The War of the Worlds (radio drama)

The War of the Worlds

Orson Welles tells reporters that no one connected with the broadcast had any idea it would cause panic (October 31, 1938)
Genre	Radio drama, science fiction
Running time	60 minutes
Home station	CBS Radio
Hosted by	The Mercury Theatre on the Air
Starring	Orson Welles Frank Readick Kenny Delmar Ray Collins
Announcer	Dan Seymour
Written by	H.G. Wells (novel) Howard E. Koch (adaptation)
Directed by	Orson Welles Paul Stewart (rehearsal director)[1]:343
Produced by	John Houseman Orson Welles Paul Stewart (associate producer)[2]:390
Executive producer(s)	Davidson Taylor (for CBS)
Narrated by	Orson Welles
Recording studio	Columbia Broadcasting Building, 485 Madison Avenue, New York
Air dates	since October 30, 1938 (1938-10-30)
Opening theme	Piano Concerto No. 1, by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

	War of the Worlds Broadcast Clip A five-minute portion of the original broadcast
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"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 Sunday, 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. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds (1898). It became famous for allegedly causing mass panic, although the reality of the panic is disputed as the program had relatively few listeners.^[3]

The first two-thirds of the one-hour broadcast was presented as a series of simulated news bulletins, which suggested an actual alien invasion by Martians was currently in progress. The illusion of realism was furthered because the Mercury Theatre on the Air was a sustaining show without commercial interruptions, and the first break in the program came almost 30 minutes into the broadcast. Popular legend holds that some of the radio audience may have been listening to Edgar Bergen and tuned in to "The War of the Worlds" during a musical interlude, thereby missing the clear introduction that the show was a drama, but recent research suggests this only happened in rare instances.^[4]:67–69

In the days following the adaptation, widespread outrage was expressed in the media. The program's news-bulletin format was described as deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast and calls for regulation by the Federal Communications Commission.^[3] The episode secured Welles's fame as a dramatist.

Production

H. G. Wells's original novel tells the story of an alien invasion of Earth. The novel was adapted by Howard E. Koch for the 17th episode of the CBS Radio series The Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast at 8 pm ET on Sunday, October 30, 1938.^{[2]:390, 394} The program's format was a simulated live newscast of developing events. The setting was switched from 19th-century England to contemporary Grover's Mill, an unincorporated village in West Windsor Township, New Jersey, in the United States.

The first two-thirds of the hour-long play is a contemporary retelling of events of the novel, presented as news bulletins interrupting another program. "I had conceived the idea of doing a radio broadcast in such a manner that a crisis would actually seem to be happening," Welles later said, "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.^[5] This approach was similar to Ronald Knox's radio hoax Broadcasting the Barricades, about a riot overtaking London, that was broadcast by the BBC in 1926,^[6][7] which Welles later said gave him the idea for "The War of the Worlds".^[8] 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.^[9]

He was also influenced by the Columbia Workshop presentations "The Fall of the City", a 1937 radio play in which Welles played the role of an omniscient announcer, and "Air Raid", a vibrant as-it-happens drama starring Ray Collins that aired October 27, 1938.^{[10]:159, 165–166} Welles had previously used a newscast format for "Julius Caesar" (September 11, 1938), with H. V. Kaltenborn providing historical commentary throughout the story.^[11]:93

"The War of the Worlds" broadcast used techniques similar to those of The March of Time, the CBS news documentary and dramatization radio series.^[12] Welles was a member of the program's regular cast, having first performed on The March of Time in March 1935.^{[1]:74, 333} The Mercury Theatre on the Air and The March of Time shared many cast members, as well as sound effects chief Ora D. Nichols.^{[4]:41, 61, 63}

Welles discussed his fake newscast idea with producer John Houseman and assistant director Paul Stewart; together, they decided to adapt a work of science fiction. They considered adapting M. P. Shiel's The Purple Cloud and Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World before purchasing the radio rights to The War of the Worlds. Houseman later wrote that he suspected Welles had never read it.^{[2]:392[4]:45[5][lower-alpha 1]}

Howard Koch had written the first drafts for the Mercury Theatre broadcasts "Hell on Ice" (October 9), "Seventeen" (October 16),^[10]:164 and "Around the World in 80 Days" (October 23).^[11]:92 Monday, October 24, he was assigned to rescript "The War of the Worlds" for broadcast the following Sunday night.^[10]:164

Tuesday night, 36 hours before rehearsals were to begin, Koch telephoned Houseman in what the producer characterized as "deep distress". Koch said he could not make The War of the Worlds interesting or credible as a radio play, a conviction echoed by his secretary Anne Froelick, a typist and aspiring writer whom Houseman had hired to assist him. With only his own abandoned script for Lorna Doone to fall back on, Houseman told Koch to continue adapting the Wells fantasy. He joined Koch and Froelick and they worked on the script throughout the night. On Wednesday night, the first draft was finished on schedule.^{[2]:392–393}

