WELLESNET MESSAGE BOARD

"When the Legend becomes Fact
- Print the Legend!"

I don’t object to being skeptical about some of the outlandish reports, but I have a problem with rejecting statements given 80 years ago in order to make it fit into a revised history.

Ray, for my part I'm not trying for one NY minute to do that!

In fact, my goal is just the opposite of rejecting anything out of hand without weighing it. And that includes first-hand memories later put on the record by folks like Houseman, Herz, Anderson, et al.

News is rightly called just, "the rough draft of History."

So what I do believe in trying to do, is sifting the truth out of both current clippings, and later interviews and research. History - and it's often an imperfect thing, at best - is pieced together from both related-but-different sources.

Best,
-Craig

P.S. - And I'm loving all of the great new threads discussing Welles' audio work, which often gets unfair short shrift.

Craig,
That comment was not aimed at you. It was about Adam Ruins Everything, which I thought was extreme in its view.
Ray

Aha!

(The clumsiness of Mr. Gore's Interweb strikes again!)

All best,
-Craig

Another precinct heard from:

http://www.ocregister.com/2017/10/31/ho ... -wont-die/

For what it's worth, I do remember when I was a kid my late grandfather telling me that he remembered the broadcast but that he was not fooled. However, he also told me that several of his neighbors had questioned the veracity of the fictitious reports. He lived in Worcester, Massachusetts, so if he was telling me the truth, at least some of the people in that area were confused. Of course, my grandfather was a great storyteller, so I can't say with all honesty that what he was telling me was true -- though I'm very much a traditionalist, and I would like to believe it!

I think it's in an Autobio (?) that Steve Allen tells the story of hearing it, I believe with his mother, and having indeed been shocked -

- that anyone had ever thought it was anything other than what it actually was!

(I think his main argument was that you just had to take one sec to spin the dial, to realize that The End Of The World would obviously not be covered by just one station!!!)

-Craig