re: Best radio dramas, past and present(?)

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Happy Anniversary!

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The 17th episode of Orson Welles’ “Mercury Theatre on the Air” began on CBS Radio at 8 pm on Sunday, 30 October 1938 with a brief announcement that the program would be an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds.

Welles then read an introduction that closely adhered to the novel before returning to a seemingly typical radio broadcast of music. The programming was then interrupted with a series of news bulletins regarding events at Grover’s Mill, NJ, which quickly became eye witness reports of a Martian invasion.

Producer John Houseman recalled that the total broadcast time, “from the first mention of the meteorites to the fall of New York City, was less than forty minutes.“ “During that time, men travelled long distances, large bodies of troops were mobilized, cabinet meetings were held, savage battles fought on land and in the air. And millions of people accepted it—emotionally if not logically.”

Announcements that “The War of the Worlds” was a dramatization of a work of fiction were made 4 times during the broadcast: at the beginning, before the middle break (at 30 minutes into the broadcast), after the middle break, and at the end. Still, many listeners were fooled by the news-like structure of the drama and calls were made to local police across the country, and to the radio station. Police entered the building to stop the broadcast, but were not allowed into the control room.

After the broadcast, Houseman recalled, “hustled out of the studio, we were locked into a small back office on another floor. Here we sat incommunicado while network employees were busily collecting, destroying, or locking up all scripts and records of the broadcast.”

According to the head of CBS News, the 23-year-old Orson Welles “sat alone and despondent. ‘I’m through,’ he lamented, “washed up.’” The broadcast, of course, made him famous.

The news of panic caused by the broadcast have been debated ever since (with most historians concluding that the panic was exaggerated by the media, and subsequently by CBS itself to promote its network), and while Welles initially denied the panic, he ultimately contributed to the myth.

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The Mercury Theater Of The Air - "The War of the Worlds" (October 30, 1938)



After the broadcast, Welles pleads his case to reporters.



All's Welles that ends Wells: Orson meets H.G. at a San Antonio radio station, 1940.

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