R.H. Greene's new documentary, "War of the Welles," shows how Orson Welles got to "The War of the Worlds," and says it really did panic millions of listeners.
New 'War of the Worlds' documentary — 'War of the Welles' — goes behind the scenes of the 1938 radio classic
A new KPCC radio documentary, "War of the Welles," by R.H. Greene, goes behind the scenes of the famous 1938 CBS radio broadcast of Orson Welles' and the Mercury Theatre's "War of the Worlds" on the night before Halloween — radio so realistic it panicked listeners who believed the Martians really were invading New Jersey.
"War of the Welles" is introduced by "Star Trek" actor George Takei and will air on KPCC's "Off-Ramp" Saturday, with a repeat Sunday. Among the highlights:
- Contrary to some accounts that only a few hundred or thousand listeners were spooked by the broadcast, some analyses figure that as many as 1.7 million listeners believed the invasion was really happening.
According to a CBS survey, 63 percent of listeners who tuned in late and missed the disclaimer at the top of the show believed it to be true. Sociologist Hadley Cantril, the sociologist who wrote the 1940 book “The Invasion From Mars,” analyzed two contemporaneous polls and found that of the 6 million people who heard the broadcast, 1.7 million believed it was real, 1.2 million were frightened by it, and (he speculates) 500,000 were too embarrassed to admit they were frightened by a radio show.
- Welles played coy for years about whether he meant to incite panic. But he was more forthright remembering events for his BBC TV series "Orson Welles' Sketchbook" in 1955.
“I had no idea that I’d suddenly become a national event," he said then. "We didn’t know it wasn’t a few people, [that] it was in fact nationwide.”
- "Casablanca" screenwriter Howard Koch wrote the radio script for “The War of the Worlds” — based on the classic 1898 SF novel by British author H.G. Wells — in less than a week. In the Americanized version of the story, Martians land in the Garden State. How did Koch decide on the landing spot?
“I stopped at a gas station, they gave me a Jersey map, and I spread the map out, closed my eyes, put the pencil down, landed on Grover’s Mills. Well, I thought, it has a good sound. American, and real.” -- Howard Koch, NPR, 1988.
- Frank Readick, the actor who played Carl Phillips, the newsman who witnesses the Martians' attack, based his histrionic line-readings on the by-now familiar description of the Hindenburg airship disaster, which had taken place only a year and half earlier, also in New Jersey.
While almost every other byproduct of the Golden Age of Radio has been forgotten, "The War of the Worlds," is still remembered 75 years later.
If you watch the news conference Welles held on Halloween in 1938, you can hear that the broadcast's success seems to have scared even Welles. His magnificent voice is gone; he sounds like an adenoidal teenager.
Orson Welles on the panic from his "War of the Worlds" broadcast
In "War of the Welles," Greene shows how Welles got to this point. "The Fall of the City," a radio drama by Archibald MacLeish, was Welles' second credited radio role. CBS founder William Paley wrote, "The play made Orson Welles an overnight star."
Welles apocalyptic description of the slow, armored approach of “The Fall of the City’s” fascist superman, eerily anticipates the Mercury's reportage of Martian death machines. - R.H. Greene, "War of the Welles"
Welles worked closely on stage and radio with producer John Houseman. Mercury actress Geraldine Fitzgerald on their famed co-dependency:
“(Orson) was like a busted water main, his talent. It went all over the streets and down alleys, and filled up holes and made shapes and patterns. Then, John comes along and then with buckets and jugs and pots and pans he collects all this wonderful, wonderful material, and allows it to have more shape than perhaps Orson would have bothered to give it. But he had too much talent to be careful with it.” --Frank Beacham's audio documentary “Theatre of the Imagination,” 1988
The original "War of the Worlds," introduced by George Takei, will be broadcast on KPCC at 8 p.m., on Wednesday, Oct. 30.
Greene and KPCC's John Rabe will host a listening party for the original broadcast in the Crawford Family Forum at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 30.