On Thursday, associate producer Paul Stewart held a cast reading of the script, with Koch and Houseman making necessary changes. That afternoon, Stewart made an acetate recording, with no music or sound effects. Welles, immersed in rehearsing the Mercury stage production of Danton's Death scheduled to open the following week, played the record at an editorial meeting that night in his suite at the St. Regis Hotel. After hearing "Air Raid" on the Columbia Workshop earlier that same evening, Welles viewed the script as dull. He stressed the importance of inserting news flashes and eyewitness accounts into the script to create a sense of urgency and excitement.^[10]:166

Houseman, Koch, and Stewart reworked the script that night,^[2]:393 increasing the number of news bulletins and using the names of real places and people whenever possible. Friday afternoon, the script was sent to Davidson Taylor, executive producer for CBS, and the network legal department. Their response was that the script was 'too' credible and its realism had to be toned down. As using the names of actual institutions could be actionable, CBS insisted upon some 28 changes in phrasing.^[10]:167

"Under protest and with a deep sense of grievance we changed the Hotel Biltmore to a nonexistent Park Plaza, Trans-America to Inter-Continent, the Columbia Broadcasting Building to Broadcasting Building," Houseman wrote.^[2]:393 "The United States Weather Bureau in Washington, D.C." was changed to "The Government Weather Bureau", "Princeton University Observatory" to "Princeton Observatory", "McGill University" in Montreal to "Macmillan University" in Toronto, "New Jersey National Guard" to "State Militia", "United States Signal Corps" to "Signal Corps", "Langley Field" to "Langham Field", and "St. Patrick's Cathedral" to "the cathedral".^[10]:167

On Saturday, Stewart rehearsed the show with the sound effects team, giving special attention to crowd scenes, the echo of cannon fire, and the sound of the boat horns in New York Harbor.^{[2]:393–394}

Early Sunday afternoon, Bernard Herrmann and his orchestra arrived in the studio, where Welles had taken over production of that evening's program.^{[2]:391, 398}

To create the role of reporter Carl Phillips, actor Frank Readick went to the record library and played the recording of Herbert Morrison's radio report of the Hindenburg disaster over and over.^[2]:398 Working with Bernard Herrmann and the orchestra that had to sound like a dance band fell to Paul Stewart,^[16] the person Welles would later credit as being largely responsible for the quality of "The War of the Worlds" broadcast.^[17]:195

Welles wanted the music to play for unbearably long stretches of time.^[18]:159 The studio's emergency fill-in, a solo piano playing Debussy and Chopin, was heard several times. "As it played on and on," Houseman wrote, "its effect became increasingly sinister—a thin band of suspense stretched almost beyond endurance. That piano was the neatest trick of the show."^[2]:400

Dress rehearsal was scheduled for 6 pm.^[2]:391

"Our actual broadcasting time, from the first mention of the meteorites to the fall of New York City, was less than forty minutes," wrote Houseman. "During that time, men travelled long distances, large bodies of troops were mobilized, cabinet meetings were held, savage battles fought on land and in the air. And millions of people accepted it—emotionally if not logically.^[2]:401

Cast

The cast of characters of "The War of the Worlds" appears in order as first heard in the broadcast.^[19][20]

• Announcer … Dan Seymour
• Narrator … Orson Welles
• First studio announcer … Paul Stewart
• Meridian Room announcer … William Alland
• Reporter Carl Phillips … Frank Readick
• Professor Richard Pierson … Orson Welles
• Second studio announcer … Carl Frank
• Mr. Wilmuth … Ray Collins
• Policeman at Wilmuth farm … Kenny Delmar
• Brigadier General Montgomery Smith … Richard Wilson
• Mr. Harry McDonald, vice president in charge of radio operations … Ray Collins
• Captain Lansing of the Signal Corps … Kenny Delmar
• Third studio announcer … Paul Stewart
• Secretary of the Interior … Kenny Delmar
• 22nd Field Artillery Officer … Richard Wilson
• Field artillery gunner … William Alland
• Field artillery observer … Stefan Schnabel
• Lieutenant Voght, bombing commander … Howard Smith
• Bayonne radio operator … Kenny Delmar
• Langham Field radio operator … Richard Wilson
• Newark radio operator … William Herz
• 2X2L radio operator … Frank Readick
• 8X3R radio operator … William Herz
• Fourth studio announcer, from roof of Broadcasting Building … Ray Collins
• Fascist stranger … Carl Frank
• Himself … Orson Welles

Broadcast

Plot summary

"The War of the Worlds" begins with a paraphrase of the beginning of the novel, updated to contemporary times. The announcer introduces Orson Welles:

