War of the Worlds

[colwood]

For some time now, I've had a 5 CD set of Welles' OTR shows. I've meant to listen to them, but aside from an occasional scan through some of the shows, I haven't had a chance to actually listen to a complete show, at least not one of the Mercury or Campbell shows.

So I figured what better time to listen to one than tonight at 8:00pm, the 65th anniversary of the Mercury's War of the Worlds broadcast. I was planning to go down to the city (NYC) to see a radio play of the broadcast, but figured what better way to celebrate the anniversary than to hear the original broadcast.

I don't need to explain it to anybody here, most of you probably have heard it, and there are few people in general that don't know about it. But I have to say, to this cynic, this show, done 65 years ago, was riveting. Yes, I knew the end. Yes I knew the plot. Yes I've heard the legends. But the actual news "broadcasts" still seemed to have an air of legitamacy in the way they were acted. I'm not saying that if I had been alive at the time I would have been hiding in a closet with a gun. But I probably would have been changing stations to see if anybody else was picking up on this "news."

Overall I thought the show was great.

[Glenn Anders]

Yes, Colwood, it is quite a show. Like Welles' Mercury Theater on the Air "Dracula," "The Pickwick Papers," "The Affairs of Anatole," and a few of the Campbell Playhouse pieces like "Rebecca" or "Jane Eyre," there are things in "The War of the Worlds" that were never bettered in dramatic Radio. The CBS Escape series produced their equal; directed in its first couple of years by William N. Robson, who figured in the early days of the CBS Workshop and Suspense. [He must have had some influence on Welles or vice verse, but, unlike Norman Corwin, Robson is almost entirelly forgotten.]

I especially admire Welles' opening, closing and winking afterword for "The War of the World." And there is something truly apocalyptic about Ray Collins describing the Martian advance on the East Coast, going to dead air but for the cries of tug boats, and then the plaintive ham radio operator giving his call sign, asking "Is there anyone there? Is there anyone --"

The show couldn't be done today because we have media coming out of our ears, but in 1938, with only three, maybe four networks, and Radio becoming a major source of news, it was indeed a grabber.

It just took a few people who believed it to embellish the story to a couple of friends next door or by phone to relatives, and away the country went.

On second thought, something comparable might be done in talk radio if a Cabal of callers descended on "open lines" at the same time with some incredible piece of imagination. A few of the talk jocks live in mean-minded fantasy, as it is.

"It's just come across the Internet. A band of ex-Arkansas State Troopers under Bill Clinton and Jesse Jackson have seized the White House! Everybody is calling your competition about it! Ar-r-gh!"

Glad you were able to take in "The War of the Worlds" for the first time on such an auspicious night.

Glenn

[François Thomas]

Thank you, Larry, for the promise of further readings on The War of the Worlds on wellesnet at the time of the show's 70th anniversary!

Regarding the beginning of the radio play you reproduced on the main page, I would like to point out that the very first sentence is not the one that was originally written and broadcast. What one finds in most books now is:

ANNOUNCER: The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air in a radio play by Howard Koch suggested by the H.G. Wells novel The War of the Worlds.

Actually, the original script and the show begin thus:

ANNOUNCER: The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air in The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

When the script was published in The New York Sun on October 31, 1938 (the day after the airing), in Hadley Cantril's book about the show in 1940 and on some other early occasions, it contained the correct introducing line. Frank Brady's biography of Welles offers a wonderful account of the battle over credits that Welles and Koch fought at the time of Cantril's book.

When an abridged version of the script appeared in Invasion from Mars: Interplanetary Stories Selected by Orson Welles in 1949, the introducing line was missing.

Then, Howard Koch (who held the copyright) rewrote it when he published the script again in his book The Panic Broadcast in 1970. His self-serving version found its way in most (though not all) later publications. A clever trick, I would say . . .

