The War of the Worlds (radio)

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Orson Welles' famous radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' classic novel The War of the Worlds was performed by Mercury Theatre on the Air as a Halloween special on October 30, 1938. The live broadcast frightened many listeners into believing that an actual Martian invasion was in progress. Although it sometimes stated there were many disclaimers pointing out the fictionality of the invasion, there was only one disclaimer at the very start of the broadcast, and then two close together near the end, leaving ample in the middle for confusion and fright on the part of listeners.

Welles's adaptation is possibly the most successful radio dramatic production in history. It was one of the Radio Project's first studies.

Contents

[edit] Broadcast

Monument commemorating where the Martians "landed" in Van Ness Park.
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Monument commemorating where the Martians "landed" in Van Ness Park.

H. G. Wells' novel is about a Martian invasion of Earth at the end of the 19th century, as related by a narrator seeing the events unfold in England. The radioplay's story was adapted by and written primarily by Howard Koch, with input from Orson Welles and the staff of CBS's Mercury Theatre On The Air. The action was transferred to contemporary Grover's Mill, a community that has since been annexed by West Windsor Township, New Jersey, and the radio program's format was meant to simulate a live newscast of developing events. To this end, Welles even played recordings of Herbert Morrison's radio reports of the Hindenburg disaster to actor Frank Readick and the rest of the cast to demonstrate the mood he wanted.

About half of the 55-minute play was a contemporary retelling of the events of the novel, presented as a series of news bulletins in documentary style. This approach to radio drama was not exactly new. Fr. Ronald Knox's satirical "newscast" of a riot overtaking London over the British Broadcasting Company in 1926 had taken a similar approach (and created much the same effect upon its audience). Welles had himself also been influenced by the Archibald MacLeish dramas The Fall of The City and Air Raid, the former using Welles himself in the role of a live radio news reporter. But the approach had never been done before with as much continued verisimilitude[1]), and the innovative format has been cited as a key factor in the confusion that would follow.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The program, broadcast from the 20th floor at 485 Madison Avenue (in New York City), started with an introduction and a short introduction to the intentions of the aliens, and noted that the adaptation was set in 1939. The program continued as an apparently ordinary music show, only occasionally interrupted by news flashes. Initially, the news is of strange explosions sighted on Mars. The news reports grew more frequent and increasingly ominous after a "meteorite"—later revealed as a Martian rocket capsule—lands in New Jersey. A crowd gathers at the landing site, and the events are related by reporter "Carl Philips" until the Martians incinerate curious onlookers with their "Heat-Rays." (Later surveys indicate that many listeners heard only this portion of the show before contacting neighbors or family to inquire about the broadcast. Many of these people contacted others, in turn; leading to rumors and later confusion.)

More Martian ships land, and then proceed to wreak havoc throughout the United States, destroying bridges and railroads, and spraying a poison gas into the air. An unnamed Secretary of the Interior advises the nation on the growing conflict. (The "secretary" was originally intended to be a portrayal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then President, but CBS insisted this detail, among others, be changed. The "secretary" did, however, sound very much like Roosevelt as the result of directions given to actor Kenny Delmar by Welles.)

Military forces begin to attack the Martians, but are unable to fight them off. People flee or gather in churches to pray as the Martian machines head towards New York City, spraying poison gas in the air.

This section ends famously: a news reporter (played by Ray Collins) broadcasts atop the CBS building, reports the Martians invading New York City, then he too collapses from the poison gas, and a radio operator is heard desperately calling out "2X2L calling CQ ... Isn't there anyone on the air? Isn't there anyone on the air? Isn't there ... anyone?"

The last portion of the broadcast was a monologue and dialog featuring Welles, portraying "noted astronomer" Professor Richard Peirson, who had earlier commented on the strange Martian explosions. The story ends as does the novel, with the Martians falling victim to earthly germs and bacteria.

Spoilers end here.

