The War of the Worlds (radio drama)

The War of the Worlds

Genre	Radio show
Running time	60 minutes
Home station	CBS Radio
Starring	Orson Welles Frank Readick Kenny Delmar Ray Collins
Announcer	Dan Seymour
Writers	Howard Koch (adaptation) Anne Froelich H.G. Wells (novel)
Directors	Orson Welles
Producers	John Houseman Orson Welles
Exec. producers	Davidson Taylor (for CBS)
Narrated by	Orson Welles
Recording studio	Columbia Broadcasting Building, 485 Madison Avenue, New York
Air dates	since October 30, 1938
Opening theme	Piano Concerto No. 1, by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

The War of the Worlds was an episode of the American radio drama anthology series 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. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds.

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 program's 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 program's news-bulletin format was decried as cruelly deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast. The episode secured Welles's fame.

Background

Orson Welles in 1937 (age 21), photographed by Carl Van Vechten

H. G. Wells's original novel relates the story of an alien invasion of Earth. The radio play's story was adapted by and written primarily by Howard Koch and Anne Froelich 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 Grover's Mill, an unincorporated village in West Windsor Township, New Jersey in the United States. The program's format was a (simulated) live newscast of developing events. To this end, Welles played recordings of Herbert Morrison's radio reports of the Hindenburg disaster for actor Frank Readick and the rest of the cast, to demonstrate the mood he wanted.

The first two thirds of the 55½ minute play was a contemporary retelling of events of the novel, presented as news bulletins. This approach was not new. Ronald Knox's satirical newscast of a riot overtaking London over the British Broadcasting Company in 1926 had a similar approach (and created much the same effect on its audience). 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. But the approach had never been taken with as much continued verisimilitude, and the innovative format has been cited as a key factor in the confusion that followed.

A 2005 BBC report suggested that Welles may have been influenced by an earlier hoax broadcast by Ronald Knox on BBC Radio. Knox's 1926 broadcast mixed breathless reporting of a revolution sweeping across London with dance music and sound effects of destruction. Knox's broadcast also caused a minor panic among listeners who did not know that the program was fictional.^{[citation needed]} An 1874 hoax in the New York Herald claiming that wild animals had escaped from the Central Park Zoo seems to have had a similar effect.

Plot summary

The program, broadcast as docudrama 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 refutes 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. 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. Phillips's 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 enquire 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 Earth's 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 Roosevelt's 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 in to 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 (played by Ray Collins), 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. Isn't there anyone on the air? Isn't there anyone on the air? Isn't there.... anyone?"

After an intermission for station identification, in which announcer Dan Seymour mentions the show's fictionality, the last third is a monologue and dialogue, with Welles returning 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 Koch's working script for the play.

Public reaction

New York Times headline from October 31, 1938

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. Some claimed they could smell poison gas or see flashes of lightning in the distance.

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."

Causes

Later studies indicate that many missed the repeated notices that the broadcast was fictional, partly because the Mercury Theatre, an unsponsored cultural program with a relatively small audience, ran at the same time as the NBC Red Network's 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 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 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.

Extent

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 six million heard the CBS broadcast; 1.7 million believed it to be true, and 1.2 million were 'genuinely frightened'". NBC's 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.

Specific instances

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."

In Concrete, Washington, phone lines and electricity went out due to 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 newswire, and soon Concrete was known worldwide.

Aftermath

Monument erected October 1998 commemorating where the Martians in the story landed in Van Nest Park, Grover's Mill, NJ.

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.^{[citation needed]} 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; 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.

In 1988, during the weekend nearest the 50th anniversary of the broadcast, West Windsor Township, N.J., where Grovers Mills is located, held a "Martian festival". Designed to attract tourist revenue, this included carnival rides, hucksters' stalls, and "Martians" firing "Heat Rays".

Remakes and re-airings

Since the original Mercury Theatre broadcast, there have been many re-airings, remakes, reenactments and new dramatizations of the original.

