The War of the Worlds (MERC)

The most famous radio show of all time; Mars invades New Jersey.

As a huge fan of the novel and not much of a fan of Orson Welles, it's tough for me to really love this show. It is undeniably clever in its repurposing of H.G. Wells' concept. Though the adaptation loses all of the subtlety and point of the original, it creates something new, a simulated news-bulletin format that promotes immersion and makes the drama more believable.

The program is famous for allegedly having created a mass panic, though scholars question how much of this real and how much of it was fabricated sensationalism to promote the show and Welles himself. Due to a general lack of commercials and the fact that the first two-thirds of the show was framed as live broadcasts, at least a few individuals were taken in. If you don't listen closely you won't notice some of the impossible shifts in time and geography that expose the gag.

According to some sources, there was widespread outrage in the media following the program. The news-bulletin format was described as deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast and calls for regulation by the Federal Communications Commission.

Mercury Theatre #17
The War of the Worlds
30 October 1938
19381030(017)_MERC_WarOfTheWorlds.mp3
CBS net. Orson Welles (producer, director, host, performer), Dan Seymour (announcer), H. G. Wells (author), Howard Koch (adaptor), Paul Stewart (associate producer, adaptor, performer: doubles), Frank Readick (doubles), John Houseman (producer, adaptor, script editor), Bernard Herrmann (composer, conductor), Kenny Delmar (quadruples), Ray Collins (triples), Davidson Taylor (production supervisor), Ora Nichols (sound effects), Ray Kremer (sound effects), Jim Rogan (sound effects), John Dietz (sound engineer), Carl Frank (doubles), Richard Wilson (triples), William Alland (doubles), Stefan Schnabel, William Herz, Howard Smith.

Herbert George Wells