Between 8:00 and
9:00 p.m. on October 30, 1938, listeners tuning in to the Columbia Broadcasting
System (CBS) radio broadcast thought they were listening to live orchestral
music from Park Plaza in New York. What
they weren’t expecting to hear were special bulletins and interviews
interrupting the hour-long program.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our
program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental
Radio News. At twenty minutes before eight, central time, Professor Farrell of
the Mount Jennings Observatory, Chicago, Illinois, reports observing several
explosions of incandescent gas, occurring at regular intervals on the planet
Mars…Ladies and gentlemen…Seismograph registered shock of almost earthquake
intensity occurring within a radius of twenty miles of Princeton. Please
investigate…Could this occurrence possibly have something to do with the
disturbances observed on the planet Mars? Ladies and gentlemen…It is reported
that at 8:50 p.m. a huge, flaming object, believed to be a meteorite, fell on a
farm in the neighborhood of Grovers Mill, New Jersey…we have dispatched a
special mobile unit to the scene…Ladies and gentlemen…object itself doesn’t
look very much like a meteor…looks more like a huge cylinder…I’ve never seen
anything like it…Just a minute…something’s happening! Ladies and gentlemen…this
is terrific…the top is beginning to rotate like a screw…she’s moving…the darn
thing’s unscrewing…keep back, keep back! Ladies and gentlemen, this is the most
terrifying thing I’ve ever witnessed…SCREAMS AND UNEARTHLY SHRIEKS…now the
whole field’s caught fire…EXPLOSION THEN DEAD SILENCE.”
Then a little bit
later, “Ladies and gentlemen…I’m speaking
from the roof of the Broadcasting Building, New York City. The bells you hear
are ringing to warn the people to evacuate the city as the Martians approach.
Estimated in the last two hours three million people have moved out along the
road to the north, Hutchison River Parkway still kept open for motor traffic.
Avoid bridges to Long Island…hopelessly jammed. All communication with Jersey
shore closed ten minutes ago. No more defenses. Our army wiped out…artillery,
air force, everything wiped out. This may be the last broadcast. We’ll stay here
to the end…People are holding service below us…in the cathedral.”
Now imagine what
might have been going through listeners’ minds who had tuned in to the program midway
through it, hearing claims that aliens from Mars had invaded New Jersey. With the concerns of World War II imminent, hysteria
and panic ensued; the phone lines at CBS were jammed with callers, and police
officers arrived at the studio ready to shut down the production. It wasn’t until the close of that long hour
that all was revealed to be what it really was: a Halloween hoax, orchestrated
by a young Orson Welles. The above was
taken as excerpts from the radio transcript airing that night.
The
twenty-three-year-old Welles directed and narrated an adaptation of H.G. Wells’
(no relation) science fiction classic, The War of the Worlds, for an
episode of the Mercury Theatre on the Air,
complete with live bulletins and sound effects. While the novel’s aliens
invaded Great Britain, Welles and company had the Martians landing in the
United States with actors reacting to the fictional tale. It stirred up a lot of trouble for the
network and the actors, with the Federal Communications Commission launching an
investigation into Welles that would eventually be dropped. The actor even lamented that he feared his
career was over.
Legend of the
panic escalated and grew over the years.
Decades later, some say the panic was nothing more than myth and hype
created mostly by newspapers taking vengeance against broadcasters. They argued
that the Mercury Theatre on the Air
had few listeners, and the newspapers sensationalized the coverage to place
doubt with advertisers about the integrity of radio broadcasts. It seemed to be about revenue.
Orson Welles didn’t
disappear; he lived until the age of seventy, working in theatre, film and
radio. I first learned about the early radio
broadcast during a film class in college.
We researched Welles and watched his 1941 classic, Citizen Kane (with Welles’
character based on newspaper magnate, William Randolph Hearst). Told in
flashback, the movie is about a reporter who goes in search of discovering the
meaning of Kane’s dying word, “Rosebud”.
While I won’t give away the meaning behind it, I do recall being rather
close in what I thought it to be. I also remember thinking Orson Welles (as
co-screenwriter) was very clever with that script; some probably believe he was
just as clever in what he did with that radio broadcast three years earlier,
even though he claimed there was no intent behind it.
Finally, as we
near the 79th anniversary of that infamous broadcast which instilled
fear and belief that Martians were walking on earth, I’ll end with the final
statement of the transcript. Also, Happy
Halloween, everyone. May there be no
Martians threatening tricks this All Hallows’ Eve.
“Orson Welles: This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen,
out of character to assure you that The War of the Worlds has no further
significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be. The Mercury Theatre’s own radio version of dressing
up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying Boo! Starting now, we
couldn’t soap all your windows and steal all your garden gates by tomorrow
night…so we did the best next thing. We
annihilated the world before your very ears, and utterly destroyed the
C.B.S. You will be relieved, I hope, to
learn that we didn’t mean it, and that both institutions are still open for
business. So, goodbye everybody, and
remember the terrible lesson you learned tonight. That grinning, glowing globular invader of
your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch, and if your doorbell
rings and nobody’s there, that was no Martian…it’s Hallowe’en.”
Part of the transcript for the 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds |