Orson Welles' End of the World Broadcast (1938) (Part 1 of 2)

 

 

 

Now we highlight not a movie, but an important radio broadcast, one that affected the art of film, especially in the 1940s and 50s. However, below you'll find two complete excellent but rare TV reenactments of this ground-breaking broadcast that launched upon the cinematic world a young man named Orson Welles whose successes and failures are legend.

 

A RADIO BROADCAST TO END ALL RADIO BROADCASTS

Orson Welles’ CBS Mercury Theater on the Air Radio-Play Adaption of 
H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1938)

 

During an evening in 1938, with the whole world all too aware of German mobilization and just days after Germany occupied the Sudetenland, much of America really believed it was being invaded from Mars. It was a phenomenon of mass delusion that lasted perhaps 90 minutes or two hours at the most, but certainly was not unwarranted under the circumstances. The German War Machine's "occupation" of its neighbors one by one was the preeminent news of the day. The newsreels seen in neighborhood theaters played up the vast German terror that was swallowing Europe. Everyone knew that war was inevitable. This was America's state of mind during the month of October 1938.

One of countless recordings of the program, 

available in possibly every format. 

This happens to be a LP from 1968. 

For more information on this record, 

see https://www.discogs.com/Orson-Welles-War-Of-The-Worlds/release/857557

Orson Welles and his Mercury Theater on the Air were performing on CBS radio their re-imagined version of a classic piece of literature just as they did every week. In fact, just the week before they’d presented Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days and the week before that Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Immortal Sherlock Holmes. On this night, the night before Halloween 1938, the Mercury Theater performed H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds in an updated format that imitated intense news bulletins coming from Grovers Mill, New Jersey.

Many people turned on the Mercury broadcast after it had started and after the disclaimer had been announced. Many had switched over from the boring introductory segment on the vastly more popular program The Chase and Sanborn Hour featuring Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy.

People heard the cleverly produced pseudo-news announcements combined with the sounds of battle and panic and, already fraught with submerged anxiety as they watched “in real time” Europe collapse, assumed that the invasion from Mars was all too real, frantically warning family and friends. Howard Koch, who wrote The War of the Worlds radio script for the broadcast, says in his book, The Panic Broadcast, that the show “caused the submerged anxieties of tens of thousands of Americans [to] surface ... and coalesce ... in a flood of terror that swept the country.”

Dramatizations and Documentaries of the Radio Broadcast

In 1957, TV’s Westinghouse Studio One live dramatic series presented The Night America Trembled with early performances by James Coburn, Ed Asner, Warren Oates, and Warren Beatty, and narrated by iconic newscaster Edward R. Morrow. This was a docudrama reenactment of the Mercury Theater on the Air production with emphasis on how the actors performed in the studio and how the music and sound effects were created, along with scenes showing the program’s effect on the unexpecting populous.

Here is the actual hour-long early TV drama 

The Night America Trembled.

In 1975, an ABC Friday Night Movie, The Night That Panicked America, another docudrama covering the same ground, was broadcast staring Vic Morrow, Meredith Baxter, Tom Bosley, and Will Geer.

This is the 1975 ABC Friday Night Movie, 

The Night That Panicked America.

In Addition:
In 2005, Highland Entertainment produced a straight-to DVD documentary of this episode of American history titled The Day That Panicked America: The H.G. Wells War of the Worlds Scandal. The first half recounts the events surrounding the CBS broadcast—but the second half unexpectedly and unnecessarily follows Orson Welles’ career and crises through Citizen Kane and decades beyond.

In 2013, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting/PBS dedicated one of its American Experience episodes to Welles’ notorious CBS broadcast. Titled American Experience: War of the Worlds, this is a documentary with “recreations” and is narrated by Oliver Platt.

Suggested Further Reading:
There are a number of fine books that explore in meticulous detail the panic that erupted that October night, including:

The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic by Hadley Cantril

The Martians Are Coming! The True Story of Orson Welles’ 1938 Panic Broadcast by Allan Gallop

Waging The War of the Worlds: A History of the 1938 Radio Broadcast and Resulting Panic by John Gosling

The Panic Broadcast by Howard Koch

The Complete War of the Worlds: Mars’ Invasion of Earth from H.G. Wells to Orson Welles edited by Brian Holmsten and Alex Lubertozzi.

Radio Play Credits:

USA. CBS Radio, The Mercury Theater on the Air. 60m.

CREW: Director Orson Welles. Script Howard Koch. Based on the novel by H.G. Wells. Producer John Houseman. Orchestra Bernard Herrmann. Engineer John Dietz. Sound Effects James Rogan, Ray Kremer, Ora Nichol.

CAST: Announcer Dan Seymour. Narrator Orson Welles. Studio Announcer Paul Stewart. Meridian Room Announcer William Alland. Reporter Carl Phillips Frank Readick. Professor Richard Pierson Orson Welles. Second Studio Announcer Carl Frank. Secretary of the Interior Kenny Delmar. The cast also included mainly in multiple roles Ray Collins, Richard Wilson, Stefan Schnabel, Carl Frank, William Herz, Howard Smith. 

 

 

 Essay continues in Part 2.

 


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