused widespread panic when listeners thought that an actual extraterrestrial invasion was occurring. Although the reports of panic were mostly false and overstated, they provided Welles with instant fame. On January 27, 2003, the Mercury Theatre broadcast of The War of the Worlds was made part of the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress. The War of the Worlds is an episode of the American radio drama anthology series The Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on October 30, 1938, and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated by actor and future filmmaker Orson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wellss novel The War of the Worlds (1898). The first two thirds of the 60-minute broadcast were presented as a series of simulated news bulletins, which suggested to many listeners that an actual alien invasion by Martians was currently in progress. Compounding the issue was the fact that the Mercury Theatre on the Air was a sustaining show (it ran without commercial breaks), adding to the programs realism. Although there were sensationalist accounts in the press about a supposed panic in response to the broadcast, the precise extent of listener response has been debated. In the days following the adaptation, however, there was widespread outrage and panic by certain listeners, who had believed the events described in the program were real. The programs news-bulletin format was described as cruelly deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast. Despite these complaints—or perhaps in part because of them—the episode secured Welles fame as a dramatist. H. G. Wellss original novel relates the story of an alien invasion of Earth. The radio plays story was adapted by and written primarily by Howard Koch and Anne Froelick with input from Welles and the rest of the Mercury Theatre on the Air staff. The setting was switched from 19th-century England to contemporary Grovers Mill, an unincorporated village in West Windsor Township, New Jersey in the United States. The programs format was a (simulated) live newscast of developing events. To this end, Welles played recordings of Herbert Morrisons radio reports of the Hindenburg disaster for actor Frank Readick and the rest of the cast, to demonstrate the mood he wanted. The broadcast employed techniques similar to those of The March of Time, the CBS news documentary and dramatization radio series. Welles was a member of the programs regular cast, having first performed on The March of Time in March 1935. The Mercury Theatre on the Air and The March of Time shared many cast members, as well as sound effects chief Ora D. Nichols. The first two-thirds of the 60 minute play was a contemporary retelling of events of the novel, presented as news bulletins interrupting another programme. This approach was similar to Ronald Knoxs satirical newscast of a riot overtaking London broadcast by the BBC in 1926, which may have influenced Welles. A 1927 drama aired by Adelaide station 5CL depicted an invasion of Australia via the same techniques and inspired reactions similar to those of the Welles broadcast. Welles had been influenced by the Archibald MacLeish dramas The Fall of the City and Air Raid, the former of which had used Welles himself in the role of a live radio news reporter. However, the approach had never been taken with as much continued verisimilitude, and the innovative format has been cited[by whom?] as a key factor in the confusion that followed. Though realistic, the play does use timeskips, at one point going from the start of a battle to its final casualty count within a minute. The program, broadcast from the 20th floor at 485 Madison Avenue in New York City, starts with an introduction from the novel, describing the intentions of the aliens and noting that the adaptation is set in 1939, a year ahead of the actual broadcast date. The program continues with a weather report and an ordinary dance band remote featuring Ramon Raquello and His Orchestra (actually the CBS orchestra under the direction of Bernard Herrmann) that is interrupted by news flashes about strange explosions on Mars. Welles makes his first appearance as the (fictional) famous astronomer and Princeton professor Richard Pierson, who dismisses speculation about life on Mars. The news grows more frequent and increasingly ominous as a cylindrical meteorite lands in Grovers Mill, New Jersey. A crowd gathers at the site. Reporter Carl Phillips (Readick) relates the events. The meteorite unscrews, revealing itself as a rocket machine. Onlookers catch a glimpse of a tentacled, pulsating, barely mobile Martian inside before it incinerates the crowd with Heat-Rays. Phillipss shouts about incoming flames are cut off in mid-sentence. (Later surveys indicate that many listeners heard only this portion of the show before contacting neighbors or family to inquire about the broadcast. Many contacted others in turn, leading to rumors and confusion.) Regular programming breaks down as the studio struggles with casualty updates, firefighting developments and the like. A shaken Pierson speculates about Martian technology. The New Jersey state militia declares martial law and attacks the cylinder; a message from their field headquarters lectures about the overwhelming force of properly equipped infantry and the helplessness of