The War of the Worlds

It’s been almost 83 years since Orson Welles’ ‘War of the Worlds’ radio broadcast terrified the nation. People were panicking and taking to the streets in all-out fear for their lives. Some even committed suicide over what they believed to be an actual Alien invasion. Today we will Learn, Hear, Feel, and see the Aliens that Tormented Thousands on that frightful night in 1938. For today, we enter, “The War of the Worlds”.

“The War of the Worlds” is an episode of the American radio drama anthology series The Mercury Theatre on the Air directed and narrated by actor and future filmmaker Orson Welles as an adaptation of H. G. Wells’s novel The War of the Worlds (1898). It was performed and broadcast live as a Halloween episode at 8 p.m. on Sunday, October 30, 1938, over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. The episode became famous for causing panic among its listening audience, although the scale of panic is disputed, as the program had relatively few listeners. (Wikipedia)

“What a night. After the broadcast, as I tried to get back to the St. Regis where we were living, I was blocked by an impassioned crowd of news people looking for blood, and the disappointment when they found I wasn’t hemorrhaging. It wasn’t long after the initial shock that whatever public panic and outrage there was vanished. But, the newspapers for days continued to feign fury”. — Orson Welles to friend and mentor Roger Hill, February 22, 1983 

(Wikipedia)

“The War of the Worlds”—Orson Welles’s realistic radio dramatization of a Martian invasion of Earth—is broadcast on the radio on October 30, 1938. (History)

“Welles was only 23 years old when his Mercury Theater company decided to update H.G. Wells’s 19th-century science fiction novel The War of the Worlds for national radio. Despite his age, Welles had been in radio for several years, most notably as the voice of “The Shadow” in the hit mystery program of the same name. “War of the Worlds” was not planned as a radio hoax, and Welles had little idea of how legendary it would eventually become.

The show began on Sunday, October 30, at 8 p.m. A voice announced: “The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater on the air in ‘War of the Worlds’ by H.G. Wells.”

Sunday evening in 1938 was prime-time in the golden age of radio, and millions of Americans had their radios turned on. But most of these Americans were listening to ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy “Charlie McCarthy” on NBC and only turned to CBS at 8:12 p.m. after the comedy sketch ended and a little-known singer went on. By then, the story of the Martian invasion was well underway.

Welles introduced his radio play with a spoken introduction, followed by an announcer reading a weather report. Then, seemingly abandoning the storyline, the announcer took listeners to “the Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza in downtown New York, where you will be entertained by the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra.” Putrid dance music played for some time, and then the scare began. An announcer broke in to report that “Professor Farrell of the Mount Jenning Observatory” had detected explosions on the planet Mars. Then the dance music came back on, followed by another interruption in which listeners were informed that a large meteor had crashed into a farmer’s field in Grovers Mills, New Jersey.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin,” the broadcast began. “Martians have landed in New Jersey!”

Soon, an announcer was at the crash site describing a Martian emerging from a large metallic cylinder. “Good heavens,” he declared, “something’s wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now here’s another and another one and another one. They look like tentacles to me … I can see the thing’s body now. It’s large, large as a bear. It glistens like wet leather. But that face, it… it … ladies and gentlemen, it’s indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it, it’s so awful. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is kind of V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate.”

The Martians mounted walking war machines and fired “heat-ray” weapons at the puny humans gathered around the crash site. They annihilated a force of 7,000 National Guardsman, and after being attacked by artillery and bombers the Martians released a poisonous gas into the air. Soon “Martian cylinders” landed in Chicago and St. Louis. The radio play was extremely realistic, with Welles employing sophisticated sound effects and his actors doing an excellent job portraying terrified announcers and other characters. An announcer reported that widespread panic had broken out in the vicinity of the landing sites, with thousands desperately trying to flee.

The Federal Communications Commission investigated the unorthodox program but found no law was broken. Networks did agree to be more cautious in their programming in the future. The broadcast helped Orson Welles land a contract with a Hollywood studio, and in 1941 he directed, wrote, produced, and starred in Citizen Kane—a movie that many have called the greatest American film ever made”. (History)

War of The Worlds – Original 1938 Radio Broadcasts (2011 Remastered Version)

The Newspapers Reactions

“On Halloween morning, 1938, Orson Welles awoke to find himself the most talked-about man in America. The night before, Welles and his Mercury Theatre on the Air had performed a radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, converting the 40-year-old novel into fake news bulletins describing a Martian invasion of New Jersey. Some listeners mistook those bulletins for the real thing, and their anxious phone calls to police, newspaper offices, and radio stations convinced many journalists that the show had caused nationwide hysteria. By the next morning, the 23-year-old Welles’s face and name were on the front pages of newspapers coast-to-coast, along with headlines about the mass panic his CBS broadcast had allegedly inspired.

