On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1938, many Americans were scared. As the news from Europe grew increasingly grim, radio listeners had grown accustomed to urgent bulletins about a crisis that threatened to plunge the world into another war. Sensing an opportunity, Orson Welles—not yet a household name—seized on the public's anxiety and, on Halloween night, delivered a broadcast that gave America a scare it would never forget. It was a dramatic adaptation of a science fiction novel about an alien invasion. The fallout from that night would forever change the way news was presented. Here to share the story is A. Brad Schwartz, author of Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles's War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Before Orson Wells
became the critically praised actor and director known for Citizen
Kane cut his teeth in broadcast radio, most Americans didn't
know of the young man from Kenosha, Wisconsin. But that
would all change on Halloween in nineteen thirty eight. You're
(00:30):
to tell the story of the war of the world's
first broadcast is a Brad Schwartz, author of Broadcast Hysteria,
Take it away, Brad Ladies.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
A gentleman, the director of the Mercury Theater.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
And star of these broadcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Orson well we know now that in the early years
of the twentieth century this world was being watched closely
by intelligences greater than.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Man's under data plan.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
In the Rocket Hill and the Groves Mill, two thousands
feet engine to getting out, no chance to release bombs.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
Only one thing left.
Speaker 5 (01:09):
Not on the planet arm Obamba's an engagement with Enemy
drive Bob Machin's over Jersey.
Speaker 6 (01:15):
Hello, I'm Awson Wells, and I've been quoting from another.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Wells no relation. H. G.
Speaker 6 (01:23):
Wells, the distinguished novelist, historian prophets it was also the
great master of science fiction. He wrote The War of
the Worlds on which was based a certain notorious radio broadcast,
which is some of you may remember, sent many thousands
of our listeners panicking into the streets all over the country.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Orson Wells. At the time of the war, the war
was broadcast. He is pretty well known in New York
and in New York theater circles, and he had achieved
some prominence as a radio performer. But the radio work
that he was doing was a non because you weren't credited,
So he's not a national figure by any means. Back
in those days, the major radio networks, they would give
(02:09):
away a lot of airtime without commercial sponsors, essentially as
a public service, because the Communications Act says, if you're
going to have a broadcast license, you disturb the public interest,
something like the Mercury Theater, where you know Arsenwells is
going to perform great works of literature and drama and
things like that on the air. This is scene as
the public service. The first episode is Dracula. They do
Treasure Island, they do Trilock Holmes, you know, all these
(02:31):
classic books and plays. The radio show is kind of
a disaster. It's not doing well in the ratings because
it is sort of highbrow. Who knows how long CBS
is going to give them this hour of time? And
that's when the idea comes up, maybe our next show
should be an adaptation of the ward the World's breaks
you will. It's a question, you know where the idea
(02:59):
of to adapt to do this way came from. Wells
told different versions of the story at different times, but
when he was under oath, talked about having this idea
of doing a broadcast that sounded like breaking news because
there had been in September of thirty eight the famous
Munich diplomatic crisis where Nazi Germany was claiming part of Czechoslovakia,
(03:21):
and there was a real question as to whether this
would precipitate another World War.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
No, Prime Minnesota has come back from his third and
greatest done and he said, we regard.
Speaker 5 (03:31):
The agreement time last night and the Anglo German.
Speaker 7 (03:35):
Naval agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two people.
Speaker 5 (03:40):
Never to go to war with one another again.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
They were reporting on this round the clock, breaking into
programming regularly, and people were getting used to the idea
that anything could be interrupted with news of a catastrophe
at any time, and Wells sees what great drama this is,
that people were gripped by this, and he wanted to
capture that in some sense a dramatic, fictitious context, not
to fool people, but use some of that power to
(04:05):
take an old story and make it seem new. But
he didn't have a book in mind. And maybe John Houseman.
We don't really know, but somebody suggests The War of
the World's by HG. Wells Orson Welles says, great, fantastic.
It's the first alien invasion story really in the modern
sense that anyone ever did. HG. Wells wrote it in
(04:28):
eighteen ninety seven and eighteen ninety eight really as a
sort of satire of colonialism, because it's written at the
high point of the British Empire, and he had been
reading about what the British were doing in Tasmania to
the indigenous inhabitants there and had this idea of a
reversal of maybe what if a superior civilization lands in
the heart of the United Kingdom and starts treating the
(04:51):
British the way the British are treating people on the
other side of the globe. What would that look like broadcast.
Speaker 6 (04:56):
The Martians were as aggressive and ruthless as any human.
They were supposedly as bad as we are at our worst,
and also much uglier. They brandished death rays and their
slimy tentacles.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
But what seemed really cutting edge in eighteen ninety eight,
by nineteen thirty eight looked particularly to members of the
Mercury Theater as something that was really kind of hokey.
Science fiction back in those days was seen as mainly
for children. So they turn it over to a writer
that they had just hired by the name of Howard Kage.
He would go on to co write the screenplay for Cosa
(05:34):
Blanca and a lot of Hollywood to the films, But
at this time he's used to struggling playwright and coach
gets the book over the weekend. He's going to turn
in a script on like Tuesday, and he is not
impressed with the novel. He thinks it's out dated, he
thinks it's really silly. He tries to get them to
change the story, and he's given the instruction to take
(05:54):
this story that sat around the turn of the century,
modernize it riches of the United States, and do it
as a series of news bullets, which he does. I mean,
he takes the basic structure of how the Martians land
and come out of their spacecraft.
Speaker 6 (06:08):
And it was understood that the Martians were fighting for
their own survival. Their planet was growing so cold and
inhospitable that they might perish if they remained.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
In the book, they moved toward London and broadcast. They
moved toward New York City, and he has a roadmap
of New Jersey because that's where he had been visiting
the week before, and closes his eyes and drops a
pencil on the map, and it lands on this little
tower called Grover's Mill, which is a few miles from Princeton,
and he goes, oh, Princeton, Okay, So I can have
my astronomer be a professor at Princeton, and I can
(06:41):
land the Martians here, and it's not far from New
York City and puts that all together.
Speaker 6 (06:45):
For a while, at least just toward the end of
the radio play, they appeared to be totally invincible.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
And so they have a draft script. They do a
rehearsal that they record so wells can listen to it.
They listened to it, I think on maybe a Thursday
before the Sunday show, and everybody who heard it talks
about how horrible this rehearsal was, that the script just
wasn't working. The performances weren't there, they didn't have the
sound effects and the music and everything like that. It
just wasn't believable. And that's the moment when Orson Welles,
(07:15):
who again is the radio show, is in trouble, realizes
he needs to bring all his talents to bear on
the show. But he only comes into it on the day.
So it's the night before Halloween, a Sunday night. A
lot of people had the expectation that it was going
to be a quiet night. But again, because of the
news that had been coming out of Europe, there is
(07:37):
a growing and definite sense that some sort of conflict
is inevitable. Anybody could have been frightened under the right conditions.
And so back in those days when radios had tubes,
it had to warm up, so you switch on the
dial and it takes a while for the sound to
come in. So if you turn on write It again,
you could easily miss the opening announcements of this show.
(07:57):
Instead come in on a weather report or music.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
Ladies and Gentlemen Following on the news given an Our
bullet in a moment ago, the Government Meteorological Bureau has
requested the large observatories of the country to keep an
astronomical watch on any further disturbances occurring on the planet Mars.
Due to the unusual nature of this occurrence, we have
arranged an interview with a note of astronomer Professor Pearson,
who will give us his views on this event. In
(08:27):
a few moments, we will take you to the Princeton
Observatory at Princeton, New Jersey. We return you until then
to the music of Ramon Rocchello and his Orbits.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Much of the first part of the show is fictitious
musical program this sort of music that was very common
on the airways at that time and that people wanted
to listen to on Monday night they did chores or
did their homework or whatever, being interrupted by these reports.
But what's going on on Mars then in Jersey and
so a lot of people either they turned the radio
on or they spun the dial, and that's what they
(08:59):
came into. This introduces a problem.
Speaker 5 (09:02):
Ladies and gentlemen, I should read you a wire A
fess appearson from doctor Gray of the Natural History Museum,
New York quote nine fifteen pm Eastern Standard Times, Seismograth
registered shock of almost earthquake intensity occurring within a radius
of twenty miles of printing. Please investigate, Signed Lloyd Gray,
Chief of Astronomical Divisions, unquote fess A.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Pearson.