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. We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns, they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacence, people went to and fro over the earth about their little affairs, serene in the assurance of their dominion over this small spinning fragment of solar driftwood which by chance or design man has inherited out of the dark mystery of Time and Space. Yet across an immense ethereal gulf, minds that are to our minds as ours are to the beasts in the jungle, intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. In the 39th year of the 20th century came the great disillusionment. It was near the end of October. Business was better. The war scare was over. More men were back at work. Sales were picking up. On this particular evening, October 30th, the Crossley service estimated that 32 million people were listening in on radios…^{[2]:394–395[20]}

The program continues with a weather report and an ordinary dance band remote featuring "Ramon Raquello and His Orchestra", interrupted by news flashes about strange explosions on Mars. An interview is arranged with reporter Carl Phillips and Princeton-based Professor of Astronomy Richard Pierson, who dismisses speculation about life on Mars. The news grows more frequent and increasingly ominous as a cylindrical meteorite lands in Grover's Mill, New Jersey. A crowd gathers at the site, where Phillips and Pierson relate the events. The cylinder unscrews, and onlookers catch a glimpse of a tentacled, pulsating, barely mobile Martian inside before it incinerates the crowd with heat-rays. Phillips's shouts about incoming flames are cut off mid-sentence.

Regular programming breaks down as the studio struggles with casualty and fire-fighting updates. A shaken Pierson speculates about Martian technology. The New Jersey state militia declares martial law and attacks the cylinder; a captain from their field headquarters lectures about the overwhelming force of properly equipped infantry and the helplessness of the Martians, until a tripod rises from the pit. The tripod obliterates the militia, and the studio returns, now describing the Martians as an invading army. Emergency response bulletins give way to damage and evacuation reports as thousands 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 that landed in the Great Swamp near Morristown, as gas explosions continue. The Secretary of the Interior addresses the nation.

A live connection is established to a field artillery battery in the Watchung Mountains. Its gun crew damages a machine, resulting in a release of black smoke, before fading into the sound of coughing. The lead plane of a wing of bombers from Langham Field 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 – although the bombers destroyed one machine, the remaining five are spreading black smoke across the Jersey Marshes into Newark.

Eventually, a news reporter, broadcasting from atop the Broadcasting Building, describes the Martian invasion of New York City – "five great machines" wading the Hudson "like [men] wading through a brook", black smoke drifting over the city, people diving into the East River "like rats", others in Times Square "falling like flies". He reads a final bulletin stating that Martian cylinders have fallen all over the country, and is eventually killed by the smoke. Finally, a ham radio operator is heard calling, "2X2L calling CQ, New York. Isn't there anyone on the air? Isn't there anyone on the air? Isn't there... anyone?"

After a period of silence comes the voice of announcer Dan Seymour:

You are listening to a CBS presentation of Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre of the Air, in an original dramatization of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. The performance will continue after a brief intermission.

The last third of the program is a monologue and dialogue. Professor Pierson, having survived the attack on Grover's Mill, attempts to make contact with other humans. In Newark, he encounters an opportunistic militiaman who holds fascist ideals in regards to man's relationship with the Martians, and intends to use Martian weaponry to take control of both species. Declaring that he wants no part of "his world", Pierson leaves the stranger with his delusions. His journey takes him to the ruins of New York, where he discovers that the Martians have died – as with the novel, they fell victim to earthly pathogenic germs, to which they had no immunity. Life eventually returns to normal, and Pierson finishes writing his recollections of the invasion and its aftermath.

After the play, Welles assumes his role as host and tells listeners that the broadcast was a Halloween concoction: the equivalent, he says, "of dressing up in a sheet, jumping out of a bush and saying, 'Boo!'"^[21] 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, at the station break network executive Davidson Taylor attempted to prevent Welles, who had added the speech at the last minute, from reading it on-air, because it could have opened the network up to legal liability, but Welles delivered it anyway.^[4]:95–96

Announcements

Radio programming charts in Sunday newspapers listed the CBS drama, "The War of the Worlds". The New York Times for October 30, 1938, also included the show in its "Leading Events of the Week" ("Tonight – Play: H. G. Wells's 'War of the Worlds'") and published a photograph of Welles with some of the Mercury players, captioned, "Tonight's show is H. G. Wells' 'War of the Worlds'".^[10]:169

Announcements that "The War of the Worlds" is a dramatization of a work of fiction were made on the full CBS network at four points during the broadcast October 30, 1938 – at the beginning, before the middle break, after the middle break, and at the end.^[22]:43 The middle break was delayed 10 minutes to accommodate the dramatic content.^[11]:94

Another announcement was repeated on the full CBS network that same evening at 10:30 pm, 11:30 pm and midnight: "For those listeners who tuned in to Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast from 8 to 9 pm Eastern Standard Time tonight and did not realize that the program was merely a modernized adaptation of H. G. Wells's famous novel War of the Worlds, we are repeating the fact which was made clear four times on the program, that, while the names of some American cities were used, as in all novels and dramatizations, the entire story and all of its incidents were fictitious."^[22]:43–44