After the play ends, Welles breaks character to remind listeners that the broadcast was only a Halloween concoction, the equivalent of dressing up in a sheet and saying "Boo" like a ghost. An urban legend claims this "disclaimer" was added to the broadcast at the insistence of CBS executives as they became aware of the panic inspired by the program; in actuality, it appears in Howard Koch's working script for the radio play as presented in his 1968 book The Panic Broadcast.

[edit] Public reaction

New York Times headline from October 31, 1938
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New York Times headline from October 31, 1938

Many people missed or ignored the opening credits of the program, and in the atmosphere of growing tension and anxiety in the days leading up to World War II, took it to be a news broadcast. Contemporary newspapers reported that panic ensued, with people fleeing the area, and others thinking they could smell the poison gas or could see the flashes of the lighting in the distance.

The author Richard J. Hand cites studies by unnamed historians who "calculate[d] that some six million heard the Columbia Broadcasting System broadcast; 1.7 million believed it to be true, and 1.2 million were 'genuinely frightened'". (Hand, 7) While Welles and company were heard by a comparatively small audience (Bergen's audience was an estimated 30 million), the uproar that followed was anything but minute: within a month, there were about 12,500 newspaper articles about the broadcast or its impact (Hand, 7), while Adolf Hitler cited the panic, as Hand writes, as "evidence of the decadence and corrupt condition of democracy." (Hand, 7)

Later studies suggested this "panic" was far less widespread than newspaper accounts suggested. However, it remains clear that many people were caught up, to one degree or another, in the confusion that followed.

Later studies also indicated that many listeners missed the repeated notices that the broadcast was entirely fictional, partly because the Mercury Theatre (an unsponsored "cultural" program with a relatively small audience) ran opposite the popular Chase & Sanborn Hour over the Red Network of NBC, hosted by Don Ameche and featuring comic ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and singer Nelson Eddy, at the time three of the most popular figures in broadcasting. About 15 minutes into the Chase & Sanborn program the first comic sketch ended and a musical number began, and many listeners presumably began tuning around the dial at that point. According to the American Experience program "The Battle over Citizen Kane", Welles knew the schedule of the Chase & Sanborn show, and scheduled the first report from Grover's Mill at the 12 minute mark to heighten the audience's confusion. As a result, some listeners happened upon the CBS broadcast at the exact point the Martians emerge from their spacecraft.

Many of these listeners were apparently confused. In fairness, it must be noted that the confusion cannot be credited entirely to naïvety. Though many of the actors' voices should have been recognisable from appearances on other radio shows, nothing like the War of the Worlds broadcast had ever been attempted in the United States, so listeners were accustomed to accepting newsflashes as reliable.

While there were repeated statements concerning the fictional nature of the program, no such statement was broadcast between the 12 minute and 40 minute marks. In fact, the warning at the 40 minute mark is the only one that occurs after the actors start speaking in character, and before Welles breaks character at the end.

In some northeastern cities people went outside to ask neighbors what was happening (many homes still did not have telephones at this time). As the story was repeated by word of mouth, rumors began to spread, and these rumors caused some panic.

Contemporary accounts spawned urban legends, many of which persist and have come to be accepted through repetition as fact: Several people reportedly rushed to the "scene" of the events in New Jersey to see if they could catch a glimpse of the unfolding events, including a few astronomers from Princeton University who went looking for the "meteorite" that had supposedly fallen near their school. Some people, who had brought firearms, reportedly mistook a farmer's water tower for an alien spaceship and shot at it.

Initially Grover's Mill was deserted, but later crowds developed as people rushed to the area. Eventually police were sent to the area to help control the crowds. To people arriving later in the evening, the scene really did look like the events being narrated on the radio broadcast, with panicked crowds and flashing police lights streaming across the masses.

Some people called CBS, newspapers or the police in confusion over the realism of the simulated news bulletins. There were instances of panic scattered throughout the US as a result of the broadcast, especially in New York and New Jersey.

Edgar Bergen and Don Ameche, who were continuing their Chase & Sanborn Hour broadcast at the same time on NBC, are often credited with "saving the world". It is said that many startled listeners were reassured by hearing their familiar tones on a neighboring channel.