Speaker 5 (09:23):
But this occurrence possibly has something to do with the
disturvices observed on the planet Mars.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
And you've been listening to A. Brad Schwartz, author of
Broadcast Hysteria, telling the story of Orson Wells's War of
the World's And what a stunt Orson Wells performed for ratings,
And not just a stunt, but pure and great radio theater.
Radio was the mass media. When we come back more
(09:51):
of the story of Orson Wells's War of the World's
here on our American Stories. Can we continue with our
American stories and author A Brad Schwartz telling the story
(10:15):
of the War of the Worlds. When we last left off,
Wells staff had taken a well known but dated and
cheesy sci fi book about invading aliens written by another
Wells in response to British imperialism, and modernized it to
feed into American anxieties about the crisis in Europe. The
process took less than a week. Let's return to the story.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Back in those days, virtually everything that aired on the
major radio network set me. Seeing CBS aired live, George
Bergs a grazy All the reasons for that had to
do with the network's basically proving that they could do
things that smaller stations couldn't do. But that conditioned people
(11:01):
to think that whatever you're hearing is happening right now.
This introduces a problem for news broadcasting, right when if
the president is giving a speech and you're not airing
it as it's airing, you can't play a recording of
it according to network policy. So how do you get
around that. You would have an actor in a studio
(11:23):
performing an impression of the president, perhaps saying things that
the president never actually said. And this was allowable because
the performance is live. Even though it's a fakery, fakery
and allegiance to the truth is what they called it.
This was an accepted practice. This is something that was
actually more popular in some ways than a lot of news.
(11:44):
And this is one of Orson Wells's first radio jobs. Actually,
so Orson Wells having had that professional experience takes a
lot of those techniques and the impressions of Fdr. Frank Reddick,
who plays the radio reporter who is there when the
Martians space crap opens up to the Hindenburg broadcast over
and over again and basically does an impression of it. Yeah,
(12:04):
I ambic, guys, it's still, and the spoken of plays
out and they pla rising to the ground, not quite
to the boy plans that all the humanited all the
plans so and the Hindenburg itt bursting into flames and
wore the world that turning into flame when the heat
ray goes off. And this is not eletant the intention.
(12:25):
But they're shuffling how dangerous this practice was, that how
easy it is to make something that does not real
sound real. They were using every trick in the book,
and they succeeded too well. We were very impressionable at
that age because of.
Speaker 7 (12:38):
Buff Rogers and Flash Gordon, and that really made a
big impression on us. One fell in particular, who owned
a store, took the money from his cash register and
loaded his car up with food and took off for
the mountains and left his wife and children at home.
Speaker 8 (12:59):
Here's eight and T telephone operators from the nineteen thirties
courtesy of the AT and T Archives, describing what happened
the night world of the World's aired.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Every light on that board lit.
Speaker 5 (13:12):
Now that board was I would say almost a half
block long.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
People believed it. And I think of the ones who
were begging us to get connections to their families, to
their husbands before the world came to an end, so
they could just tell them they loved them.
Speaker 9 (13:28):
And and told me that people were jumping out of
the windows and they were going to kill their families
before the martians could get them.
Speaker 8 (13:35):
Some people said, what were they?
Speaker 7 (13:36):
Did I have a chance to see them?
Speaker 4 (13:38):
What were they like?
Speaker 8 (13:40):
A few policemen trickle, then then a few more, and
soon the room was full of policemen and a massive
struggle was going on between the police page boys and
CBS executives who were trying to prevent the cops from
busting in and stopping the show.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
It was a show to witness.
Speaker 8 (13:56):
The following hours were a nightmare.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
The building was.
Speaker 8 (13:59):
Suddenly full of people in dark blue uniforms hustled out
of the studio. We were locked in a small office
on another floor. Here we sat in Communicato. Well Network
employees were busy collecting, destroying, or locking up all scripts
and records of the broadcast.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
This is us and Wells ladies and gentlemen out of
character to assure you that the War of the World
has no further significance. But as the holiday offering, it
was intended to be.