• In February 1949, Leonardo Paez and Eduardo Alcaraz produced a Spanish-language version of Welles's 1938 script for Radio Quito in Quito, Ecuador. The broadcast 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 six deaths, including those of Paez's girlfriend and nephew. Paez moved to Venezuela after the incident.
• WKBW in Buffalo, New York, has aired several versions of its own radio dramatization, the first in 1968.
• WSWO near Dayton, Ohio, has its own dramatization.
• National Public Radio aired a remake on the 50th anniversary of the Mercury Theatre play in 1988. It starred Jason Robards, Steve Allen (who as a youth listened to the 1938 broadcast), Douglas Edwards, Scott Simon and Terry Gross. It was nominated for a Grammy Award for "Best Spoken Word or Nonmusical Recording".
• In 1994, L.A. Theatre Works and Santa Monica, California public radio station KCRW broadcast the original play before a live audience. The cast included 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.
• In 2002 a re-enactment of the radio play produced by Premiere Radio Networks and starring Glenn Beck was broadcast live from the XM Satellite Radio studios in Washington, D.C.
• Northwest Missouri State University aired a TV version of the original show for their 2006 Halloween special, supplemented by fake footage of an interview with an astronomy professor, the aliens landing outside of Maryville, Missouri, and people running through the streets in terror.
• In 2010, Hungarian university station Első Pesti Egyetemi Rádió re-created the broadcast in Hungarian, using the 1938 sound effects as if it were broadcast on a fictional Hungarian radio station in 1938.
• In 2010, Bricolage Production Company performed the radio play as part of its Midnight Radio series, changing the names of the locations to settings in and around Pittsburgh.
• Many American radio stations, particularly those that regularly air old time radio programs, re-air the original program as a Halloween tradition.

Influence

It is sometimes said the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was received with skepticism by the American public, as a consequence of the radio performance. In the 1943 film Air Force, when the attack is reported on the radio a character asks if they have Orson Welles tuned in.

The plot of the 1994 TV movie Without Warning centers around Earth being hit by three meteor fragments. The filmmakers acknowledged their debt to The War of the Worlds, and the film was first broadcast on CBS TV on the 56th anniversary of the radio broadcast. It was broadcast with a disclaimer identifying it as fictional, as the 1983 TV movie Special Bulletin had been. NBC placed disclaimers in an October 1999 TV movie dramatizing possible effects of the Y2K bug though it was unlikely to be confused with reality.

In 2005, Danish radio station P2 announced a plan to broadcast a remake of The War of the Worlds on September 3 of that year. As the broadcast was about to start, an announcer interrupted the show to report a fake story about a biological terrorist attack on Copenhagen.^{[citation needed]}