[edit] Aftermath

In the aftermath of the reported panic, a public outcry arose, but CBS informed officials that listeners were reminded throughout the broadcast that it was only a performance. Welles and the Mercury Theatre escaped punishment, but not censure, and CBS had to promise never again to use the "we interrupt this programme" device for dramatic purposes.

A study by the Radio Project discovered that most of the people who panicked presumed that Germans — not Martians — had invaded. Other studies have suggested that the extent of the panic was exaggerated by contemporary media.

When a meeting between H. G. Wells and Orson Welles was broadcast on Radio KTSA San Antonio on October 28, 1940, Wells expressed a lack of understanding of the apparent panic and suggested that it was, perhaps, only pretence, like the American version of Halloween, for fun. The two men and their radio interviewer joked about the matter, though clearly with some embarrassment. KTSA, as a CBS affiliate, had carried the original broadcast.

Both the War of the Worlds broadcast and the panic it created have become textbook examples of mass hysteria and the delusions of crowds.

[edit] Conspiracy theory

It has been suggested in recent years that the War of the Worlds broadcast was actually a psychological warfare experiment. In the 1999 documentary, Masters of the Universe: The Secret Birth of the Federal Reserve, writer Daniel Hopsicker claims that the Rockefeller Foundation actually funded the broadcast, studied the ensuing panic, and compiled a report that was only available to a chosen few. A variation of this conspiracy theory has the Princeton Radio Project and the Rockefeller Foundation as co-conspirators. [2]. This seems at odds with the fact that the Mercury Theatre's broadcasts over CBS before December 1938 did not contain any sponsorship announcements, and the competing Chase & Sanborn Hour on NBC originated from studios in Manhattan's Rockefeller Center complex.

There has been continued speculation that the panic generated by the War of the Worlds broadcast inspired officials to cover up unidentified flying object evidence, to avoid a similar panic. Indeed, U.S. Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt wrote in 1956, "The [U.S. government's] UFO files are full of references to the near mass panic of October 30, 1938, when Orson Welles presented his now famous The War of the Worlds broadcast."

Ironically, in a theatrical trailer for his film F For Fake, Welles joked about such theories, jesting that the broadcast indeed "had secret sponsors."

[edit] Popularity

Beginning in 2006, Three Eagles Comunications station, Star 106, KLSS (106.1 FM), will broadcast the radio program on Halloween in Northern Iowa and Southern Minnesota beginning at 6 p.m. central time.

The Los Angeles CBS affiliate radio station, KNX (1070 AM), re-broadcasts the radio program every year on Halloween and in 2006 the Florida, NY based independent radio station WTBQ (1110 AM) is planning a broadcast on Halloween using a slightly modified script and with local actors.

On September 9, 1957, CBS' prestigious life-television program, Studio One, opened its tenth season with Nelson Bond's The Night America Trembled, the first dramatization of the public panic to the radio adaptation of Wells' novel. The hour-long production was narrated by Edward R. Murrow and featured such future stars as Ed Asner, James Coburn, Warren Oates, and Warren Beatty.

A 1975 television film for ABC, Howard Koch and Nicholas Meyer's The Night That Panicked America, also dramatizes the public's panicked reaction to the broadcast, but comes across as a fairly standard disaster movie (albeit one in which the disaster is assumed rather than actual). The production included Vic Morrow, Meredith Baxter, Michael Constantine, John Ritter, Will Geer and Tom Bosley.

The script was also updated and broadcast by PBS on the 50th anniversary of the original radio play in 1988. It starred Jason Robards, Steve Allen, Douglas Edwards, Scott Simon and Terry Gross and was nominated for a Grammy Award.

In 1994 the L.A. Theater Works' The Play's the Thing and KPCC rebroadcast the original radio play before a live audience, featuring actors from the various Star Trek television shows, including: Leonard Nimoy, Wil Wheaton, Gates McFadden, Brent Spiner, and Armin Shimerman. John de Lancie served as the director.

