Editor’s note: David Acord, author of “When Mars Attacked: Orson Welles, The War of the Worlds and the Radio Broadcast That Changed America Forever,” has graciously shared his thoughts on the infamous broadcast of Oct. 30. 1938 with Wellesnet in a four-part series. His eBook is available though amazon.com
By DAVID ACORD
Even before Orson Welles’ radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds ended on the night of October 30, 1938, he was being blamed for its unexpected impact. Thousands of panicked listeners, hundreds of irate police officers and city officials from around the >country, and even executives at his own network, CBS, branded him with the scarlet ‘H’ for “Hoaxer.”
However, as I discuss at length in my book, When Mars Attacked, there was no hoaxing involved; the nationwide scare was a thoroughly unintended consequence. If anything, Welles and the rest of the Mercury Theatre crew were guilty of naiveté for failing to anticipate how powerful their innovative and realistic production would turn out to be.
If you really want to blame someone for the panic, though, my vote would go to the anonymous producer of The Chase and Sanborn Hour, the program playing opposite Welles’ The Mercury Theatre On the Air on that fateful Sunday night.
Hear me out. The Chase and Sanborn Hour was a variety show, and it was massively popular – the Seinfeld or Friends of its day. It starred ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his wisecracking dummy Charlie McCarthy, and its ratings dwarfed that of Mercury’s. It boasted A-level guest stars from Hollywood and some of the best comedy writers in the business.
And yet, less than halfway through the show, many listeners turned their radio dials away from Chase and Sanborn and came upon Mercury Theatre and its thrilling story of a Martian invasion. The only problem was, they had missed the opening of the show, when the Mercury announcer had clearly stated that what followed was a dramatic adaptation of H.G. Wells’ novel. They thought what they were hearing was real.
Why did so many people turn away from The Chase and Sanborn Hour? Because the show was lousy! Rather than starting off with Bergen and McCarthy’s popular back-and-forth comedy routine – the highlight of every show – the producer of the show instead decided to begin with crooner Nelson Eddy, who launched into a full-throated version of “Song of the Vagabonds.” The number, lifted from a 1920s operetta set in 15th-century France, was an odd choice to start off the program, to say the least. Eddy’s booming baritone was off-putting and the lyrics were hard to understand. The song is a call to arms, urging the French people to rise up and defend their country from an attack by neighboring Burgundy, but outside the context of the operetta, it made little sense to a 1938 American audience. Eddy followed up with the equally miserable “Canadian Logging Song.” I had to listen to it several times as part of my research for the book, so trust me when I tell you: the Canadian logging industry is a terrible subject for a song.
And so, thanks to the boneheaded decision to start off with Eddy, listeners around the country began twisting their radio dials to escape his interminable caterwauling – and fell right into the Martians’ trap. Many people landed on CBS, where Welles’ radio play was well underway. The rest, as they say, is history.
I tried to uncover the identity of the producer of that night’s Chase and Sanborn Hour, but his name has been lost to history (which is probably a good thing for his legacy, come to think of it). But he still gets my vote for the person most responsible for the nationwide panic of October 30, 1938. If he had done a better job of structuring the show – say, saving Nelson Eddy’s performances for the end of the show, or cutting him altogether – who knows? More people might have listened to Chase and Sanborn, and Welles’ stunning achievement would have been largely ignored.
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