Speaker 8 (14:27):
The haggard Wells set alone and despondent. I'm through, he lamented,
washed up. I didn't bother to reply to this highly
inaccurate self appraisal.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
We annihilated the world before your very ears and utterly
destroyed the CBS. You will be relieved, I hope to
learn that we didn't mean it and that both institutions
are still open for business.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
There were several letters that Ersenwall's received that are written
that night.
Speaker 8 (14:53):
Dear Sirs, I heard your broadcast of Force in Wells
Mercury Theater and practically had hysterics. Everybody absolutely wild. They
were tearing frantically about in tearing up beds and dressers,
and practically crazy. If you know what's wise, you better
not have programs like this in the future.
Speaker 10 (15:09):
Which is the Columbia Broadcasting Company sponsors of World of Worlds.
It is outrageous to broadcast such plays as was presented
by the Mercury Theaters Sunday Night. Orson Wells, little white
haired old man of Broadway, I would suggest you enter
some accredited college or university, or possibly a prep.
Speaker 8 (15:27):
School, and acquire a reasonable amount of education. Are you
a drug addict, a gut or drunk? Or are you
of thanks to you that half a dozen or more
nearly passed out or died because of your silly program.
You might as well dig a hole and crawl in it.
Stay there too, and we mean you.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Most of them are written not in response to the
broadcast itself. Relatively few people heard the show then. It
was only when they opened their newspapers the next day
and they saw these headlines. War drama sends listeners in panic,
thinking Marsihan invasion is back. It was only then that
you know, a lot of people were frightened, not by
(16:07):
the Martian invasion, but by the idea that so many
Americans could be deceived.
Speaker 8 (16:12):
Finally, the press was a loose on us, rievening for horror,
how many deaths have we heard of? Implying that we
knew of thousands? What did we know of the fatal
stampede in a Jersey hall, implying that it was one
of many what traffic deaths. The ditches must be chalked
full of corpses, the suicides. Haven't you heard about the
one on Riverside Drive?
Speaker 9 (16:34):
John Houseman, you are aware of terror at the time
you were giving this role where you were the terror
was going on to automation.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Oh no, of course.
Speaker 6 (16:42):
You know.
Speaker 9 (16:43):
We did Dracula, and it seemed to me during Dracula
I had high hopes that people would react as they
do in a movie of that kind, and I don't
know that they did particularly, and so I've given up.
One doesn't believe in the radio audience, but you don't
know that whether they're listening or not. You have no
idea how many people are listening to what they're thinking.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
I had every hope that the people would be excited
as they would be at a melodrama.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Dramatized news goes out of fashion very quickly after this.
Speaker 5 (17:10):
Do you always think, mister Wills, that you might have
taken unfair advantage of the public and using a method
as a convand for authentic news.
Speaker 9 (17:18):
I don't believe that I have, since it is not
a method original with me.
Speaker 10 (17:23):
It is used by many radio programs.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
It's very important to make clear that even though Wells,
many years after the fact, would sort of suggest or
claim that he did this to teach people a lesson
not to believe everything that they heard, everybody else who
was involved with the show who left a recollection said
that was not the case. That they were as surprised
as anybody else, that they were just trying to make
(17:47):
this alien invasion story that nobody believed seem credible by
a fake news broadcast. Somebody who was frightened wrote after
this broadcast, how are we supposed to know when news
is news and when it is just fiction? And that's
really the question that this episode raises. When you have
this new technology that can spread lies just as quickly
(18:11):
as facts, where do you draw the line? How do
people know what to trust?
Speaker 8 (18:16):
Now?
Speaker 3 (18:17):
That concern that was a very real concern back then
has only deepened and I think has become the central
question of our time.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
So goodbye everybody, and remember please for the next day.
So the terrible lesson you learn tonight that grinning, glowing,
globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of
the punkin Patch and if your doorbell rings and nobody's there,
that was no Martian at Halloween.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
And a terrific job by the production editing and storytelling
by our own Monty Montgomery and Ring and Habib, And
a special thanks to A. Brad Schwartz, author of Broadcast Hysteria,
orson Welles's War of the World's and the Art of
Fake News. The real trouble they got into was this.
They did it so well and then the newspapers ran
(19:07):
with it. My goodness, some of those messages from outraged Americans.
