Orson Welles and The War of the Worlds

On Sunday, October 30, 1938, Orson Welles and his troupe of actors in the Mercury Theater touched off mass panic with a dramatic radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’ 1897 novel of Martian conquest, The War of the Worlds. In spite of pre-broadcast announcements that the production was fiction, about a million Americans readied their guns for battle, fled and prayed for deliverance from what they believed was a real threat. Orson Welles (left), roundly criticized for inciting the hysteria, apologized for the realistic nature of the radio play and explained that he never expected such a severe reaction. The War of the Worlds broadcast went on the air opposite radio’s number-one program, The Charlie McCarthy Show, featuring ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy. Critic Alexander Woollcott telegraphed Welles, ‘This only goes to prove, my beamish boy, that the intelligent people were all listening to a dummy, and all the dummies were listening to you.’

Photo: Library of Congress

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