Showing posts with label War of The Worlds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label War of The Worlds. Show all posts
Saturday, November 01, 2014
War of The Worlds –Original Radio Broadcast | 76th Anniversary – VIDCAST
+10-31-08.jpg "Nation is Swept By Hysteria Over 'Martian Invasion'")
The War of the Worlds was an episode of the American radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on October 30, 1938 and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated by Orson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds.
The first two thirds of the 60-minute broadcast were presented as a series of simulated "news bulletins", which suggested to many listeners that an actual alien invasion by Martians was currently in progress. Compounding the issue was the fact that the Mercury Theatre on the Air was a 'sustaining show' (it ran without commercial breaks), thus adding to the program's quality of realism.
Although there were sensationalist accounts in the press about a supposed panic in response to the broadcast, the precise extent of listener response has been debated. In the days following the adaptation, however, there was widespread outrage. The program's news-bulletin format was decried as cruelly deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast, but the episode secured Orson Welles' fame. . . .
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
The Myth of the War of the Worlds Panic
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By Jefferson Pooley and Michael Socolow
www.slate.com
10-28-13
Orson Welles’ infamous 1938 radio program did not touch off nationwide hysteria. Why does the legend persist?
Wednesday marks the 75th anniversary of Orson Welles’ electrifying War of the Worlds broadcast, in which the Mercury Theatre on the Air enacted a Martian invasion of Earth. “Upwards of a million people, [were] convinced, if only briefly, that the United States was being laid waste by alien invaders,” narrator Oliver Platt informs us in the new PBS documentary commemorating the program. The panic inspired by Welles made War of the Worlds perhaps the most notorious event in American broadcast history.
That’s the story you already know—it’s the narrative widely reprinted in academic textbooks and popular histories. With actors dramatizing the reaction of frightened audience members (based on contemporaneous letters), the new documentary, part of PBS’s American Experience series, reinforces the notion that naïve Americans were terrorized by their radios back in 1938. So did this weekend’s episode of NPR’s Radiolab, which opened with the assertion that on Oct. 30, 1938, “The United States experienced a kind of mass hysteria that we’ve never seen before.”
There’s only one problem: The supposed panic was so tiny as to be practically immeasurable on the night of the broadcast. Despite repeated assertions to the contrary in the PBS and NPR programs, almost nobody was fooled by Welles’ broadcast. . . .
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Radio Terror Brings Panic in All Areas
10-31-1938
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By The Daily Times News 10-31-1938
Friday, October 31, 2008
70 Years Ago Today: Orson Welles Presented H.G. Wells, "War of The Worlds"
By Orson Welles
The Mercury Theatre on the Air
CBS Radio
10-31-1938
Other panel members included:
Luis W. Alvarez - physicist (and later, a Nobel Prize winner), University of California, Berkeley
Samuel A. Goudsmit - Brookhaven National Laboratories physicist
Thornton L. Page - astrophysicist, deputy director of the Operations Research Office, Johns Hopkins University.
Lloyd V. Berkner - physicist, Carnegie Institution
There were additional “associate panel members” which included Dr. J. Allen Hynek.
Ironically, Welles’ version of War of The Worlds, or more accurately the panic that ensued figured prominently in the recommendations by the panel to begin a “debunking campaign” (re UFO reports) which some believe continues to this day! The panel suggested a PR campaign, using psychiatrists, astronomers and assorted celebrities to significantly reduce public interest in UFO's. It was also recommended that the mass media be used for the debunking, including influential media giants like Walt Disney Corporation—FW.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Nation is Swept By Hysteria Over 'Martian Invasion'
10-31-1938
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By The Daily Times News
10-31-1938
10-31-1938