Are you a drug addict? You might as well dig
a hole and crawl into it and stay there. But
it launched one of the great careers in American life,
The Life of Worst and Wells the Story of the
War of the World's. Here on our American Stories.
And we continue with our American stories. Before Orson Wells
became the critically praised actor and director known for Citizen
Kane cut his teeth in broadcast radio, most Americans didn't
know of the young man from Kenosha, Wisconsin. But that
would all change on Halloween in nineteen thirty eight. You're
(00:30):
to tell the story of the war of the world's
first broadcast is a Brad Schwartz, author of Broadcast Hysteria,
Take it away, Brad Ladies.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
A gentleman, the director of the Mercury Theater.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
And star of these broadcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Orson well we know now that in the early years
of the twentieth century this world was being watched closely
by intelligences greater than.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Man's under data plan.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
In the Rocket Hill and the Groves Mill, two thousands
feet engine to getting out, no chance to release bombs.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
Only one thing left.
Speaker 5 (01:09):
Not on the planet arm Obamba's an engagement with Enemy
drive Bob Machin's over Jersey.
Speaker 6 (01:15):
Hello, I'm Awson Wells, and I've been quoting from another.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Wells no relation. H. G.
Speaker 6 (01:23):
Wells, the distinguished novelist, historian prophets it was also the
great master of science fiction. He wrote The War of
the Worlds on which was based a certain notorious radio broadcast,
which is some of you may remember, sent many thousands
of our listeners panicking into the streets all over the country.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Orson Wells. At the time of the war, the war
was broadcast. He is pretty well known in New York
and in New York theater circles, and he had achieved
some prominence as a radio performer. But the radio work
that he was doing was a non because you weren't credited,
So he's not a national figure by any means. Back
in those days, the major radio networks, they would give
(02:09):
away a lot of airtime without commercial sponsors, essentially as
a public service, because the Communications Act says, if you're
going to have a broadcast license, you disturb the public interest,
something like the Mercury Theater, where you know Arsenwells is
going to perform great works of literature and drama and
things like that on the air. This is scene as
the public service. The first episode is Dracula. They do
Treasure Island, they do Trilock Holmes, you know, all these
(02:31):
classic books and plays. The radio show is kind of
a disaster. It's not doing well in the ratings because
it is sort of highbrow. Who knows how long CBS
is going to give them this hour of time? And
that's when the idea comes up, maybe our next show
should be an adaptation of the ward the World's breaks
you will. It's a question, you know where the idea
(02:59):
of to adapt to do this way came from. Wells
told different versions of the story at different times, but
when he was under oath, talked about having this idea
of doing a broadcast that sounded like breaking news because
there had been in September of thirty eight the famous
Munich diplomatic crisis where Nazi Germany was claiming part of Czechoslovakia,
(03:21):
and there was a real question as to whether this
would precipitate another World War.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
No, Prime Minnesota has come back from his third and
greatest done and he said, we regard.
Speaker 5 (03:31):
The agreement time last night and the Anglo German.
Speaker 7 (03:35):
Naval agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two people.
Speaker 5 (03:40):
Never to go to war with one another again.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
They were reporting on this round the clock, breaking into
programming regularly, and people were getting used to the idea
that anything could be interrupted with news of a catastrophe
at any time, and Wells sees what great drama this is,
that people were gripped by this, and he wanted to
capture that in some sense a dramatic, fictitious context, not
to fool people, but use some of that power to
(04:05):
take an old story and make it seem new. But
he didn't have a book in mind. And maybe John Houseman.
We don't really know, but somebody suggests The War of
the World's by HG. Wells Orson Welles says, great, fantastic.
It's the first alien invasion story really in the modern
sense that anyone ever did. HG. Wells wrote it in
(04:28):
eighteen ninety seven and eighteen ninety eight really as a
sort of satire of colonialism, because it's written at the
high point of the British Empire, and he had been
reading about what the British were doing in Tasmania to
the indigenous inhabitants there and had this idea of a
reversal of maybe what if a superior civilization lands in
the heart of the United Kingdom and starts treating the
(04:51):
British the way the British are treating people on the
other side of the globe. What would that look like broadcast.