Public reaction

Producer John Houseman noticed that at about 8:32 pm. ET, CBS supervisor Davidson Taylor received a telephone call in the control room. Creasing his lips, Taylor left the studio and returned four minutes later, "pale as death". He had been ordered to interrupt "The War of the Worlds" broadcast immediately with an announcement of the program's fictional content, but by that time actor Ray Collins was choking on the roof of Broadcasting Building and the break was less than a minute away.^[2]:404

Actor Stefan Schnabel recalled sitting in the anteroom after finishing his on-air performance. "A few policemen trickled in, then a few more. Soon, the room was full of policemen and a massive struggle was going on between the police, page boys, and CBS executives, who were trying to prevent the cops from busting in and stopping the show. It was a show to witness."^[23]

During the sign-off theme, the phone began ringing. Houseman picked it up and the furious caller announced he was mayor of a Midwestern town where mobs were in the streets. Houseman hung up quickly: "For we were off the air now and the studio door had burst open."^[2]:404

The following hours were a nightmare. The building was suddenly full of people and dark-blue uniforms. Hustled out of the studio, we were locked into a small back office on another floor. Here we sat incommunicado while network employees were busily collecting, destroying, or locking up all scripts and records of the broadcast. Finally, the Press was let loose upon us, ravening for horror. How many deaths had we heard of? (Implying they knew of thousands.) What did we know of the fatal stampede in a Jersey hall? (Implying it was one of many.) What traffic deaths? (The ditches must be choked with corpses.) The suicides? (Haven't you heard about the one on Riverside Drive?) It is all quite vague in my memory and quite terrible.^[2]:404

Paul White, head of CBS News, was quickly summoned to the office – "and there bedlam reigned", he wrote:

The telephone switchboard, a vast sea of light, could handle only a fraction of incoming calls. The haggard Welles sat alone and despondent. "I'm through," he lamented, "washed up." I didn't bother to reply to this highly inaccurate self-appraisal. I was too busy writing explanations to put on the air, reassuring the audience that it was safe. I also answered my share of incessant telephone calls, many of them from as far away as the Pacific Coast.^[24]:47–48

Because of the crowd of newspaper reporters, photographers, and police, the cast left the CBS building by the rear entrance. Aware of the sensation the broadcast had made, but not its extent, Welles went to the Mercury Theatre where an all-night rehearsal of Danton's Death was in progress. Shortly after midnight, one of the cast, a late arrival, told Welles that news about "The War of the Worlds" was being flashed in Times Square. They immediately left the theatre, and standing on the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street, they read the lighted bulletin that circled the New York Times building: ORSON WELLES CAUSES PANIC.^{[10]:172–173}

Some listeners heard only a portion of the broadcast, and in the tension and anxiety prior to World War II, mistook it for a genuine news broadcast.^[25] Thousands of those people rushed to share the false reports with others, or called CBS, newspapers, or the police to ask if the broadcast was real. Many newspapers assumed that this large number of phone calls, and scattered reports of listeners rushing about or even fleeing their homes, proved the existence of a mass panic, though such behavior was never widespread.^{[4]:82–90, 98–103[26][27][28]}

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 WGAR's station manager for help. Oblivious to the situation, the manager advised Paar to calm down, saying it was "all a tempest in a teapot".^[29]

In a 1975 interview with radio historian Chuck Schaden, radio actor Alan Reed recalled being one of several actors recruited to answer phone calls at CBS's New York headquarters.^[30]

In Concrete, Washington, phone lines and electricity suffered a short circuit at the Superior Portland Cement Company's 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.^[31]

Welles continued with the rehearsal of Danton's Death (scheduled to open November 2), leaving shortly after dawn October 31. He was operating on three hours of sleep when CBS called him to a press conference. He read a statement later printed in newspapers nationwide, and took questions from reporters:^{[10]:173, 176}

Question: Were you aware of the terror such a broadcast would stir up?
Welles: Definitely not. The technique I used was not original with me. It was not even new. I anticipated nothing unusual.

Question: Should you have toned down the language of the drama?
Welles: No, you don't play murder in soft words.