References in fiction

• Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Michael Crichton's Sphere both cite the Welles broadcast as evidence that, in the event of an actual alien arrival, it would be more prudent to anticipate mass panic on the part of humanity rather than wonder and awe.
• The 1968 novel Sideslip by Ted White and Dave Van Arnam takes place in an alternative history where aliens took advantage of the confusion following the broadcast to carry out an actual invasion.
• In the 1984 film The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, aliens arrive on Earth in Grover's Mill, and hypnotize Welles, causing him to pass the broadcast off as a drama, when it is indeed factual.
• In the 1990 film Spaced Invaders, a crew of 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.
• A 1957 Westinghouse Studio One episode, "The Night America Trembled", depicts a semi-fictionalized version of the broadcast and the audience reaction. A 1975 made-for-television film, The Night That Panicked America, offers a similar dramatization of the event.
• In the fictional history of the War of the Worlds TV series, Welles was hired by the government to orchestrate the broadcast in order to cover up a reconnaissance mission by the same aliens who would launch an all-out war 15 years later.
• In a Halloween episode of Hey Arnold!, Arnold and Gerald conduct a radio broadcast in an attempt to scare the residents of Arnold's boarding house. The broadcast is inadvertently picked up by a paranormal investigator, who mistakes it for legitimate and re-broadcasts it across the city as a real news bulletin.
• The Doctor Who audio drama Invaders from Mars is set in New York City at the time of the broadcast. Unusual events occurring in the city's underworld mirror the radio story.
• "Battle for the Planet", an Animaniacs segment starring Pinky and the Brain, features the Brain's plan to recreate the broadcast and take over the world during the panic he believes (wrongly) will ensue.
• The TaleSpin episode "War of the Weirds" centers around several characters' competing and escalating hoaxes about travel to Mars and Martian invasions.
• In an episode of The Flintstones, a radio broadcaster sparks panic in Bedrock by warning of an imminent invasion by the "Way-Outs", which is really just a music group resembling The Beatles wearing odd costumes.
• In an episode of the short-lived animated series adaptation of Dennis the Menace, Dennis and his cohorts visit a radio station studio to record a radio play for a school project. Their play is accidentally broadcast, which deprives invading Martians of the element of surprise and leads to their defeat by the townspeople.
• Touched by an Angel features parts of the original broadcast in a Halloween episode titled "The Sky is Falling", where an old man had to deal with the trauma he endured during the nationwide panic, including the death of his father due to a misfire by a paranoid citizen.
• The November 4, 2007, episode of Cold Case deals with a fictional murder that took place during the panic surrounding the original 1938 radio broadcast.
• In "Panic", a 1997 episode of HBO's Perversions of Science, alien invaders disguised as humans mistakenly believe that a War of the Worlds-style broadcast is announcing an unexpected invasion of Earth by their people.
• The Simpsons has alluded to the broadcast several times. In "Radio Bart", Homer buys Bart a microphone that can be used to broadcast on nearby radios. Bart tricks Homer into believing a Martian has eaten the President of the United States. "Treehouse of Horror XVII" features a segment titled "The Day the Earth Looked Stupid", in which a hoax broadcast inspires a brief panic in Springfield circa 1938. Aliens then destroy Springfield after no one believes they are really aliens.
• In the Futurama episode "Lrrreconcilable Ndndifferences", the (fictional) head of Welles (voiced by Maurice LaMarche) is recruited to re-perform his famous broadcast to make an alien ruler's wife believe he had actually conquered Earth.
• 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.
• EC Comics did a story in Weird Science where a TV network decides to a televise a remake of the broadcast. To avoid confusion, they publicize the event weeks ahead of time. A real invasion occurs the same night, and as the station breaks into the hoax report with a real report, no one believes it.
• In Superman #62 (January/February 1950) published by DC Comics, Welles learns of an imminent Martian invasion. Everyone except Superman dismisses Welles's radio warnings as another hoax.
• Crimson Glory's song "March to Glory", an introduction to their album Astronomica, contains clips from The War of the Worlds other 20th-century radio broadcasts. The next song on the album is entitled "War of the Worlds", and is about an alien invasion.
• Pinback's song "Boo" from the album Blue Screen Life uses sound bites from the broadcast, including the infamous "2X2L calling CQ" line, at the beginning. The sound bites correlate to the lyrics of the song, which describe a sinking submarine.

Current ownership

The estate of scriptwriter Howard Koch owns the rights to the radio broadcast.

See also

• False document
• Jafr alien invasion

Sources

• Cantril, Handley; Koch, Howard; Gaudet, Hazel; Herzog, Herta; Wells, H. G. (1982 reprint) [1940]. The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691093997. 
• Hand, Richard J. (2006). Terror on the Air!: Horror Radio in America, 1931–1952. Jefferson, North Carolina: Macfarlane & Company. ISBN 0786423676. 
• Koch, Howard (1970). The Panic Broadcast: Portrait of an Event. Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown. ISBN 0316500607. 
• Ruperto, Edward J. (2002 reprint) [1956]. The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. Garden City, New York: Doubleday. ISBN 096653123X. http://www.nicap.org/rufo/contents.htm. 

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 0517588307. 
• 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. ISBN 0786441054. 
• The Martian Panic Sixty Years Later from CSICOP
• The Martian Invasion describes instances of panic, outcry over the panic and the responses by the FCC and CBS
• Once Upon a Time, When Radio Was King... Orson Welles’ Broadcast of War of the Worlds, by Emanuel Levy
• BBC report on the 1926 Knox riot hoax

External links

• The Mercury Theatre Online With downloadable MP3 of the 1938 broadcast.
• Mp3 download from the Internet Archive
• History of the War of the Worlds broadcast
• War-of-the-worlds.org
• Site about broadcast maintained by West Windsor, New Jersey – the site of the alleged landing
• 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)
• The imagination, prognostications, and politics of H. G. Wells from worldandi.com (January 2004)
• www.worldradioday.org - website dedicated to promoting the October 30th (The War of the Worlds date) as World Radio Day by UNESCO