The
classic broadcasts of The War of The Worlds
960 more bonus classic Old Time
Radio Shows
ALL KNOWN EPISODES TO EXIST.
Don't be fooled by other
collections that claim to contain more episodes. Many of these shows
were aired on multiple dates in reruns, so you have plenty of
sellers out there padding their collections with reruns!
We feature all known episodes in existence and do not add
"fluff" to our collections to increase our claimed episode count
like many others.
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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. It was
performed as a Halloween episode of the series on
Sunday, October 30, 1938, and aired over the Columbia
Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated
by actor and future filmmaker Orson Welles, the episode
was an adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel The War of the
Worlds (1898). It became famous for allegedly causing
mass panic, although the scale of the panic is disputed
as the program had relatively few listeners.
The first two-thirds of the one-hour broadcast was
presented as a series of simulated news bulletins. The
first news update interrupted a program of dance music
to report that a series of odd explosions had been
spotted on Mars, which was followed soon thereafter by a
seemingly unrelated report of an unusual object falling
on a farm in Grover's Mill, New Jersey. Martians emerged
from the object and attacked using a heat ray during the
next interruption, which was followed by a rapid series
of news reports describing a devastating alien invasion
taking place across the United States and the world. The
illusion of realism was furthered because the Mercury
Theatre on the Air was a sustaining show without
commercial interruptions, and the first break in the
program came almost 30 minutes into the broadcast.
Popular legend holds that some of the radio audience may
have been listening to Edgar Bergen and tuned in to "The
War of the Worlds" during a musical interlude, thereby
missing the clear introduction that the show was a
drama, but recent research suggests this only happened
in rare instances.
In the days following the adaptation, widespread outrage
was expressed in the media. The program's news-bulletin
format was described as deceptive by some newspapers and
public figures, leading to an outcry against the
perpetrators of the broadcast and calls for regulation
by the Federal Communications Commission. The episode
secured Welles' fame as a dramatist.
H. G. Wells's original novel tells the story of a
Martian invasion of Earth. The novel was adapted by
Howard E. Koch for the 17th episode of the CBS Radio
series The Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast at 8 pm
ET on Sunday, October 30, 1938. The program's format was
a simulated live newscast of developing events. The
setting was switched from 19th-century England to
contemporary Grover's Mill, an unincorporated village in
West Windsor Township, New Jersey, in the United States.
The first two-thirds of the hour-long play is a
contemporary retelling of events of the novel, presented
as news bulletins interrupting another program. "I had
conceived the idea of doing a radio broadcast in such a
manner that a crisis would actually seem to be
happening," Welles later said, "and would be broadcast
in such a dramatized form as to appear to be a real
event taking place at that time, rather than a mere
radio play. This approach was similar to Ronald Knox's
radio hoax Broadcasting the Barricades, about a riot
overtaking London, that was broadcast by the BBC in
1926, which Welles later said gave him the idea for "The
War of the Worlds". A 1927 drama aired by Adelaide
station 5CL depicted an invasion of Australia via the
same techniques and inspired reactions similar to those
of the Welles broadcast.
He was also influenced by the Columbia Workshop
presentations "The Fall of the City", a 1937 radio play
in which Welles played the role of an omniscient
announcer, and "Air Raid", a vibrant as-it-happens drama
starring Ray Collins that aired October 27, 1938. Welles
had previously used a newscast format for "Julius
Caesar" (September 11, 1938), with H. V. Kaltenborn
providing historical commentary throughout the story.
"The War of the Worlds" broadcast used techniques
similar to those of The March of Time, the CBS news
documentary and dramatization radio series.[12] Welles
was a member of the program's regular cast, having first
performed on The March of Time in March 1935. The
Mercury Theatre on the Air and The March of Time shared
many cast members, as well as sound effects chief Ora D.
Nichols.
Welles discussed his fake newscast idea with producer
John Houseman and assistant director Paul Stewart;
together, they decided to adapt a work of science
fiction. They considered adapting M. P. Shiel's The
Purple Cloud and Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World
before purchasing the radio rights to The War of the
Worlds. Houseman later wrote that he suspected Welles
had never read it.