Welles barely had time to glance at the papers, leaving him with only a horribly vague sense of what he had done to the country. He’d heard reports of mass stampedes, of suicides, and of angered listeners threatening to shoot him on sight. “If I’d planned to wreck my career,” he told several people at the time, “I couldn’t have gone about it better.” With his livelihood (and possibly even his freedom) on the line, Welles went before dozens of reporters, photographers, and newsreel cameramen at a hastily arranged press conference in the CBS building. Each journalist asked him some variation of the same basic question: Had he intended, or did he at all anticipate, that War of the Worlds would throw its audience into a panic?

That question would follow Welles for the rest of his life, and his answers changed as the years went on—from protestations of innocence to playful hints that he knew exactly what he was doing all along”. (Smithsonian)

The Script used:

“The famous script was written by Howard E. Koch and titled “An Attack by the Men of Mars,” as an adaptation of the H.G. Wells classic novel War of the Worlds. Orson Welles narrated the script on his radio series Mercury Theater on the Air, produced by John Houseman. CBS Radio aired “War of the Worlds” on October 30, 1938. Welles’ realistic narrative duped many listeners, putting them under the impression Martians were attacking America. The first 40 minutes of the one-hour broadcast were presented as a news bulletin — without any commercials — giving many people the impression they were listening to breaking news and being attacked. Welles was unaware of the broadcast’s impact until the next day. Facing public and media criticism, Welles apologized for the panic caused by the radio show.

Many American radio stations annually air “War of the Worlds” as a Halloween tradition.

The 17-page script is a draft with numerous misspellings, corrections and incomplete sentences”. (Fine books Magazine)

The Book used for the broadcast was, “The War of the Worlds” which was written by H.G. Wells

“Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, history, satire, biography and autobiography. His work also included two books on recreational war games. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is often called the “father of science fiction”, along with Jules Verne and the publisher Hugo Gernsback.

During his own lifetime, however, he was most prominent as a forward-looking, even prophetic social critic who devoted his literary talents to the development of a progressive vision on a global scale. A futurist, he wrote a number of utopian works and foresaw the advent of aircraft, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television and something resembling the World Wide Web. His science fiction imagined time travel, alien invasion, invisibility, and biological engineering. Brian Aldiss referred to Wells as the “Shakespeare of science fiction”, while American writer Charles Fort referred to him as a “wild talent”.” (Wikipedia)

“Wells rendered his works convincing by instilling commonplace detail alongside a single extraordinary assumption – dubbed “Wells’s law” – leading Joseph Conrad to hail him in 1898 as “O Realist of the Fantastic!”. His most notable science fiction works include The Time Machine (1895), which was his first novel, The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898) and the military science fiction The War in the Air (1907). Wells was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times.

Two years after narrating an adaptation of H.G. Wells’s 1898 novel The War of the Worlds on the radio—and purportedly causing some listeners to panic, thinking that Martians were invading Earth—Orson Welles came face to face with the British author. Coincidentally, the two men were in San Antonio, Texas for separate speaking engagements, and radio station KTSA arranged for an on-air chat on October 28, 1940.

Welles, who was just 25 years old at the time, had a friendly conversation with the 74-year-old Wells, who expressed his delight at meeting “my little namesake, Orson,” and joked that Welles should drop the extra “e” in his name. They touch on the author’s visit to the United States, listeners’ reaction to the radio show, Adolf Hitler, and Welles’s next project, Citizen Kane”. (Mental Floss)

H.G. Wells Books

To Purchase a copy of the Book (War of the Worlds) written by H.G. Welles click the link. https://www.amazon.com/War-Worlds-H-G-Wells/dp/1505260795

To purchase The H. G. Wells Collection: Deluxe 6-Volume Box Set Edition (Arcturus Collector’s Classics). https://www.amazon.com/H-G-Wells-Collection-Boxed/dp/1789505488

Orson Welles apologizes for ‘The War of the Worlds’ mass panic

AT&T Operators Recall War of the Worlds Broadcast – AT&T Archives

The War of the Worlds Mass Panic (That Never Happened)

The book and Radio Broadcast also inspired Hollywood to make a movie. The film is Spielberg’s third on the subject of alien visitation. Spielberg accepted the script after finding it had several similarities to his personal life, including the divorce of his parents (Ray and Mary Ann’s divorce), and because the plight of the fictional survivors reflects his own uncertainty after the devastation of the September 11 attacks. Although accepting the script, Spielberg asked for several changes. Spielberg had been against the idea of the aliens arriving in spaceships, since every alien invasion movie used such a vehicle.[8] The original Martian cylinders were discarded, where Spielberg replaced the origins of the tripods by stating they were buried underground in the Earth long ago. Filming took place in Virginia, Connecticut, New Jersey, California, and New York. The film shooting lasted an estimated 73 days. The film was described as an anti-war film, as civilians run and only try to save themselves and their family instead of fighting back against the alien Tripods. War of the Worlds premiered at the Ziegfeld Theatre on June 23, 2005. There, Tom Cruise revealed his relationship with Katie Holmes. Six days later, on June 29, the film was released in approximately 3,908 theaters across America. The home video was subsequently released on November 22, 2005.

