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.‘Twas the night before Halloween, mischief night, in 1938 that a young Orson Welles’ now infamous radio broadcast of War of the Worlds caused widespread panic. Networks did agree to be more cautious in their programming in the future. The Federal Communications Commission investigated the unorthodox program but found no law was broken. An announcer reported that widespread panic had broken out in the vicinity of the landing sites, with thousands desperately trying to flee. 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. Soon “Martian cylinders” landed in Chicago and St. ![]() 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. The Martians mounted walking war machines and fired “heat-ray” weapons at the puny humans gathered around the crash site. The mouth is kind of V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate.” The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it, it’s so awful. But that face, it… it … ladies and gentlemen, it’s indescribable. They look like tentacles to me … I can see the thing’s body now. Now here’s another and another one and another one. “Good heavens,” he declared, “something’s wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Soon, an announcer was at the crash site describing a Martian emerging from a large metallic cylinder. ![]() 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. An announcer broke in to report that “Professor Farrell of the Mount Jenning Observatory” had detected explosions on the planet Mars. 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. Welles introduced his radio play with a spoken introduction, followed by an announcer reading a weather report. By then, the story of the Martian invasion was well underway. after the comedy sketch ended and a little-known singer went 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. Sunday evening in 1938 was prime-time in the golden age of radio, and millions of Americans had their radios turned on. ![]() 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. The show began on Sunday, October 30, at 8 p.m. ![]() “War of the Worlds” was not planned as a radio hoax, and Welles had little idea of how legendary it would eventually become. 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. Wells’s 19th-century science fiction novel The War of the Worlds for national radio. Welles was only 23 years old when his Mercury Theater company decided to update H.G. “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.
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