the Martians in Earths gravity until a Tripod alien fighting machine rears up from the pit. The Martians obliterate the militia, and the studio returns, now describing the Martians as an invading army. Emergency response bulletins give way to damage reports and evacuation instructions as millions of refugees clog the roads. Three Martian tripods from the cylinder destroy power stations and uproot bridges and railroads, reinforced by three others from a second cylinder as gas explosions continue. An unnamed Secretary of the Interior (Kenny Delmar) advises the nation. (The secretary was originally intended to be a portrayal of Franklin D. Roosevelt, then President, but CBS insisted this detail, among others, be changed. Welles directed Delmar to nonetheless imitate Roosevelts voice.) A live connection is established to a field artillery battery. Its gun crew reports damaging one machine and a release of black smoke/poison gas before fading into the sound of coughing. The lead plane of a wing of bombers broadcasts its approach and remains on the air as their engines are burned by the Heat-Ray and the plane dives on the invaders. Radio operators go active and fall silent, most right after reporting the approach of the black smoke. The bombers destroyed one machine, but cylinders are falling all across the country. This section ends famously: A news reporter, broadcasting from atop the CBS building, describes the Martian invasion of New York City – five great machines wading across the Hudson River, poison smoke drifting over the city, people running and diving into the East River like rats, others falling like flies – until he, too, succumbs to the poison gas. Finally, a despairing ham radio operator is heard calling, 2X2L calling CQ. Isnt there anyone on the air? Isnt there anyone on the air? Isnt there... anyone? After an intermission for station identification, in which announcer Dan Seymour mentions that the show is fiction, the last third is a monologue and dialogue. Welles returns as Professor Pierson, describing the aftermath of the attacks. The story ends, as does the novel, with the Martians falling victim to earthly pathogenic germs, to which they have no Immunity. After the play, Welles informally breaks character to remind listeners that the broadcast was a Halloween concoction, the equivalent, as he puts it, of dressing up in a sheet, jumping out of a bush and saying, Boo!. Popular mythology holds this disclaimer was hastily added to the broadcast at the insistence of CBS executives as they became aware of panic inspired by the program; in fact, it had appeared in Kochs working script for the play. Some listeners heard only a portion of the broadcast and, in the atmosphere of tension and anxiety prior to World War II, took it to be an actual news broadcast. Newspapers reported that panic ensued, with people across the Northeastern United States and Canada fleeing their homes. Some people called CBS, newspapers or the police in confusion over the realism of the news bulletins. Future Tonight Show host Jack Paar had announcing duties that night for Cleveland CBS affiliate WGAR. As panicked listeners called the studio, Paar attempted to calm them on the phone and on air by saying, The world is not coming to an end. Trust me. When have I ever lied to you? When the listeners started charging Paar with covering up the truth, he called WGARs station manager for help. Oblivious to the situation, the manager advised Paar to calm down, saying it was all a tempest in a teapot. In Concrete, Washington, phone lines and electricity went out due to a short-circuit at the Superior Portland Cement Companys substation. Residents were unable to call neighbors, family or friends to calm their fears. Reporters who heard of the coincidental blackout sent the story over the news-wire, and soon Concrete was known worldwide. Within one month, newspapers had published 12,500 articles about the broadcast and its impact. Adolf Hitler cited the panic, as Richard J. Hand writes, as evidence of the decadence and corrupt condition of democracy. Later studies indicate that many missed the repeated notices about the broadcast being fictional, partly because The Mercury Theatre on the Air, an unsponsored cultural program with a relatively small audience, ran at the same time as the NBC Red Networks popular Chase and Sanborn Hour. About 15 minutes into Chase and Sanborn, the first comic sketch ended and a musical number began, and many listeners began tuning around the dial at that point. According to the American Experience program The Battle Over Citizen Kane, Welles knew the schedule of Chase and Sanborn and scheduled the first report from Grovers Mill at the 12-minute mark to heighten the audiences confusion. As a result, some listeners happened upon the CBS broadcast at the point the Martians emerge from their spacecraft. Because the broadcast was unsponsored, Welles and company could schedule breaks at will rather than structuring them around necessary advertisements. As a result, the only notices that the broadcast was fictional came at the start of the broadcast and about 40 and 55 minutes into it. A study by the Radio Project discovered that some who panicked presumed that Germans, not Martians, had invaded. The shadow of war was constantly in and on the air. People were on edge, wrote Welles biographer