Question: Why was the story changed to put in names of American cities and government officers?
Welles: H. G. Wells used real cities in Europe, and to make the play more acceptable to American listeners we used real cities in America. Of course, I'm terribly sorry now.^[10]:174[32]

In its editions of October 31, 1938, the Tucson Citizen reported that three Arizona affiliates of CBS—KOY in Phoenix, KTUC in Tucson and KSUN in Bisbee—had originally scheduled a delayed broadcast of "The War of the Worlds" that night; CBS had shifted The Mercury Theater on the Air from Monday nights to Sunday nights on September 11, but the three affiliates preferred to keep the series in its original Monday slot so as not to have it compete with NBC's top-rated Chase and Sanborn Hour. However, late on that Sunday night, CBS contacted KOY and KTUC owner Burridge Butler and instructed him not to air the program the following night.^[33]

Within three weeks, newspapers had published at least 12,500 articles about the broadcast and its impact,^[22]:61[34] although the story dropped off the front pages after a few days.^[3] Adolf Hitler referenced the broadcast in a speech in Munich on November 8, 1938.^[4]:161 Welles later remarked that Hitler cited the effect of the broadcast on the American public as evidence of "the corrupt condition and decadent state of affairs in democracy".^[35][36]

Causes

Later studies indicate that many missed the repeated notices about the broadcast being fictional, partly because The Mercury Theatre on the Air, an unsponsored CBS cultural program with a relatively small audience, ran at the same time as the NBC Red Network's popular Chase and Sanborn Hour featuring ventriloquist Edgar Bergen. At the time, many Americans assumed that a significant number of Chase and Sanborn listeners changed stations when the first comic sketch ended and a musical number by Nelson Eddy began, thereby tuning in "The War of the Worlds" after the opening announcements, but historian A. Brad Schwartz, after studying hundreds of letters from people who heard "The War of the Worlds", as well as contemporary audience surveys, concluded that very few people frightened by Welles's broadcast had tuned out Bergen's program. "All the hard evidence suggests that The Chase & Sanborn Hour was only a minor contributing factor to the Martian hysteria," he wrote. "...in truth, there was no mass exodus from Charlie McCarthy to Orson Welles that night."^[4]:67–69 Because the broadcast was unsponsored, Welles and company could schedule breaks at will rather than arranging them around 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 fewer than one-third of frightened listeners understood the invaders to be aliens; most thought they were listening to reports of a German invasion or a natural catastrophe.^{[4]:180, 191[28]} "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. … 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."^{[10]:164–165}

CBS News chief Paul White wrote that he was convinced that the panic induced by the broadcast was a result of the public suspense generated before the Munich Pact. "Radio listeners had had their emotions played upon for days … Thus they believed the Welles production even though it was specifically stated that the whole thing was fiction".^[24]:47

Extent

Historical research suggests the panic was far less widespread than newspapers had indicated at the time. "[T]he panic and mass hysteria so readily associated with 'The War of the Worlds' did not occur on anything approaching a nationwide dimension," American University media historian W. Joseph Campbell wrote in 2003. He quotes Robert E. Bartholomew, an authority on mass panic outbreaks, as having said that "there is a growing consensus among sociologists that the extent of the panic … was greatly exaggerated".^[28]

This position is supported by contemporary accounts. "In the first place, most people didn't hear [the show]," said Frank Stanton, later president of CBS.^[3] Of the nearly 2,000 letters mailed to Welles and the Federal Communications Commission after "The War of the Worlds," currently held by the University of Michigan and the National Archives and Records Administration, roughly 27% came from frightened listeners or people who witnessed any panic. After analyzing those letters, A. Brad Schwartz concluded that although the broadcast briefly misled a significant portion of its audience, very few of those listeners fled their homes or otherwise panicked. The total number of protest letters sent to Welles and the FCC is also low in comparison with other controversial radio broadcasts of the period, further suggesting the audience was small and the fright severely limited.^{[4]:82–93[26]}

Five thousand households were telephoned that night in a survey conducted by the C. E. Hooper company, the main radio ratings service at the time. Only 2% of the respondents said they were listening to the radio play, and no one stated they were listening to a news broadcast. About 98% of respondents said they were listening to other radio programming – The Chase and Sanborn Hour was long the most popular program in that timeslot – or not listening to the radio at all. Further shrinking the potential audience, some CBS network affiliates, including some in large markets such as Boston's WEEI, had pre-empted The Mercury Theatre on the Air in favor of local commercial programming.^[3]

Ben Gross, radio editor for the New York Daily News, wrote in his 1954 memoir that the streets were nearly deserted as he made his way to the studio for the end of the program.^[3] Producer John Houseman reported that the Mercury Theatre staff was surprised when they were finally released from the CBS studios to find life going on as usual in the streets of New York.^[2]:404 The writer of a letter the Washington Post published later likewise recalled no panicked mobs in the capital's downtown streets at the time. "The supposed panic was so tiny as to be practically immeasurable on the night of the broadcast", media historians Jefferson Pooley and Michael Socolow wrote in Slate on its 75th anniversary in 2013; "Almost nobody was fooled".^[3]

According to Campbell, the most common response said to indicate a panic was calling the local newspaper or police to confirm the story or seek additional information. This, he writes, is an indicator that people were not generally panicking or hysterical. "The call volume perhaps is best understood as an altogether rational response ..."^[28] Some New Jersey media and law enforcement agencies received up to 40% more telephone calls than normal during the broadcast.^[37]

Newspaper coverage and response

What a night. After the broadcast, as I tried to get back to the St. Regis where we were living, I was blocked by an impassioned crowd of news people looking for blood, and the disappointment when they found I wasn't hemorrhaging. It wasn't long after the initial shock that whatever public panic and outrage there was vanished. But, the newspapers for days continued to feign fury.