[purplepines]

The recent article in the following link is entitled "The Hyped Panic of War of the Worlds" - I would be interested to know what you good people think of it:

http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=fwn6zpjwm6trlsgy8kjcr6lxrhxffm1w

[ToddBaesen]

Francois:

Thanks for the reminder of that change. Howard Koch also changed something else in his published script, making the year 1938, when the broadcast gives it as 1939. This may seem minor, but Welles pointed it out the next day at his press conference in his defense. By setting the play one year in the future, it clearly can't be a current event. Listening to the recording today, after so many years we don't notice that slight change (more Wellesian sleigh of hand), but in 1938, it would have certainly stood out more, just as today, we'd notice a show that was announced as taking place in 2009 rather than in 2008.

Of course, the year didn't really matter if people tuned in later and became convinced the world was being attacked by invaders from Mars. But I think the piece by Michael Socolow is probably accurate in saying the "mass" hysteria was really not as massive as the media reports of the time indicated. Obviously many people were quite alarmed, but the numbers were probably greatly exaggerated. The point is, even if it was only 5,000 or as few as 500 people who ran out of their houses and believed the radio reports were real, it was still a big news story because of the crazy things people did, even if they were only a few hundred.

[François Thomas]

Todd,

Thanks for reminding us about that other discrepancy. I always wondered about its meaning.

In the show, you hear "In the thirty-ninth year of the twentieth century came the great disillusionment", while Howard Koch's The Panic Broadcast changes that to "In the thirty-eighth year of the twentieth century."

As you know, opinions vary as to whether the 21st century began on January 1, 2000 (which is when the celebrations took place) or on January 1, 2001. In the first case, 1938 actually was the 39th year of the 20th century. In the second case, as you say, the drama is set in the future.

I don't have the press conference at hand, so I can't check if it completely favors the second interpretation.

Something else:

I don't remember Wellesnetters mentioned the release of The Night America Trembled (1957) on DVD, in various American and European editions. That live TV drama from the "Studio One" programme on CBS recreates the making of The War of the Worlds, although without mentioning the names of the persons involved. The host of "The Mercury Theatre on the Air" and its director are even supposed to be different persons. Neither Houseman nor Koch are alluded to. The programme is hosted by Edward R. Murrow, and James Coburn, Warren Beatty, Warren Oates, and Ed Asner play small roles. It seems to me to be a fair recreation of the atmosphere of live radio drama as well a a good sample of the golden age of live TV drama.

A short review is to be found here:

http://www.war-ofthe-worlds.co.uk/night ... embled.htm

[RayKelly]

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing radio legend Norman Corwin, 98, about his thoughts on “The War of the Worlds” broadcast.
He was charming, engaging and shared a great many stories with me about the decade he worked at The Springfield, MA Republican (my employer). He left the newspaper business during the Depression and made a name for himself in radio.
Corwin had many warm memories of Welles, who said he never “played the star” in any of their radio dealings in the 1940s. He spoke about Welles’ enormous talent and how much he missed him as a friend and colleague. I did not use all of his comments about the panic broadcast for my article. Here are his complete remarks regarding “The War of the Worlds”:

Orson Welles’s “War of the Worlds first demonstrated the up-to-then unrealized ubiquity of radio and its power to affect people – in this care to scare them out of their wits and, in many cases, their homes. The fact that this effect was unintended and accidental only increased the surprise, shock, and dismay that it engendered.

The drama, based on a fantasy by the British writer H.G. Welles, recounted an imaginary attack by armed Martians on the thickly populated states of New York and New Jersey. I, then as a director of radio for CBS, was in a studio exactly above the studio Welles occupied. I was rehearsing a documentary program and was completely unaware that Orson had emptied the living rooms of America.

The next morning, I called a friend of mine who had worked in master control the night before and asked him what time the last call came in. He answered after 1 in the morning. The caller, he said, was a man who sounded like a truck driver from New Jersey. “Lissen, mister, are you the guys who broadcast that Mars program?” My friend admitted we were, and the caller went on, “Lissen here, man, my wife hoid that program and she got so scared she flung open a door and fell down a whole flight of stairs. Jeez, it was a wunnful program.”

Some weeks later came a report from a Central American country that a Spanish language rebroadcast of the Mars script so upset a community that angry listeners attacked the radio station…”

[Alan Brody]

The idea that the WOTW panic was hyped would seem to dovetail with the HG Wells/Orson Welles radio interview two years after the panic, where Wells and Welles both appear to agree that, not only Welles didn't mean it, but the American people didn't mean it as well.

