Seventy eight years after radio listeners heard of a Martian attack on Grover’s Mill, New Jersey, author and The War of the Worlds expert A. Brad Schwartz will visit the Garden State to talk about Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre infamous broadcast.
Schwartz, who co-wrote a 2013 episode of PBS’ American Experience on the broadcast, is the author of Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News.
“I can’t wait to share the story of War of the Worlds so close to the site of the most famous invasion that never happened,” Schwartz said. “As this bizarre election blurs the line between journalism and entertainment, between fact and fiction, Welles’s original fake news broadcast is more relevant than ever before.”
The CBS broadcast took place on Oct. 30, 1938.
Schwartz’s upcoming visit to New Jersey will take him to:
- October 4 at 7 p.m. – Chester Library – 250 W Main St, Chester, NJ 07930
- October 5 at 7 p.m. – Bridgewater Library – 1 Vogt Drive, Bridgewater, NJ 08807
- October 6 at 7 p.m. – Hillsborough Library – 379 South Branch Road, Hillsborough, NJ 08844
In addition to his New Jersey appearances, Schwartz has two Midwest
- October 20, 7:30 p.m. – South Haven Speakers Series – Lake Michigan College, South Haven Campus at 125 Veterans Blvd.,South Haven, MI 49090
- October 22, 1:30 p.m. – Barrington Writers Workshop – The Garlands at 1000 Garland Lane,Barrington, IL 60010
The radio show was based on H.G. Wells sci-f classic novel. (The150th anniversary of the British author’s birth was marked on September 21).
The publicity surrounding the broadcast added further fuel to Welles’ meteoric rise on stage and radio and drew the interest of Hollywood producers.
The making of the broadcast and the controversy surrounding it is examine in Schwartz’s book, which has been hailed for its exhaustive research.
“Drawing on both ratings and hundreds of archived original letters from listeners (both pro and con) addressed to the FCC and CBS, Schwartz easily dismantles the idea that Welles alarmed the nation, as most people were tuned to another station,” Kirkus wrote. “Among actual listeners, many knew the program was fiction, either because they heard it announced as such at the beginning or because they saw through it—and loved it. Relatively few people lost their grips on reality, but the press saw them as the majority and never bothered to check if they actually were… An entertaining assessment of a watershed moment in American life and its lasting effect on popular culture.”
Publishers Weekly wrote that Schwartz “lays out a balanced case — recognizing that some Americans did consider War of the Worlds an actual news report and were deeply frightened by it, but that most treated it as a scary prank or a betrayal of the radio’s supposed objectivity. The book rightly emphasizes the enormous power mass media wields over the emotions and politics of the country… Welles’s Martian landing might not have fooled today’s listeners, but our vulnerability and our appetite for fake news persists. Schwartz’s book is an impeccable account of the most famous radio show in history, a fascinating biography of Orson Welles, and a vital lesson about the responsibility of the media.”
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