Howard Koch had written the first drafts for the Mercury
Theatre broadcasts "Hell on Ice" (October 9),
"Seventeen" (October 16), and "Around the World in 80
Days" (October 23). Monday, October 24, he was
assigned to rescript "The War of the Worlds" for
broadcast the following Sunday night.
Tuesday night, 36 hours before rehearsals were to begin,
Koch telephoned Houseman in what the producer
characterized as "deep distress". Koch said he could not
make The War of the Worlds interesting or credible as a
radio play, a conviction echoed by his secretary Anne
Froelick, a typist and aspiring writer whom Houseman had
hired to assist him. With only his own abandoned script
for Lorna Doone to fall back on, Houseman told Koch to
continue adapting the Wells fantasy. He joined Koch and
Froelick and they worked on the script throughout the
night. On Wednesday night, the first draft was finished
on schedule.
On Thursday, associate producer Paul Stewart held a cast
reading of the script, with Koch and Houseman making
necessary changes. That afternoon, Stewart made an
acetate recording, with no music or sound effects.
Welles, immersed in rehearsing the Mercury stage
production of Danton's Death scheduled to open the
following week, played the record at an editorial
meeting that night in his suite at the St. Regis Hotel.
After hearing "Air Raid" on the Columbia Workshop
earlier that same evening, Welles viewed the script as
dull. He stressed the importance of inserting news
flashes and eyewitness accounts into the script to
create a sense of urgency and excitement.
Houseman, Koch, and Stewart reworked the script that
night, increasing the number of news bulletins and using
the names of real places and people whenever possible.
Friday afternoon, the script was sent to Davidson
Taylor, executive producer for CBS, and the network
legal department. Their response was that the script was
'too' credible and its realism had to be toned down. As
using the names of actual institutions could be
actionable, CBS insisted upon some 28 changes in
phrasing.
"Under protest and with a deep sense of grievance we
changed the Hotel Biltmore to a nonexistent Park Plaza,
Trans-America to Inter-Continent, the Columbia
Broadcasting Building to Broadcasting Building,"
Houseman wrote. "The United States Weather Bureau in
Washington, D.C." was changed to "The Government Weather
Bureau", "Princeton University Observatory" to
"Princeton Observatory", "McGill University" in Montreal
to "Macmillan University" in Toronto, "New Jersey
National Guard" to "State Militia", "United States
Signal Corps" to "Signal Corps", "Langley Field" to "Langham
Field", and "St. Patrick's Cathedral" to "the
cathedral".
On Saturday, Stewart rehearsed the show with the sound
effects team, giving special attention to crowd scenes,
the echo of cannon fire, and the sound of the boat horns
in New York Harbor.
Early Sunday afternoon, Bernard Herrmann and his
orchestra arrived in the studio, where Welles had taken
over production of that evening's program.
To create the role of reporter Carl Phillips, actor
Frank Readick went to the record library and played the
recording of Herbert Morrison's radio report of the
Hindenburg disaster over and over. Working with
Bernard Herrmann and the orchestra that had to sound
like a dance band fell to Paul Stewart, the person
Welles would later credit as being largely responsible
for the quality of "The War of the Worlds" broadcast.
Welles wanted the music to play for unbearably long
stretches of time. The studio's emergency fill-in, a
solo piano playing Debussy and Chopin, was heard several
times. "As it played on and on," Houseman wrote, "its
effect became increasingly sinister—a thin band of
suspense stretched almost beyond endurance. That piano
was the neatest trick of the show."
Dress rehearsal was scheduled for 6 pm.
"Our actual broadcasting time, from the first mention of
the meteorites to the fall of New York City, was less
than forty minutes," wrote Houseman. "During that time,
men travelled long distances, large bodies of troops
were mobilized, cabinet meetings were held, savage
battles fought on land and in the air. And millions of
people accepted it—emotionally if not logically.
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