As HG Wells puts it on that program, the attitude in England toward the event was "Have you never heard of Holloween in America when everyone pretends to see ghosts?"

[RayKelly]

... but the numbers were probably greatly exaggerated. The point is, even if it was only 5,000 or as few as 500 people who ran out of their houses and believed the radio reports were real, it was still a big news story because of the crazy things people did, even if they were only a few hundred.

While doing research I saw numbers that seemed ridiculously high (1 million!!!), however, I think it was much more than a few hundred or thousand. If you pull out microfilm of local newspapers from Oct. 31, 1938 (no Associated Press reports), you see a hundred here, a few hundred there, another few hundred somewhere else

In the mid size Massachusetts city I live in, the next morning's paper reported a few hundred calls to the police and newspaper switchboards. It also reported an off-duty polcie officer trying to calm down a panicked crowd at a late night store, as well as an ambulance call to a woman who collapsed. Based on deadlines of that period, that's what they pulled together in a few hours.
There were similar stories from newspapers in Rhode Island and Connecticut. I can only guess it was much worse in the New York/ New Jersey area.

[Glenn Anders]

Well said, Ray.

Glenn

[Glenn Anders]

Well said, Ray.

You might also consider that, because of the Time Zones, the program was received in different ways across the Country. The broadcast was also carried on a couple of smaller regional networks, and on the Canadian Broadcast Company. And so, people were hearing different bits of this pioneer docu-drama at various times.

The accounts and descriptions are pretty clear and detailed that, no matter how the script later was re-edited, Howard Koch wrote the first draft of "The War of the Worlds" adaptation, but after that there were many revisions, many of them by Welles, right up to Air Time. As it finally stood, a number of the participants reported having grumbled about the script, along lines that the dramaturgy was more mediocre than usually had been the case thus far in the series, and that people just would not sit still for it.

[Turned out that people didn't "sit still for it." In fact, a lot of them ran from their homes, screaming.]

But we should all be able to agree that Welles' "The War of the Worlds" was a brilliant success for its time, and a huge story on the national scene. He may be remembered best in the popular mind for this program since it is invoked generation after generation as an example of how governments or the media can manipulate the public in what, during the last eight years, has become known as "The Politics of Fear."

Thank you, Ray, for all these contributions. I was going to do a piece about the event, but you and Larry have made most of my points.

We'll see.

Glenn

[ToddBaesen]

Last night I was reading a book about UFO's and was struck by how so many of the sightings they reported in the 50's and 60's occurred in South America, specifically in Brazil, and the area around Rio. There were also many sightings in other South American countries. Likewise, the majority of the sightings in the U.S. during that same period seem to have been centered in the west and southwest, especially in New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada.

Now, I have just read another report that claims a "Rockefeller grant" may have been responsible for Welles "testing" The War of the Worlds on the radio, to see what the public response would be towards an alien invasion!

Obviously, all of this is total conjecture, if not outright fabrication, but I still find it interesting that both Welles and Houseman agreed that The War of the Worlds was not their original first choice for a radio show that particular week, but was actually a last minute change. Originally, they were going to adapt another novel (Lorna Doone). If that is true, it gives some credence to these reports.

Where it gets truly bizarre, is if we accept that a Rockefeller grant got Welles to change his radio show program back in October of 1938, then it becomes clear why Rockefeller would also come to Welles in late 1941, after the bombing of Pearl harbor and ask him to go to Brazil.

If any or even part of this is true, the story of Orson Welles career takes on quite "another dimension." For instance, if Rockefeller was working within the highest ranks of the United States government in 1941, when he asked Welles to go to Brazil, what was his position in 1938 when presumably, he or his foundation may have asked Welles to stage an alien invasion on the radio to see what the public reaction might be.

Could that be why there were so many UFO sightings reported in Brazil and other South American countries in the fifties and sixties?

[Night Listener]

One small correction to Glenn Anders' post above which stated, "You might also consider that, because of the Time Zones, the program was received in different ways across the Country." If this is intended to mean that the program was heard by audiences at different times that Sunday night, this is incorrect.