Recordings of the broadcast are still available (see old-time radio).

On October 31, 2002, radio show host Glenn Beck did a live version as well in honor of the drama on Halloween.

XM Satellite Radio has broadcast a new version called Not From Space in recent years in which Microsoft's Bill Gates is one of the Martians.

[edit] Influence

It is sometimes said that the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was first received in skepticism by the American public, as a consequence of the radio performance.

Amazingly enough, the drama has been rewritten to apply to other locations and rebroadcast, with similar results:

  • A 1944 broadcast in Santiago, Chile caused panic, including mobilization of troops by the governor.
  • A February 12, 1949 broadcast in Quito, Ecuador panicked tens of thousands [3]. Some listeners, enraged at the deception, set fire to the radio station and the offices of El Comercio, the capital's leading newspaper, killing twenty people. The property damage was estimated at $350,000. Three officials charged with responsibility for the broadcast were arrested.

Because of the panic in the 1930s and 1940s associated with this radio play, U.S. TV networks have deemed it necessary to post bulletins to their viewing audience to inform them some TV stories were in fact fictional drama, and not really happening. Disclaimers of this sort were shown during broadcasts of the 1983 television movie Special Bulletin and again during the 1994 telefilm, Without Warning, both of which were dramas disguised as realistic news broadcasts (Without Warning, presenting an alien attack on Earth, acknowledged that it was a tribute to War of the Worlds and was broadcast on CBS TV on the 56th anniversary of the radio broadcast). NBC placed disclaimers in an October 1999 TV movie dramatizing the possible disastrous effects of the Y2K bug even though it was obviously drama and was unlikely to be confused with reality.

[edit] Possible influence on Welles

A 2005 BBC report suggested that Welles' idea and style may have been influenced by an earlier 1926 hoax broadcast by Ronald Knox on BBC radio. Knox's broadcast also mixes breathless reporting of a revolution sweeping across London with dance music and sound effects of destruction. Moreover, Knox's broadcast also caused a minor panic among listeners who did not know that the program was fictional.

A somewhat similar hoax from 1874 used wild animals rather than aliens claiming that they were escaping from New York Central Park Zoo and this also seems to have generated some public panic.[4]

[edit] References in fiction

Michael Crichton's Sphere cites the Orson Welles broadcast as an example of why, in the event of an actual alien arrival, it would be more prudent to anticipate mass panic on the part of humanity than wonder and awe. There has been similar speculation for decades in ufology: that the War of the Worlds broadcast is the reason evidence supporting the reality of unidentified flying objects has been suppressed.

The 1968 novel Sideslip by Ted White and Dave Van Arnam takes place in an alternative history where aliens (quite different from Wells' and Welles' Martians) took advantage of the confusion following the broadcast to carry out an actual invasion, and ruled Earth for three decades (until overthrown thanks to the intervention of an intrepid private eye from our own reality).

In the 1984 movie The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, the plot hinges around an alien race of Red Lectroids whose arrival on earth in Grover's Mill, New Jersey instigates Orson Welles' The War of the Worlds radio broadcast, with the aliens hypnotizing Welles and causing him to pass the broadcast off as a drama, when it was indeed factual. Their later cover is that of employees of a fictional defense contracting company called Yoyodyne.

The War of the Worlds TV series also incorporated a similar premise. In an episode taking place in Grover's Mill during the 50th anniversary of the broadcast, it is revealed that Orson Welles was hired by the government to orchestrate the broadcast in order to cover up what was a reconnaissance mission by the same aliens who would launch an all-out war 15 years later.

In the 1990 film Spaced Invaders, a crew of rather dimwitted Martians intercepts radio signals from a rebroadcast of the performance and believes the entire Martian invasion fleet is moving in, leading them to land on Earth and get stranded, setting up the plot of the film.

The episode is briefly referred to in the film Radio Days by Woody Allen.

The X-Files episode "War of the Coprophages" parodied the 1938 panic as a small town called "Miller's Grove" (a reference to the Welles program's "Grover's Mill") is seized by fear of an invading horde of tiny robot cockroaches.

