The War of the Worlds

big one.

We are, of course, talking about the War of the Worlds.

The legendary night broadcasting.

It is.

It makes me wonder about the nature of creative constraints.

How do you mean?

We look back at the War of the Worlds as this calculated masterpiece, but it sounds like they were just frantically bailing water to keep the ship from sinking.

They definitely were.

On October 30, 1938, American history was changed forever by a Halloween prank.

Most of the six million people who tuned in to 23-year-old Orson Welles' radio adaptation of the H.G. Wells sci-fi classic War of the Worlds realized that it was simply an audio drama.

However, because of the realistic news bulletin format, many thousands of listeners believed that aliens had actually landed in the small town of Grovers Mill, New Jersey.

Even in those days before Facebook and Twitter, the reaction was immediate.

Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained.

Coming up in this episode, I want to share with you what made me fall in love with audio drama in the first place, and what in no small part has influenced my life and career direction, eventually bringing me here to Weird Darkness.

The 1938 radio drama of War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, as performed by Mercury Radio Theatre and Orson Welles.

It's a classic that is still worth listening to all these years later.

in the macabre.

The War of the Worlds by H. G.

Wells Book 1.

The Coming of the Martians Chapter 1.

But I'm sure there was probably a lot more than that.

But no one thought to check the listings for that night, or they missed the intro that said it was a dramatization of the War of the Worlds.

I mean, they already knew what was on, pretty much like we do.

We know what's on, what time, what channel.

I tried to get the key parts, the most important parts that I could, um, But again, there's a lot more to tell on this.

We could only get so much in, folks.

So let's move on to the War of the Worlds, the 1953 film, which is one of my favorite films.

It is good.

as announcer Dan Seymour started the weekly radio broadcast of the Mercury Theater across the airwaves.

The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater on the air in The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

Ladies and gentlemen, the director of the Mercury Theater and star of these broadcasts, Orson Welles.

When Orson Welles took the microphone, he was a young man on the edge of greatness, already wearing the title of boy genius.

We take you now to Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza in downtown New York, where you will be entertained by the music of Raymond Raquello and his orchestra.

© BF-WATCH TV 2021

Now, for those who listened to the program from the beginning, it should have been quite clear that it was a dramatization of a science fiction work, The War of the Worlds.

Possibly.

But the thing was, so in 1953, the film they made of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, which was based on this 1897 novel.

At the end of the film, they got a newsreel shot of the Grumman flying wing.

And that's the craft that dropped the atomic bomb on the Martians in the film.

Start your free trial today.

Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater on the Air in The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

Welcome and thanks for joining me today.

It's Halloween in America today, and I'm going to share a radio program that frightened thousands of people.

The War of the Worlds was a Halloween episode of the radio series The Mercury Theater on the Air.

It was directed and narrated by Orson Welles as an adaptation of H.G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds, 1898.

And that was performed and broadcast live at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on October 30, 1938, over the CBS radio network.

The episode is famous for inciting a panic, convincing some members of the listening audience that a Martian invasion was taking place, and it just scared the hell out of them.

Hear what that was next.

The Columbia Broadcasting System and affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater on the air in The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

Ah, radio of past.

This particular broadcast, by the way, that happened today in 1938.

The broadcast, The War of the Worlds, okay? 23-year-old Orson Welles broadcast a fictional alien invasion over, yes, CBS radio.

This was in 1938, friends.

CBS radio was here even then.