— Orson Welles to friend and mentor Roger Hill, February 22, 1983^[38]

As it was late on a Sunday night in the Eastern Time Zone, where the broadcast originated, few reporters and other staff were present in newsrooms. Most newspaper coverage thus took the form of Associated Press stories, which were largely anecdotal aggregates of reporting from its various bureaus, giving the impression that panic had indeed been widespread. Many newspapers led with the AP's story the next day.^[28]

On November 2, 1938, the Australian Age characterized the incident as "mass hysteria" and stated that "never in the history of the United States had such a wave of terror and panic swept the continent". Unnamed observers quoted by the Age commented that "the panic could have only happened in America."^[39]

Editorialists chastised the radio industry for allowing this to happen. This response may have reflected newspaper publishers' fears that radio, to which they had lost some of the advertising revenue that was scarce enough during the Great Depression, would render them obsolete. In "The War of the Worlds", they saw an opportunity to cast aspersions on the newer medium. "The nation as a whole continues to face the danger of incomplete, misunderstood news over a medium which has yet to prove that it is competent to perform the news job," wrote Editor & Publisher, the newspaper industry's trade journal.^[3][40]

William Randolph Hearst's papers called on broadcasters to police themselves lest the government step in, as Iowa Senator Clyde L. Herring proposed a bill that would have required all programming to be reviewed by the FCC prior to broadcast (he never actually introduced it). Others blamed the radio audience for its credulity. Noting that any intelligent listener would have realized the broadcast was fictional, the Chicago Tribune opined, "it would be more tactful to say that some members of the radio audience are a trifle retarded mentally, and that many a program is prepared for their consumption." Other newspapers took pains to note that anxious listeners had called their offices to learn whether Martians were really attacking.^[28]

Few contemporary accounts exist outside newspaper coverage of the mass panic and hysteria supposedly induced by the broadcast. Justin Levine, a producer at KFI-AM in Los Angeles, wrote in a 2000 history of the FCC's response to hoax broadcasts that "the anecdotal nature of such reporting makes it difficult to objectively assess the true extent and intensity of the panic.^[41] Bartholomew sees this as yet more evidence that the panic was predominantly a creation of the newspaper industry.^[42]

Research

In a study published in book form as The Invasion from Mars (1940), Princeton professor Hadley Cantril calculated that some six million people heard "The War of the Worlds" broadcast.^[22]:56 He estimated that 1.7 million listeners believed the broadcast was an actual news bulletin and, of those, 1.2 million people were frightened or disturbed.^[22]:58 Media historians Jefferson Pooley and Michael Socolow have since concluded, however, that Cantril's study has serious flaws. Its estimate of the program's audience is more than twice as high as any other at the time. Cantril himself conceded this, but argued that unlike Hooper, his estimate had attempted to capture the significant portion of the audience that did not have home telephones at that time. Since those respondents were contacted only after the media frenzy, Cantril allowed that their recollections could have been influenced by what they read in the newspapers. Claims that Chase and Sanborn listeners who missed the disclaimer at the beginning when they turned to CBS during a commercial break or musical performance on that show and thus mistook "The War of the Worlds" for a real broadcast inflated the show's audience and the ensuing alleged panic are impossible to substantiate.^[3]

Apart from his admittedly imperfect methods of estimating the audience and assessing the authenticity of their response, Pooley and Socolow found, Cantril made another error in typing audience reaction. Respondents had indicated a variety of reactions to the program, among them "excited", "disturbed", and "frightened". Yet he included all of them with "panicked", failing to account for the possibility that despite their reaction, they were still aware the broadcast was staged. "[T]hose who did hear it, looked at it as a prank and accepted it that way," recalled researcher Frank Stanton.^[3]

Bartholomew grants that hundreds of thousands were frightened, but calls evidence of people taking action based on their fear "scant" and "anecdotal".^[43] 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.^[28]

Later investigations found much of the alleged panicked responses to have been exaggerated or mistaken. Cantril's researchers found that, contrary to what had been claimed, no admissions for shock were made at a Newark hospital during the broadcast; hospitals in New York City similarly reported no spike in admissions that night. A few suicide attempts seem to have been prevented when friends or family intervened, but no record of a successful one exists. A Washington Post claim that a man died of a heart attack brought on by listening to the program could not be verified. One woman filed a lawsuit against CBS, but it was soon dismissed.^[3]