In a Halloween episode of Hey Arnold, Arnold and Gerald conduct their own radio broadcast in an attempt to scare townspeople much like Orson Welles did. [5]

A Doctor Who audio drama entitled Invaders from Mars is set in New York City at the time of the broadcast, with unusual events occurring in the city's underworld, which mirror the radio story.

The 1992 BBC TV Halloween special Ghostwatch was similar in its shocking displays of a haunted house in North London.

A similar realistic-looking "hoax" was a 1977 British science fiction movie entitled Alternative 3 which was presented as a science documentary, though the credits showed a production date of April Fool's Day. To this day, there are many who contend the events documented in Alternative 3 were at least partly factual.

An Animaniacs segment starring Pinky and the Brain, "Battle for the Planet", featured a plan to recreate the broadcast in hopes of actually taking over the world during the panic. However, the Brain fails to realize that the public has grown more sophisticated in viewing such material, especially considering the amateurish effort the pair attempt, and no one takes it seriously (The character of The Brain is based on Orson Welles himself)

An Adventures in Odyssey episode, "Terror From the Skies", is based on and makes many references to The War of the Worlds. Like Orson Welles' broadcast, it features a dramatized radio broadcast that tells about an alien invasion of Earth.

In an episode of The Flintstones, there was a publicity stunt in the form of a Halloween radio broadcast about a coming invasion of the Way-Outs, which was really just a Beatles-like music group wearing odd costumes. Much of Bedrock was scared, but the fear was exacerbated by Fred trying to get to the Water Buffalo Lodge in his secret spaceman costume. Eventually, the broadcaster is forced by the police to explain his previous announcements were fictitious.

In the video game Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, supporting character Para-Medic from Snake's radio frequency gives an amusing retelling of her parents' panic during the radio play.

The War of the Worlds Murder[6] by Max Allan Collins was published by Berkley in 2005, blending fact and fiction for an exciting tale where Orson Welles is accused of murder and teams with The Shadow writer Walter Gibson to clear his name.

The Doomsday Conspiracy by Sidney Sheldon makes a mention of this event, using it as a way for one of the U.S. Generals to justify withholding information from the public to prevent a mass panic.

In the episode Madeline and the Spider Lady of the The New Adventures of Madeline animated series, the girls played around in an 'unused' radio studio and acted out a phony news broadcast concerning giant polka-dotted ants who were attacking New York, and got broadcast when a technician at the station accidentally hits a lever and switched the broadcast from the Spider Lady drama to the girls' phony news report. What follows is mass hysteria similar to those reported as the outcome of the Orson Welles War of the Worlds radio drama broadcast.

A similar plot was used in the short lived animated series adoption of the American Dennis the Manace comic strip, in which Dennis and his cohorts visit a radio station studio to record a radio play for a school project. Unfortunately, in this version, Martians did really try to invade earth, but the plans were foiled by the coincidence of Dennis' play accidentally leaking out to the public after Ruff accidentally flips a lever and causes the recording to be broadcast.

In the episode of The Simpsons titled Radio Bart, Homer buys Bart a microphone that can be used to broadcast on nearby radios. One of the pranks Bart pulls is to pretend he is the leader of a Martian invasion of Earth and eaten the United States president, which Homer subsequently believes.

Another episode of the Simpsons Halloween Special XVII airing on Sunday, November 5th, 2006 entitled The Day the Earth Looked Stupid adapts the storyline of Orson Welles' famous broadcast and has it take place in Springfield circa 1938. The episode has people act like animals instead of acting suicidal. Orson Welles was voiced by Maurice LaMarche, The same voice as "The Brain".

[edit] See also

[edit] Sources

  • Richard J. Hand, Terror on the Air!: Horror Radio in America, 1931-1952; Macfarlane & Company, Inc, 2006; ISBN 0-7864-2367-6
  • Edward J. Ruppelt, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, 1956, available online: [7]

[edit] External links

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