Speaker 6 (04:56):
The Martians were as aggressive and ruthless as any human.
They were supposedly as bad as we are at our worst,
and also much uglier. They brandished death rays and their
slimy tentacles.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
But what seemed really cutting edge in eighteen ninety eight,
by nineteen thirty eight looked particularly to members of the
Mercury Theater as something that was really kind of hokey.
Science fiction back in those days was seen as mainly
for children. So they turn it over to a writer
that they had just hired by the name of Howard Kage.
He would go on to co write the screenplay for Cosa
(05:34):
Blanca and a lot of Hollywood to the films, But
at this time he's used to struggling playwright and coach
gets the book over the weekend. He's going to turn
in a script on like Tuesday, and he is not
impressed with the novel. He thinks it's out dated, he
thinks it's really silly. He tries to get them to
change the story, and he's given the instruction to take
(05:54):
this story that sat around the turn of the century,
modernize it riches of the United States, and do it
as a series of news bullets, which he does. I mean,
he takes the basic structure of how the Martians land
and come out of their spacecraft.
Speaker 6 (06:08):
And it was understood that the Martians were fighting for
their own survival. Their planet was growing so cold and
inhospitable that they might perish if they remained.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
In the book, they moved toward London and broadcast. They
moved toward New York City, and he has a roadmap
of New Jersey because that's where he had been visiting
the week before, and closes his eyes and drops a
pencil on the map, and it lands on this little
tower called Grover's Mill, which is a few miles from Princeton,
and he goes, oh, Princeton, Okay, So I can have
my astronomer be a professor at Princeton, and I can
(06:41):
land the Martians here, and it's not far from New
York City and puts that all together.
Speaker 6 (06:45):
For a while, at least just toward the end of
the radio play, they appeared to be totally invincible.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
And so they have a draft script. They do a
rehearsal that they record so wells can listen to it.
They listened to it, I think on maybe a Thursday
before the Sunday show, and everybody who heard it talks
about how horrible this rehearsal was, that the script just
wasn't working. The performances weren't there, they didn't have the
sound effects and the music and everything like that. It
just wasn't believable. And that's the moment when Orson Welles,
(07:15):
who again is the radio show, is in trouble, realizes
he needs to bring all his talents to bear on
the show. But he only comes into it on the day.
So it's the night before Halloween, a Sunday night. A
lot of people had the expectation that it was going
to be a quiet night. But again, because of the
news that had been coming out of Europe, there is
(07:37):
a growing and definite sense that some sort of conflict
is inevitable. Anybody could have been frightened under the right conditions.
And so back in those days when radios had tubes,
it had to warm up, so you switch on the
dial and it takes a while for the sound to
come in. So if you turn on write It again,
you could easily miss the opening announcements of this show.
(07:57):
Instead come in on a weather report or music.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
Ladies and Gentlemen Following on the news given an Our
bullet in a moment ago, the Government Meteorological Bureau has
requested the large observatories of the country to keep an
astronomical watch on any further disturbances occurring on the planet Mars.
Due to the unusual nature of this occurrence, we have
arranged an interview with a note of astronomer Professor Pearson,
who will give us his views on this event. In
(08:27):
a few moments, we will take you to the Princeton
Observatory at Princeton, New Jersey. We return you until then
to the music of Ramon Rocchello and his Orbits.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Much of the first part of the show is fictitious
musical program this sort of music that was very common
on the airways at that time and that people wanted
to listen to on Monday night they did chores or
did their homework or whatever, being interrupted by these reports.
But what's going on on Mars then in Jersey and
so a lot of people either they turned the radio
on or they spun the dial, and that's what they
(08:59):
came into. This introduces a problem.
Speaker 5 (09:02):
Ladies and gentlemen, I should read you a wire A
fess appearson from doctor Gray of the Natural History Museum,
New York quote nine fifteen pm Eastern Standard Times, Seismograth
registered shock of almost earthquake intensity occurring within a radius
of twenty miles of printing. Please investigate, Signed Lloyd Gray,
Chief of Astronomical Divisions, unquote fess A.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Pearson.