(R.H. Greene narrating "War of the Welles" at the Mohn Broadcast Center. Credit: John Rabe)
"War of the Welles," a 75th anniversary celebration of the Orson Welles/Mercury Theatre broadcast of "The War of the Worlds," was written, directed, edited and narrated by R. H. Greene, with help from Alana Rinicella; and produced by R. H. Greene and John Rabe for Southern California Public Radio. It was introduced by George Takei. Re-enactments were read by Tim Cogshill, Darroch Greer, Alana Rinicella, and John Rabe. Engineering help from SCPR's Dave McKeever and Doug Gerry, and NPR's New York bureau.
'The War of the Worlds' at 75: Listen to it again on KPCC along with George Takei
Orson Welles' classic science fiction radio broadcast “The War of the Worlds” turns 75 this year, and to celebrate, KPCC will re-air the show and distribute it internationally along with a companion documentary, introduced by "Star Trek" actor and sci-fi icon George Takei, just before Halloween.
The show — based on H.G. Wells' 1898 novel — will air at 8p.m. Oct. 30 on KPCC, as well as on the BBC and Minnesota Public Radio, among other broadcast entities. You can also attend a companion live event in KPCC's Crawford Family Forum that night or view it on streaming video here on KPCC.org.
It's been nearly eight decades since the Oct. 30, 1938, airing of "War of the Worlds" to millions of listeners on the CBS radio network, which famously panicked audiences into believing Martians were actually invading the town of Grover's Mill, N.J.
Now — as stock markets move by fake Tweets, viewers flock to TV shows that re-imagine current events and breaking news alerts ping on all platforms — the lessons of the hysterical reaction to the broadcast remain vital.
“I was only 1 when the ‘War of the Worlds’ was first broadcast,” recalls Takei, a Japanese-American who was interned with his family during World War II. “But I remember my parents and their friends talking about it."
Takei added: "When you think about how many Americans honestly believed the Martians were invading, it’s not hard to understand why Americans would – just a few years later – be so paranoid as to think Japanese-American citizens — who’d lived here for generations — could suddenly become America’s enemy simply because they happened to look like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor.”
While many listeners to "War of the Worlds" thought it chronicled an actual invasion, many others simply drew closer to their radios to hear a chilling tale told with all the realism of a live news event. It had never been done before, and “The War of the Worlds” changed mass media forever. In many ways, it was the blueprint for Welles’ “Citizen Kane,” released three years later.
Screenwriter Howard Koch (“Casablanca”) adapted Wells’ novel for the Mercury Theatre production. Many members of the Mercury Theatre made significant contributions to the broadcast, but only Orson Welles – known chiefly until then as the voice of “The Shadow” – could pull it all together, like a great conductor leading an orchestra.
As a companion to “The War of the Worlds,” KPCC is also distributing a new documentary on the radio production, “War of the Welles,” by R.H. Greene.
Greene’s work includes “Airborne: A Life in Radio with Orson Welles,” the first radio documentary to assess Welles’ full radio career. With new interviews — including Welles expert Leonard Maltin — plus archival sound from his vast collection, “War of the Welles,” which will be broadcast Saturday, October 26 and Sunday, October 27, in lieu of Off-Ramp, tells the backstory of “The War of the Worlds,” shows why it works so effectively as a radio show, and debunks myths about the production.
In "War of the Welles," Greene writes, “We remain fascinated not only because of the broadcast's dramatic impact, but because of the story behind the story. By sending terrified masses into the streets convinced a Martian attack had been launched, the Mercury ‘War of the Worlds’ taught us something deeply disturbing about ourselves: That no matter how sophisticated the tools of communication become, the trust we place in them, and the limitations of human perception, can make people susceptible to believing just about anything.”
Both the 1938 rebroadcast and "The War of the Welles" are being distributed through PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, free of charge to any station - public or commercial.
SCPR's 75th anniversary celebration of the broadcast, including the rebroadcast, "War of the Welles," and our Crawford Family Forum event, is produced by KPCC's John Rabe, host of KPCC's Off-Ramp program and producer of the NPR/ARW documentary "Walking Out of History," which told the story of Ernest Shackleton's "Endurance" voyage.
(Pierre Guillaud/AFP/Getty Images)