“…you don’t play
murder with soft words.” — Orson Welles, 31 October 1938
Tomorrow will be the 76th anniversary of the
infamous The Mercury Theatre's dramatization of H.G. Wells’s story War of the Worlds. Social scientists and historians are
still studying and postulating on what exactly happened in its aftermath and
its meaning when it comes to mass hysteria.
A bit of background: the
world was on tenterhooks on 30 October 1938.
Nazi saber rattling had reached fever pitch. People over the world were focused on a
crisis in Munich. Everybody was worried.
Radio broadcasts had only recently begun interrupting normal
programming to report what we would call “breaking news.” Having just endured the privation and pain of
the Great Depression, listeners across the United States were just getting used
to sudden, staccato reports of dire happenings in Europe.
The American radio audience was primed for bad news
Then came CBS's broadcast of War of the Worlds.
And there is no doubt that the writer Howard E. Koch, the
producer John Houseman, and the director Orson Welles sought to capitalize on
prevailing conditions to ramp up the impact of their little Halloween
hoax. They used the names of actual
people and told a story that sounded (sort of) like a report of actual, ongoing
events.
On the other hand, they did announce—at the beginning, twice
during the course of the broadcast, and at its end—that they were acting out a
play based on H.G. Wells’s fiction.
Also, given the supposed “real-time” nature of the broadcast, the
willing suspension of disbelief would have to have been at higher than fever
pitch for people to believe, even in those simpler times, that all the events
reported could have taken place in 62 minutes.
Certain habits of radio listeners played into their
gullibility. The Mercury Theatre ordinarily
garnered only about two percent of the radio audience. The
Chase and Sanborn Hour, starring Edgar Bergen got the big bulk of the
eardrums. But about twelve minutes into
that hyper-popular variety show—that featured a ventriloquist on the radio, by
the way—they announced a musical performance by a rather dull ensemble. Quite a few people got up from their easy chairs
and twisted their dials to CBS just in time to catch the scary part of the
Mercury broadcast, having missed the disclaimer at the beginning. The dimmer brains among those latecomers were
the ones who were duped into thinking they
were listening to an actual report. Some
of them raised a ruckus.
Pretty much immediately after the show signed off the air,
the cops invaded the studio, network employees collected all the scripts and
records, and the print press corps took over the story. The next day, which was Halloween, newspapers
across the country blared headlines about how the Mercury show had caused
widespread panic. And, on that October
31st, Orson Welles was forced to meet reporters and apologize to the
nation for its overreaction to his joke.
For a long while people believed the reports of widespread
panic in the wake of the show. Recent
analysis, however, has come to a different conclusion. American University media historian W. Joseph Campbell and many sociologists have
reinvestigated actual events and found no evidence of panicked crowds in the
streets. Slate Magazine ran an article last year on the 75th
anniversary that concluded, “Almost no one was fooled.”
So what were all those news headlines about? Well, you see, in the 1930’s a real war raged
between newspapers and radio for dominance in news reporting and in garnering
the bulk of advertising dollars. In an
attempt to discredit radio, newspapers greatly exaggerated the dimensions of
public’s panic. It seems now that all those banner headlines were really meant
to characterize radio news as an unreliable upstart medium.
Orson Welles took the blame.
For your listening pleasure, here is a link to the actual
broadcast:
And here is the adorable young Orson apologizing on the
following day:
Happy Halloween from---
Annamaria Alfieri
Little Orson looks like he's saying, " But, Ma, it wasn't ME! You gotta blame the other guy!" tstraw
ReplyDeleteRight!, Thelma. come to think of it, it often looked at way throughout his life.
DeleteOh, I love that quote! “…you don’t play murder with soft words.” I am having that made up for a framed picture on my office wall. I used to work in radio, and so many years after, what we could and could not do on the air was still being shaped by the War of the Worlds. Happy Halloween!
ReplyDeleteI am sure those rules are still in place, Sheila, even though the 1938 panic is largely disproven at this point. Broadcasts were re-enacted where the panic was far more real, notably in Ecuador in the 70's. Go figure!
DeleteAnd there was an interesting article in the Times this morning about the putting together of Welles' last film, "The Other Side of the Wind." What a project! It will come out next year to mark the centenary of his birth
ReplyDeleteSteph
Steph, what good news. I am huge fan of Welles. I'll watch for it with glee.
DeleteThere's a wonderful story about Welles and Winston Churchill. They were staying at the same hotel in Italy. Welles was (as always) trying to get backing for a film. Welles and his prospective patron were in the surf as was Churchill. Churchill nodded at Welles and the patron was clearly impressed. So later, Welles thanks Churchill for acknowledging him and explains that that got him some money for the film. Sometime later the patron and Welles start to walk past Churchill in the dining room at which point, Churchill stands, looks at Welles, and bows.
ReplyDeleteSteph
How great! Seriously important people that they were, they both kept their inner imp alive!
DeleteModern scholarship about how there was no panic over this show is the bunk. My parents were living in an apartment in Michigan City, Indiana at the time, a long way from Grover's Mill. Their next-door neighbors went berserk. My dad tried to tell them it was nothing but a radio show, but these folks weren't having any. They threw all their valuables in the Chevy and roared off to California. And they weren't alone.
ReplyDeleteKate, my father had a coworker in NJ who made it to the Canadian border before he found out it was a hoax. My father laughed his head off every time he told that story. He, like your parents, thought the over-reactors were a laughable lot. I believe the evidence. There are no police reports of panicked mobs in the streets. There were people who went overboard, but since only 2% of the radio listening audience was even tuned in, the modern investigators seem to have the data on their side. The newspapers blew it all out of proportion. At least I believe so.
DeleteI'm concerned people may have a similar reaction to all the conflicting advice and not-always-accurate facts re ebola... today... where is that King Czar?? Did he ever materialize??? tjs
ReplyDelete