New York Times headline from October 31, 1938
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 actor and future filmmaker Orson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wells's 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), adding to the program's 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 and panic by certain listeners who believed the events described
in the program were real. 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. The
episode secured Welles's fame.
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