Given that the character of Professor Richard Pierson of the Observatory at Princeton played a key role in The War of the Worlds broadcast, it seems fitting that the Princeton Public Library host a celebration of the 80th anniversary of the infamous radio broadcast.
Hannah Schmidl of the Princeton Public Library and A. Brad Schwartz, author of Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News and a Princeton University doctoral student, have organized a month-long series of events.
War of the Worlds is the latest in series of history-centered exhibits at Princeton, Schmidl said. The library has organized such program series as the Vietnam War, Princeton and slavery and the history of science.
The five programs celebrate various aspects of the October 30, 1938 broadcast by Welles and his Mercury Theatre On the Air on the Columbia Broadcasting System.
“Back when I first began researching War of the Worlds as an undergraduate seven years ago, the phrase ‘fake news’ had a totally different meaning from the common one today – more satire instead of deliberate hoaxes or propaganda. But current events have definitely caught up with everything Welles’ broadcast warned us about. The program itself, which so brilliantly and frighteningly copied the breaking-news format still in use today, will always serve as a powerful reminder of how the conventions of journalism can be used to craft a very convincing lie,”Schwartz said.”But I think it’s even more important to understand how the news media in 1938 exaggerated the hysteria caused by War of the Worlds – and how that false narrative was quickly twisted to serve political or other ends – because we need to be just as vigilant about that form of ‘fake news’ today. When Welles, almost twenty years after the broadcast, said the lesson of War of the Worlds was that audiences “shouldn’t take any opinion pre-digested, and they shouldn’t swallow everything that came through the tap, whether it was radio or not,” he couldn’t have been more right. He was speaking to the central challenge of our time.”
- October 4: Film screening of the PBS’ American Experience documentary War of the Worlds. The 2013 offering features interviews with film director and cinema historian Peter Bogdanovich, Welles’ eldest daughter Chris Welles Feder and other authors and experts, as well as dramatizations of some of the thousands of letters sent to Welles by an alternately admiring and furious public. For additional details on the screening, visit https://princetonlibrary.
org/event/film-screening-war- of-the-worlds/ - October 10: Metuchen-based Raconteur Radio presents a staged radio play of “The War of the Worlds,” loosely adapted from the H.G. Wells classic. The 55-minute production features theatrical lighting, period costumes, Golden Age radio equipment, sound effects and vintage commercials. For further information on the production, visit https://princetonlibrary.
org/event/raconteur-radio-war- of-the-worlds/ - October 18: Schwartz speaks on his book Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles’s ‘War of the Worlds’ and the Art of Fake News. A Princeton University doctoral student, Schwartz explores what the broadcast can teach us about the “fake news” that threatens our democracy today. Eighty years ago, Welles’s infamous “panic broadcast” made West Windsor’s Grovers Mill ground zero for an imaginary Martian invasion, as well as the center of a supposedly nationwide hysteria. But as Schwartz described in his acclaimed book, listener letters written by New Jerseyans and others challenge the very existence of that panic, while offering a dire warning to our own social media age. Schwartz recent co-authored the book Scarface & the Untouchable: Al Capone, Eliot Ness, and the Battle for Chicago with Max Allan Collins. For additional details on Schwartz’s talk, visit https://princetonlibrary.
org/event/author-talk- broadcast-hysteria-orson- welless-war-of-the-worlds-and- the-art-of-fake-news/ - October 23: Join specialists Philip Hallman and Vincent Longo from the University of Michigan Special Collections Research Center to experience firsthand archival material related to The War of the Worlds broadcast. This event will feature access to original letters sent from Princeton and across New Jersey in response to the broadcast in 1938 as well as digital access to additional letters sent from across the country. Visitors are encouraged to make observations, ask questions, and be the historian themselves. Historians from the University of Michigan and Princeton University will be on hand to speak about the material and answer questions. For further information, visit https://princetonlibrary.
org/event/open-archive-war-of- the-worlds-fan-and-hate-mail/ - October 28: Members of the Einstein Alley Musician’s Collaborative blend spoken word, live music and an assortment of sound, theatrical and lighting effects to bring the story of the broadcast of “War of the Worlds.” The original radio script will be adapted into a series of vignettes in between which musicians will perform a piece which reflects the mood of the story. Diverse genres – jazz, bluegrass, grunge, gospel, classical, hip-hop and electronica – will be used to create an organic soundscape of mystery, terror and rebirth. For concert details, visit https://princetonlibrary.
org/event/concert-war-of-the- worlds-80/
“War of the Worlds wasn’t the first ‘fake news’ event, but it was the biggest of its day – and, because that day happened to be the dawn of the mass media age, it quickly became the paradigmatic example of how audiences will supposedly believe anything,” Schwartz said. “Of course, we now know the story’s more complicated than that – that far fewer listeners were frightened than the newspapers assumed at the time – and this has given the subject new life in the past decade or so, as more and more people reevaluate this story they thought they knew. Because this incident happened so long ago, we can use it to reflect on our own attitudes and media habits at a distance, far removed from the division and rancor dominating public life today. ”
He added, “That’s why I’m so excited about the University of Michigan project, which we’re debuting as part of this event series, to digitize all the War of the Worlds letters in their Welles collection and make them available to schools and colleges along with a lesson plan teaching students about media literacy and “fake news.” I’ve seen some of the early reports from classroom testing of this project, and it’s thrilling to see today’s high schoolers making the same connections I did back in college – comparing newspaper reports of panic to the reactions preserved in these letters and realizing just how much this event has to say about the present. I hope this project will help a new generation rediscover War of the Worlds for a new generation while arming them against ever more pernicious forms of ‘fake news,’ keeping the broadcast relevant well past its 80th anniversary.”
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