Speaker 5 (09:23):
But this occurrence possibly has something to do with the
disturvices observed on the planet Mars.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
And you've been listening to A. Brad Schwartz, author of
Broadcast Hysteria, telling the story of Orson Wells's War of
the World's And what a stunt Orson Wells performed for ratings,
And not just a stunt, but pure and great radio theater.
Radio was the mass media. When we come back more
(09:51):
of the story of Orson Wells's War of the World's
here on our American Stories. Can we continue with our
American stories and author A Brad Schwartz telling the story
(10:15):
of the War of the Worlds. When we last left off,
Wells staff had taken a well known but dated and
cheesy sci fi book about invading aliens written by another
Wells in response to British imperialism, and modernized it to
feed into American anxieties about the crisis in Europe. The
process took less than a week. Let's return to the story.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Back in those days, virtually everything that aired on the
major radio network set me. Seeing CBS aired live, George
Bergs a grazy All the reasons for that had to
do with the network's basically proving that they could do
things that smaller stations couldn't do. But that conditioned people
(11:01):
to think that whatever you're hearing is happening right now.
This introduces a problem for news broadcasting, right when if
the president is giving a speech and you're not airing
it as it's airing, you can't play a recording of
it according to network policy. So how do you get
around that. You would have an actor in a studio
(11:23):
performing an impression of the president, perhaps saying things that
the president never actually said. And this was allowable because
the performance is live. Even though it's a fakery, fakery
and allegiance to the truth is what they called it.
This was an accepted practice. This is something that was
actually more popular in some ways than a lot of news.
(11:44):
And this is one of Orson Wells's first radio jobs. Actually,
so Orson Wells having had that professional experience takes a
lot of those techniques and the impressions of Fdr. Frank Reddick,
who plays the radio reporter who is there when the
Martians space crap opens up to the Hindenburg broadcast over
and over again and basically does an impression of it. Yeah,
(12:04):
I ambic, guys, it's still, and the spoken of plays
out and they pla rising to the ground, not quite
to the boy plans that all the humanited all the
plans so and the Hindenburg itt bursting into flames and
wore the world that turning into flame when the heat
ray goes off. And this is not eletant the intention.
(12:25):
But they're shuffling how dangerous this practice was, that how
easy it is to make something that does not real
sound real. They were using every trick in the book,
and they succeeded too well. We were very impressionable at
that age because of.
Speaker 7 (12:38):
Buff Rogers and Flash Gordon, and that really made a
big impression on us. One fell in particular, who owned
a store, took the money from his cash register and
loaded his car up with food and took off for
the mountains and left his wife and children at home.
Speaker 8 (12:59):
Here's eight and T telephone operators from the nineteen thirties
courtesy of the AT and T Archives, describing what happened
the night world of the World's aired.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Every light on that board lit.
Speaker 5 (13:12):
Now that board was I would say almost a half
block long.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
People believed it. And I think of the ones who
were begging us to get connections to their families, to
their husbands before the world came to an end, so
they could just tell them they loved them.
Speaker 9 (13:28):
And and told me that people were jumping out of
the windows and they were going to kill their families
before the martians could get them.
Speaker 8 (13:35):
Some people said, what were they?
Speaker 7 (13:36):
Did I have a chance to see them?
Speaker 4 (13:38):
What were they like?
Speaker 8 (13:40):
A few policemen trickle, then then a few more, and
soon the room was full of policemen and a massive
struggle was going on between the police page boys and
CBS executives who were trying to prevent the cops from
busting in and stopping the show.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
It was a show to witness.
Speaker 8 (13:56):
The following hours were a nightmare.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
The building was.
Speaker 8 (13:59):
Suddenly full of people in dark blue uniforms hustled out
of the studio. We were locked in a small office
on another floor. Here we sat in Communicato. Well Network
employees were busy collecting, destroying, or locking up all scripts
and records of the broadcast.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
This is us and Wells ladies and gentlemen out of
character to assure you that the War of the World
has no further significance. But as the holiday offering, it
was intended to be.
Speaker 8 (14:27):
The haggard Wells set alone and despondent. I'm through, he lamented,
washed up. I didn't bother to reply to this highly
inaccurate self appraisal.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
We annihilated the world before your very ears and utterly
destroyed the CBS. You will be relieved, I hope to
learn that we didn't mean it and that both institutions
are still open for business.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
There were several letters that Ersenwall's received that are written
that night.