Frank Brady: For the entire month prior to The War of the Worlds, radio had kept the American public alert to the ominous happenings throughout the world. The Munich crisis was at its height. Adolf Hitler, in his address to the annual Nazi party congress at Nuremberg in September, called for the autonomy of the Sudetenland, an area on the Czech border regions populated by three million Sudeten Germans, as they were called. Hitler ranted and lied over German radio … For the first time in history, the public could tune into their radios every night and hear, boot by boot, accusation by accusation, threat by threat, the rumblings that seemed inevitably leading to a world war. Later studies suggested the panic was less widespread than newspapers had indicated at the time. During this period, many newspaper publishers were concerned that radio, a new medium, would render them obsolete. In that time of yellow journalism, print journalists took the opportunity to suggest that radio was dangerous by embellishing the story of the panic that ensued. Hand cites studies by unnamed historians who calculate[d] that some 6 million heard the CBS broadcast; 1.7 million believed it to be true, and 1.2 million were genuinely frightened. NBCs audience, by contrast, was an estimated 30 million. Robert E. Bartholomew grants that hundreds of thousands were frightened but calls evidence of people taking action based on their fear scant and anecdotal. Indeed, contemporary news articles indicate that police were swamped with hundreds of calls in numerous locations, but stories of people doing anything more than calling authorities mostly involve only small groups. Such stories were often reported by people who were panicking themselves. In the aftermath of the reported panic, CBS responded to public outcry by pointing to reminders throughout the broadcast that it was a performance. Welles and Mercury Theatre escaped punishment but not censure; CBS is believed to have had to promise never again to use we interrupt this program for dramatic effect. However, many radio commercials to this day do start with the phrase We interrupt this program. The notoriety of the broadcast led the Campbell Soup Company to sponsor the show; The Mercury Theatre on the Air was renamed The Campbell Playhouse. Many listeners sued the network for mental anguish and personal injury. All suits were dismissed, except for a claim for a pair of black mens shoes (size 9B) by a Massachusetts man, who spent his shoe money to escape the Martians. Welles insisted the man be paid. A meeting between H.G. Wells and Orson Welles was broadcast on Radio KTSA San Antonio, a CBS affiliate, on October 28, 1940. Wells expressed a lack of understanding of the apparent panic and suggested it may have been only pretense, like the American version of Halloween, for fun. The two men and their radio interviewer joked with embarrassment about the matter. On December 14, 1988, the original radio script for The War of the Worlds was sold at auction at Sothebys in New York by author Howard Koch. The typescript bears the handwritten deletions and additions of Orson Welles and producer John Houseman. It was thought to have been the only copy of the script known to survive. The police came in after the broadcast and seized whatever copies they could find as evidence, I suppose, Koch told The New York Times. There was a question that we had done something that might have criminal implications. Expected to bring between $25,000 and $35,000, the script sold for $143,000 — setting a record for an article of entertainment memorabilia. I had a private offer of $60,000, Koch said after selling the 46-page script, which had been in his file cabinet for years. They advised me to take the gamble. I guess it was the right gamble. A second surviving War of the Worlds radio script — Welless own directorial copy, given to an associate for safekeeping — was auctioned June 2, 1994, at Christies in New York. Estimated to bring $15,000 to $20,000, the script was sold for $32,200. The successful bidder was filmmaker Steven Spielberg, whose collection also includes one of the three balsa Rosebud sleds from Citizen Kane. Spielberg adapted The War of the Worlds for a feature film in 2005. The New Jersey Township of West Windsor, where Grovers Mill is located, commemorated the 50th anniversary of the broadcast in 1988 with four days of festivities including art and planetarium shows, a panel discussion, a parade, burial of a time capsule, a dinner dance, film festivals devoted to H. G. Wells and Orson Welles, and the dedication of a bronze monument to the fictional Martian landings. Howard Koch, an author of the original radio script, attended the 49th anniversary celebration as an honored guest. On 27 October, 2013, BBC Radio 4extra broadcast the show at 6pm GMT to commemorate the 75th Anniversary with an introduction by George Takei. On the previous day, BBC Radio 4 broadcast an analysis of the impact the broadcast made on an unsuspecting audience and its legacy. It looked at the myths and anecdotes generated since the original broadcast. On October 29, 2013, the PBS documentary series American Experience examined The War of the Worlds broadcast on the eve of its 75th anniversary. youtube/watch?v=Xs0K4ApWl4g
Posted on: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 18:27:05 +0000