The FCC also received letters from the public that advised against taking reprisals.^[44] Singer Eddie Cantor urged the commission not to overreact, as "censorship would retard radio immeasurably."^[45] The FCC not only chose not to punish Welles or CBS, it also barred complaints about "The War of the Worlds" from being brought up during license renewals. "Janet Jackson's 2004 'wardrobe malfunction' remains far more significant in the history of broadcast regulation than Orson Welles' trickery," wrote media historians Jefferson Pooley and Michael Socolow.^[3]

Meeting of Welles and Wells

H. G. Wells and Orson Welles met for the first and only time in late October 1940, shortly before the second anniversary of the Mercury Theatre broadcast, when they both happened to be lecturing in San Antonio, Texas. On October 28, 1940, the two men visited the studios of KTSA radio for an interview by Charles C. Shaw,^[1]:361 who introduced them by characterizing the panic generated by "The War of the Worlds": "The country at large was frightened almost out of its wits".^[35]

Wells expressed good-natured skepticism about the actual extent of the panic caused by "this sensational Halloween spree. Are you sure there was such a panic in America or wasn't it your Halloween fun?"^[35]

Welles appreciated the comment: "I think that’s the nicest thing that a man from England could say about the men from Mars. Mr. Hitler made a good deal of sport of it, you know … It's supposed to show the corrupt condition and decadent state of affairs in democracy, that 'The War of the Worlds' went over as well as it did. I think it's very nice of Mr. Wells to say that not only I didn’t mean it, but the American people didn’t mean it."^[35]

When Shaw interjected that there was "some excitement" that he did not wish to belittle, Welles asked him, "What kind of excitement? Mr. H. G. Wells wants to know if the excitement wasn't the same kind of excitement that we extract from a practical joke in which somebody puts a sheet over his head and says 'Boo!' 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."^[35]

"That’s a very excellent description," Shaw said.^[35]

"You aren’t quite serious in America, yet," said Wells. "You haven’t got the war right under your chins. And the consequence is you can still play with ideas of terror and conflict. … It's a natural thing to do until you're right up against it."^[35]

"Until it ceases to be a game," Welles said — a phrase Wells repeated.^[35][36] Britain and France had then been at war with Nazi Germany for more than a year.

Authorship

As the Mercury's second theatre season began in 1938, Orson Welles and John Houseman were unable to write the Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcasts on their own. They hired Howard E. Koch, whose experience in having a play performed by the Federal Theatre Project in Chicago led him to leave his law practice and move to New York to become a writer. Koch was put to work at $50 a week, raised to $60 after he proved himself.^[2]:390 The Mercury Theatre on the Air was a sustaining show, so in lieu of a more substantial salary, Houseman gave Koch the rights to any script he worked on.^{[46]:175–176}

A condensed version of the script for "The War of the Worlds" appeared in the debut issue of Radio Digest magazine (February 1939), in an article on the broadcast that credited "Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre players".^[47] The complete script appeared in The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic (1940), the book publication of a Princeton University study directed by psychologist Hadley Cantril. Welles strongly protested Koch being listed as sole author since many others contributed to the script, but by the time the book was published, he had decided to end the dispute.^{[10]:176–179}

Welles did seek legal redress after the CBS TV series Studio One presented its top-rated broadcast, "The Night America Trembled", on September 9, 1957. Hosted by Edward R. Murrow, the live presentation of Nelson S. Bond's documentary play recreated the 1938 performance of "The War of the Worlds" in the CBS studio, using the script as a framework for a series of factual narratives about a cross-section of radio listeners. No member of the Mercury Theatre is named.^[48][49] The courts ruled against Welles, who was found to have abandoned any rights to the script after it was published in Cantril's book. Koch had granted CBS the right to use the script in its program.^[50]

"As it developed over the years, Koch took some cash and some credit," wrote biographer Frank Brady. "He wrote the story of how he created the adaptation, with a copy of his script being made into a paperback book enjoying large printings and an album of the broadcast selling over 500,000 copies, part of the income also going to him as copyright owner."^[10]:179

The book, The Panic Broadcast, was first published in 1970.^[51] The best-selling album was a sound recording of the broadcast titled Orson Welles' War of the Worlds, "released by arrangement with Manheim Fox Enterprises, Inc."^[52][53] The source discs for the recording are unknown.^[54] Welles told Peter Bogdanovich that it was a poor-quality recording taken off the air at the time of broadcast – "a pirated record which people have made fortunes of money and have no right to play." Welles received no compensation.^[55]

Legacy

Initially apologetic about the supposed panic his broadcast had caused (and privately fuming that newspaper reports of lawsuits were either greatly exaggerated or totally fabricated^[41]), Welles later embraced the story as part of his personal myth. "Houses were emptying, churches were filling up; from Nashville to Minneapolis there was wailing in the streets and the rending of garments," he told Peter Bogdanovich years later.^[1]:18

