When 23 year-old genius and enfant terrible Orson Welles broadcast his Halloween eve radio adaptation of H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds" in 1938, as we all know, it resulted in scandal and panic. There have been plenty of urban legends and misconceptions relating the broadcast including beliefs that many people committed suicide but this is just one exaggeration relating to one of the most infamous radio broadcasts in history. Welles, who was the director of the acclaimed Mercury Theatre weekly radio program that he founded with John Houseman, had eschewed the highbrow fare in favor of playfully presenting a modern spin on H.G. Wells's novel that had been written and set in the Victorian era. His reluctant script writer Howard Koch randomly chose an innocuous small town, Grover's Mill, New Jersey, to replace the London setting of the book. Welles listened to the finished recording of the program and made a last minute decision to liven it up by presenting it in the format of what today would be called a "breaking news" story. Cleverly presenting the show as a standard musical program, Welles had intermittent bulletins about large explosions on Mars taking place. Ultimately, the bulletins announced that Martians had landed in New Jersey and were decimating local military forces, using high powered ray guns as weapons. This 2013 PBS broadcast of "American Experience" looks at the unintended consequences of the broadcast, separating fact from fiction. For example, Welles did have an introduction stating that the program was a fictional radio play. However, many listeners were tuned into another program to hear the popular ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his legendary "partner", Charlie McCarthy. When Bergen's act ended, listeners started to engage in channel-surfing and came upon the sensational broadcast, having missed the introduction. Before long, many people did indeed panic. Police stations were flooded with calls from locals all across the nation. Some people packed their belongings and fled to isolated areas, while others sought ways to enlist in the battle against the Martians. (The program uses actors to verbalize actual interviews of everyday people who spoke to the press about their own personal experiences.)
What the "American Experience" episode clarifies is that not everyone was snookered. People who were aware of the joke wrote and called the network to praise Welles, but others were outraged about being made to look foolish. While the show was on the air, Welles was forced to interrupt the program with a reminder that it was all a work of fiction, but by then many people had tuned out and run for the hills. Some filed lawsuits against Welles and CBS, the network that broadcast the show. As the program points out, Welles pretended to be contrite and made a public apology, even though he privately delighted in having gained international recognition that he correctly assumed would boost his career. (Indeed, Hollywood soon beckoned.) One commentator says that Welles's apology was, in fact, the greatest performance of his career. In the end, none of the lawsuits against Welles or CBS succeeded and the government only issued a rule that prohibited any future broadcast from simulating an actual news bulletin.Welles was catapulted to international fame and even got his first sponsor for future broadcasts.The rest, as they say, is history- and Welles would continue to antagonize benefactors who employed him throughout his life.
The excellent 53-miinute "American Experience" episode provides excerpts from the broadcasts, comments from media historians and a wealth of fascinating photos consisting of Welles at work in the studio and front pages from the national newspapers that covered the scandal with predictable prominence.
It's easy in the modern era to smirk at what influential columnist Dorothy Thompson called the "incredible stupidity" of the American people in her column that defended Welles and his artistic vision. However, the show puts in context the fact that in those dark days of the late 1930s, the radio was a virtual god in most households, dispensing reliable and accurate information. The news was often grim but it was honest. An American public had been through almost decade of financial devastation from the Great Depression. Many millions were still out of work, life savings were lost and life for many seemed hopeless. In the midst of all this, Americans looked with great concern on alarming world events: Hitler's ever-expanding territorial ambitions and the correct suspicion that the accommodation of the Allies wouldn't satiate him for long; the rise of fascist Italy and the war-mongering gains of a militaristic Japan, all of which pointed to the seeming inevitability of second world war. Before modern day America judges the gullibility of a previous generation, consider that as you are reading this, the nation is reeling from thousands of deaths a week from the worst pandemic in a hundred years. Yet, there are substantial numbers of people who continue to insist that it's all a hoax. Now that is "incredible stupidity".
The program is available for streaming on Amazon and can be viewed for free by Amazon Prime members.