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3 Versions of the “War of the Worlds” Made it to Film:

The war of the world’s 1953

Scientist Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry) and Sylvia Van Buren (Ann Robinson) are the first to arrive at the site of a meteorite crash. Soon after, an alien war machine emerges and begins killing at random. The Marines are called in, but they’re no match for the aliens’ force field. Forrester and Van Buren, however, are able to wound one of the creatures and procure a sample of its blood. They take it to Los Angeles where they hope, through testing, to be able to discover the aliens’ weakness.

Release date: August 13, 1953 (New York)

Director: Byron Haskin

Adapted from: The War of the Worlds

Music by: Leith Stevens

To watch this version of the Film, click the link. https://pluto.tv/en/on-demand/movies/the-war-of-the-worlds-1953-1-1?utm_medium=textsearch&utm_source=google

“Two versions of ”War of the Worlds” debut — The Tom Cruise version is competing with a straight-to-video release by ”Outsider” costar C. Thomas Howell

The world will end twice this July 4 weekend. C. Thomas” Ponyboy” Howell. Cruise’s version of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds hit theaters June 29 (see review on page 45), while Howell’s was released straight to video June 28 (distributor Asylum marvels at the” coincidence”)” (Entertainment Weekly)

War of the Worlds 2005

“War of the Worlds is a 2005 American science fiction action film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Josh Friedman and David Koepp, based on the 1898 novel by H. G. Wells and jointly produced and released by Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures. It stars Tom Cruise with Dakota Fanning, Justin Chatwin, Miranda Otto, and Tim Robbins in supporting roles, with narration by Morgan Freeman. The film follows an American dockworker who is forced to look after his children, from whom he lives separately, as he struggles to protect them and reunite them with their mother when extraterrestrials invade the Earth and devastate cities with giant war machines. It was Gene Barry’s final film before his retirement that year and his death in 2009”. (Wikipedia)

To watch the Tom Cruise version of this movie for $2.99, you can click the following link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwIoeFtfJkg

H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds

R 2005 ‧ Sci-fi/Horror ‧ 1h 32m

Astronomer George Herbert (C. Thomas Howell) is assigned to investigate reports of strange meteors crashing into earth near New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. As the meteors land, enormous multi-limbed metal creatures disembark and begin destroying everything and everyone in their path with heat-ray guns. Amidst the apocalyptic destruction, Herbert teams with a soldier (Andy Lauer) and a pastor (Rhett Giles) on his journey into Washington to reunite with his family.

Initial release: June 28, 2005

Director: David Michael Latt

Sequel: War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave

Adapted from: The War of the Worlds

Music by: Ralph Rieckermann

If you would like to watch the C Thomas Howell version, you may do so by clicking the PlutoTV link below. https://pluto.tv/en/on-demand/movies/war-of-the-worlds-las-2004-1-1?utm_medium=textsearch&utm_source=google

References used in this Post:

Wikimedia Foundation. (2021, October 26). The War of the Worlds (1938 radio drama). Wikipedia. Retrieved October 27, 2021, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(1938_radio_drama).

A&E Television Networks. (2009, October 29). Orson Welles’s “War of the worlds” is broadcast. History.com. Retrieved October 27, 2021, from https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/welles-scares-nation.

Magazine, S. (2015, May 6). The infamous “War of the worlds” radio broadcast was a magnificent fluke. Smithsonian.com. Retrieved October 27, 2021, from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/infamous-war-worlds-radio-broadcast-was-magnificent-fluke-180955180/.

Original War of the Worlds Script Draft read by Orson Welles to be auctioned. Fine Books & Collections. (2016, January 26). Retrieved October 27, 2021, from https://www.finebooksmagazine.com/news/original-war-worlds-script-draft-read-orson-welles-be-auctioned.

When Orson Welles met H.G. Wells: Two years after the war of the worlds panic, the two icons finally met. Mental Floss. (2018, February 6). Retrieved October 27, 2021, from https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/529187/when-orson-welles-met-hg-wells-the-war-of-the-worlds.

Wikimedia Foundation. (2021, October 19). H. G. Wells. Wikipedia. Retrieved October 27, 2021, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._G._Wells.

Wikimedia Foundation. (2021, October 26). War of the worlds (2005 film). Wikipedia. Retrieved October 27, 2021, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Worlds_(2005_film).

Scott Brown  Updated July 01, 2005 at 04:00 A. M. E. D. T. (n.d.). Two versions of ”war of the worlds” debut. EW.com. Retrieved October 27, 2021, from https://ew.com/article/2005/07/01/two-versions-war-worlds-debut/.

I hope you have enjoyed our visit to the Martians. If this post educated or Enthralled you, please feel free to; like, comment, share or subscribe. I look forward to seeing you soon. As always’ Thanks for stopping in.