Speaker 8 (14:53):
Dear Sirs, I heard your broadcast of Force in Wells
Mercury Theater and practically had hysterics. Everybody absolutely wild. They
were tearing frantically about in tearing up beds and dressers,
and practically crazy. If you know what's wise, you better
not have programs like this in the future.
Speaker 10 (15:09):
Which is the Columbia Broadcasting Company sponsors of World of Worlds.
It is outrageous to broadcast such plays as was presented
by the Mercury Theaters Sunday Night. Orson Wells, little white
haired old man of Broadway, I would suggest you enter
some accredited college or university, or possibly a prep.
Speaker 8 (15:27):
School, and acquire a reasonable amount of education. Are you
a drug addict, a gut or drunk? Or are you
of thanks to you that half a dozen or more
nearly passed out or died because of your silly program.
You might as well dig a hole and crawl in it.
Stay there too, and we mean you.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Most of them are written not in response to the
broadcast itself. Relatively few people heard the show then. It
was only when they opened their newspapers the next day
and they saw these headlines. War drama sends listeners in panic,
thinking Marsihan invasion is back. It was only then that
you know, a lot of people were frightened, not by
(16:07):
the Martian invasion, but by the idea that so many
Americans could be deceived.
Speaker 8 (16:12):
Finally, the press was a loose on us, rievening for horror,
how many deaths have we heard of? Implying that we
knew of thousands? What did we know of the fatal
stampede in a Jersey hall, implying that it was one
of many what traffic deaths. The ditches must be chalked
full of corpses, the suicides. Haven't you heard about the
one on Riverside Drive?
Speaker 9 (16:34):
John Houseman, you are aware of terror at the time
you were giving this role where you were the terror
was going on to automation.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Oh no, of course.
Speaker 6 (16:42):
You know.
Speaker 9 (16:43):
We did Dracula, and it seemed to me during Dracula
I had high hopes that people would react as they
do in a movie of that kind, and I don't
know that they did particularly, and so I've given up.
One doesn't believe in the radio audience, but you don't
know that whether they're listening or not. You have no
idea how many people are listening to what they're thinking.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
I had every hope that the people would be excited
as they would be at a melodrama.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Dramatized news goes out of fashion very quickly after this.
Speaker 5 (17:10):
Do you always think, mister Wills, that you might have
taken unfair advantage of the public and using a method
as a convand for authentic news.
Speaker 9 (17:18):
I don't believe that I have, since it is not
a method original with me.
Speaker 10 (17:23):
It is used by many radio programs.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
It's very important to make clear that even though Wells,
many years after the fact, would sort of suggest or
claim that he did this to teach people a lesson
not to believe everything that they heard, everybody else who
was involved with the show who left a recollection said
that was not the case. That they were as surprised
as anybody else, that they were just trying to make
(17:47):
this alien invasion story that nobody believed seem credible by
a fake news broadcast. Somebody who was frightened wrote after
this broadcast, how are we supposed to know when news
is news and when it is just fiction? And that's
really the question that this episode raises. When you have
this new technology that can spread lies just as quickly
(18:11):
as facts, where do you draw the line? How do
people know what to trust?
Speaker 8 (18:16):
Now?
Speaker 3 (18:17):
That concern that was a very real concern back then
has only deepened and I think has become the central
question of our time.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
So goodbye everybody, and remember please for the next day.
So the terrible lesson you learn tonight that grinning, glowing,
globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of
the punkin Patch and if your doorbell rings and nobody's there,
that was no Martian at Halloween.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
And a terrific job by the production editing and storytelling
by our own Monty Montgomery and Ring and Habib, And
a special thanks to A. Brad Schwartz, author of Broadcast Hysteria,
orson Welles's War of the World's and the Art of
Fake News. The real trouble they got into was this.
They did it so well and then the newspapers ran
(19:07):
with it. My goodness, some of those messages from outraged Americans.
Are you a drug addict? You might as well dig
a hole and crawl into it and stay there. But
it launched one of the great careers in American life,
The Life of Worst and Wells the Story of the
War of the World's. Here on our American Stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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