CBS, too, found reports ultimately useful in promoting the strength of its influence. It presented a fictionalized account of the panic in a 1957 episode of the television series Studio One, and included it prominently in its 2003 celebrations of CBS's 75th anniversary as a television broadcaster. "The legend of the panic," according to Jefferson and Socolow, "grew exponentially over the following years ... [It] persists because it so perfectly captures our unease with the media's power over our lives."^[3]

The New Jersey Township of West Windsor, where Grover's 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.^[58]

The 75th anniversary of "The War of the Worlds" was marked by an international rebroadcast with an introduction by George Takei,^[59] and an episode of the PBS documentary series American Experience.^[60][61]

Awards

On January 27, 2003, the Mercury Theatre broadcast of "The War of the Worlds" was one of the first 50 recordings made part of the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.^[62]

Notable re-airings and adaptations

Since the original Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast of "The War of the Worlds", many re-airings, remakes, re-enactments, parodies, and new dramatizations have occurred. Many American radio stations, particularly those that regularly air old-time radio programs, re-air the original program as a Halloween tradition. Some notable examples include:

• A Spanish-language version produced in February 1949 by Leonardo Paez and Eduardo Alcaraz for Radio Quito in Quito, Ecuador, reportedly set off panic in the city. Police and fire brigades rushed out of town to engage the supposed alien invasion force. After it was revealed that the broadcast was fiction, the panic transformed into a riot. Hundreds attacked Radio Quito and El Comercio, a local newspaper that had participated in the hoax by publishing false reports of unidentified objects in the skies above Ecuador in the days preceding the broadcast. The riot resulted in at least seven deaths, including those of Paez's girlfriend and nephew. Paez moved to Venezuela after the incident.^{[43][63][64][65]}
• An updated version of the radio drama aired several times between 1968 and 1975 on WKBW radio in Buffalo, New York.^[66]
• On the 50th anniversary of the radio play in 1988, National Public Radio aired a remake directed by David Ossman (who updated Howard W. Koch's original script with Koch's approval) and starring Jason Robards, Steve Allen, Hector Elizondo, Rene Auberjonois, Philip Proctor, Douglas Edwards, Scott Simon, and Terry Gross.^[67] It was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word or Nonmusical Recording.^[68]
• In 1994, L.A. Theatre Works and Santa Monica, California public radio station KCRW broadcast the original play before a live audience. Most of the cast for this production had appeared in one of more incarnation of Star Trek, including Leonard Nimoy, John de Lancie, Dwight Schultz, Wil Wheaton, Gates McFadden, Brent Spiner, Armin Shimerman, Jerry Hardin, and Tom Virtue. De Lancie directed. It was accompanied by an original sequel called "When Welles Collide" co-written by de Lancie and Nat Segaloff featuring the same cast as themselves.^[69]
• In 2002, XM Satellite Radio collaborated with conservative talk-show host Glenn Beck for a live recreation of the broadcast, using Koch's original script and airing on October 30 (64 years after the Welles broadcast). The remake aired on the Buzz XM channel, as well as on Beck's AM/FM affiliates.^[70]

On October 30, 2016, the 78th anniversary to the minute, WOGB out of Reedsville, Wisconsin aired the drama.

See also

• False document
• Jafr alien invasion
• Jovian–Plutonian gravitational effect

Notes

References

Further reading

• Bulgatz, Joseph (1992). Ponzi Schemes, Invaders from Mars & More: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. New York: Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0-517-58830-7. 
• Estrin, Mark W.; Welles, Orson (2002). Orson Welles Interviews. Jackson (Miss.): University of Mississippi. 
• Gosling, John (2009). Waging The War of the Worlds: A History of the 1938 Radio Broadcast and Resulting Panic. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-4105-4. 
• Holmsten, Brian; Lubertozzi, Alex, eds. (2001). The Complete War of the Worlds: Mars' Invasion of Earth from H.G. Wells to Orson Welles. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks MediaFusion. ISBN 1-570-71714-1. 
• Schwartz, A. Brad (2015). Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles's War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News. New York: Hill and Wang. ISBN 0-8090-3161-2. 
• The Martian Panic Sixty Years Later: What Have We Learned? from CSICOP
• The Martian Invasion at the Wayback Machine (archived July 21, 2011) describes instances of panic, outcry over the panic and the responses by the FCC and CBS
• BBC report on the 1926 Knox riot hoax

External links

• Media related to The War of the Worlds (radio drama) at Wikimedia Commons
• The Mercury Theatre Online With downloadable MP3 of the 1938 broadcast.
• Mp3 download from the Internet Archive
• War of the Worlds Invasion: The Complete War of the Worlds Website (John Gosling)
• mp3 of King Daevid MacKenzie's Echoes of a Century 2005 program which contains sections of the Chase & Sanborn and Mercury Theatre broadcasts of October 30, 1938, edited together in a manner approximating the sequence believed to have generated the reported panic
• Who's Out There? NASA film with commentary on the 1938 broadcast and extraterrestrial life (1975)