The Mercury Theater was broadcast across the country simultaneously in all time zones. See the newspaper listings at http://www.jjonz.us/RadioLogs/ according to which The War of the Worlds was heard at 8pm in the east, 7pm in the midwest, and 5pm in the west. The only way to broadcast a program at the same nominal time in New York and Los Angeles in those days was to reassemble the cast and crew and actually re-perform the script again 3 hours after the live east coast performance. This was by no means unusual, but none of the networks did it for their Sunday night programming. Recordings ("electrical transcriptions") were rarely used in those days, and in fact most networks had policies prohibiting their use except in the most unusual circumstances, like the tragedy of the Hindenberg in May 1937. World War II effectively ended the bias against playing recordings on the air, but it was still very much observed in October 1938.

Across the country, the hour belonged to NBC Red, whose Sunday night ratings giant was The Chase & Sanborn Hour with Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy. Anything scheduled against that audience favorite was considered a throw-away. Over at the Mutual network was a musical program with the WOR Symphony under Alfred Wallenstein--with the exception of its Colonial Network affiliates in New England that aired a paid broadcast by Father Coughlin instead. NBC Blue also had a musical program from San Francisco with Ernest Gill and his Orchestra. Not even all CBS affiliates carried the Mercury show, such as the Boston station which broadcast a local public affairs program instead.

There were some people on the west coast who claimed to enjoy the reactions of listeners there because they knew, from relatives in other parts of the country who had already heard the program in other time zones, that the show was a hoax. Stan Freberg in his autobiography "It Only Hurts When I Laugh" talks about sitting in a diner in Los Angeles smirking at the other customers who were taking the show seriously. The 62-year-old Freberg writing in 1988 might well remember what he wished had happened 50 years earlier when he was a 12-year-old boy in Los Angeles, but he was demonstrably mistaken.

[Alan Brody]

Freberg's phony anecdote is a good example of how there was probably alot of exaggeration and outright lies concerning how much panic really took place that night. There's no doubt that many people did indeed panic in isolated incidents, but my guess is that the idea of nationwide 'panic' took on a life it's own after the fact, aided by newspapers looking for a great story and looking for an excuse to bash the new upstart medium of radio. Could the panic even be considered an example of Hearstian 'yellow journalism'?

Glenn's account seems more honest then most: even knowing the show was just a show, parts of it are still compellingly creepy because of Welles and the Mercury's uncanny ability to mimic real media styles, as they would later show with the newsreel scene at the beginning of Citizen Kane.

[Glenn Anders]

Night Listner: One cannot argue with facts. They have a way of correcting memory.

I suppose what I mean, in my own memory of the experience that Sunday evening in 1938, is there was a feeling New York City, or Grover Mills, New Jersey, was an immense distance away from Geneva, Ohio. Coast to Coast broadcasting, though in the shiny polish of time, appears to have been well established, in actuality, was often a hit or miss experience. Not all stations in a "network" carried the same programs; substitutions were made; local programing preempted the networks for local events. Some stations stubbornly took one part of a network feed but not others.

That fact is recognized in the Mercury Theater script for "The War of the Worlds" by the casual way interludes of music and news bulletins interrupted the schedule. These were common occurences, people expected them, and families around their radios (who tended to obsessively face the speaker, as early TV audiences scrutinized the tube) waited patiently, not knowing if the interruption was a simple "technical difficulty," a failure of someone/some scheduled program to start on time, or an important announcement. It created a sense of expectancy which is hard to explain now.

In that sense, a seven year-old boy like myself, and many an adult, felt confusion, immediacy, and the belief that something going on a hundred miles away might as well be taking place on the other side of the world. I'm sure that, in October 1938, I had no real understanding of Time Zones, but events appeared to take place both at once and at a different time.

That speaks to the skepticism Todd Baesen shows in his post about whether or not people on one end of the country could actually have thought the the other end was being invaded by Martians.

I want to thank you for the link to the newspaper logs, Night Listener. One thing is clear, the fledgeling Networks certainly provided listeners with a much higher standard of quality programing than does Radio today.

We have tended to become cynics looking for the lowest common denominator, and NBC, CBS and ABC are certainly making a pretty buck on our avid seeking of cultural and intellectual decline!

Glenn