It Has Come to My Attention: The War of the Worlds

The War of the Worlds is an episode of the American radio drama anthology series The 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 (1898).

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 had believed the events described in the program were real. The program's news-bulletin format was described as cruelly deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast. Despite these complaints--or perhaps in part because of them--the episode secured Welles' fame as a dramatist.

Kevin Lauderdale returns with an all new episode.  There have been many other productions of Welles' infamous broadcast since then and Kevin wants to bring a few of them, including the Jeff Wayne musical, to your attention.

 

Links of Interest

The Complete War of The Worlds by Brian Holmsten

War of the Worlds CD by Jeff Wayne

Jeff Wayne's Musical Version Of The War Of The Worlds, The New Generation

Jeff Wayne's Musical Version Of The War Of The Worlds (mp3)

 

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