The Panic of 1938

The year is 1938, the night October 30th, and millions in America are sitting around their Radio. Sunday evenings at 8:00 PM was prime time in the Golden age of Radio. A young 23-year-old radio announcer by the name of Orson Welles decides to update H.G. Wells’ 19th- century science fiction novel “War of The Worlds” for national radio. Although young, Orson Welles had been in radio for several years prior to this, and was well known by listeners as the voice of the “The Shadow.”

Orson did not know his realistic radio dramatization of a Martian invasion of Earth would cause a great panic across America. The show starts off:

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. Wells.”

Now remember I said that 8:00 PM was prime time, well most Americans were listening to another popular show at 8:00 PM called “Charlie McCarthy,” on NBC, and only tuned in to CBS at 8:12 PM and by then the story of the Martian invasion was underway.

I can see how this all turned out the way it did. At first Welles introduces his radio play with a spoken intro. A weather report follows, and 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.” The music kept playing and then an announcer breaks in with this report: “Professor Farrell of the Mount Jenning Observatory” had detected explosions on the planet Mars. Music returns and again interrupted with an alert announcing that a large meteor had crashed into a farmer’s field in Grovers Mills New Jersey. He then begins to describe a Martian emerging from a “Martian cylinder.”

“Good heavens,” he declared, “something’s wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now here’s another and another one and another one. They look like tentacles to me … I can see the thing’s body now. It’s large, large as a bear. It glistens like wet leather. But that face, it …it … ladies and gentlemen, it’s indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it, it’s so awful. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is kind of V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate.”

The announcer goes on to say that the Martians mounted walking war machines and fired “heat-ray” weapons at the puny humans gathered around the crash site. 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. Soon “Martian cylinders” landed in Chicago and St. Louis.

The radio play was extremely realistic. Welles used great sound effects and his actors put on a show as terrified announcers and other characters. They made it sound as if this invasion was really happening. They described widespread panic, and thousands trying to flee. Little did they know that that was true.

It is said that as many as a million listeners believed that the invasion was happening. They took to the streets, jammed highways, ran away from the Martians and sought refuge. People begged police for masks to save them from toxic gas. They called the electric companies to turn off all lights so that that the Martians wouldn’t see them. One woman ran into an Indianapolis church where evening services were being held and yelled, “New York has been destroyed! It’s the end of the world! Go home and prepare to die!” It was even rumored that some committed suicide, but that was never proved.

CBS finally gets wind of the panic and Welles goes on the air to remind listeners that it was all fiction. The FCC investigated and found that no law was broken. Networks took this as a lesson in using more caution in their programming. Welles thought that his career was over, but what this actually did was get him a contract with a Hollywood studio, and in 1941 he starred, directed, wrote, and produced the greatest movie in history, “Citizen Kane.”

source: history.com

Uncategorized