You know how sometimes they make movies based on books so you can just watch the movie and pretend you know what you're talking about when someone mentions the book? Or you can even show the movie to your kids because it's completely the same as reading the story?
Not that I've ever done that, but I've heard of some careless, neglectful parents who do.
Well, back in the days when movie tickets cost a nickel and if you wanted to see the movie again you had to either pay another nickel or hide under the seats until the lights went back down and it was pointless to wait for the movie to come out on video because there was no such thing as video and recording a movie off of a television broadcast wasn't a reliable alternative since nobody owned televisions, you couldn't simply show your kids the movie to get them to stop nagging you to read them the story. You might, however, be able to find stories on the radio (radio: it's that thing in the car dashboard that you can use to tune in to baseball games when you're not texting, emailing, shaving or snacking).
It just so happens that Orson Welles (remember him? Citizen Kane? any of this ringing a bell?) operated this intellectualistic theater company that broadcast productions on CBS radio. One Sunday night, just before Halloween 1938, Orson and his colleagues broadcast a play based on H.G. Wells's (no relation) War of the Worlds, updated to present day and integrated into a seemingly innocuous fake ballroom music program. The music was interrupted by fake news bulletins reporting the discovery of strange metal cylinders in New Jersey (of all places) and the subsequent rampage of Martians, until some mysterious virus brought them down in a way mere humans couldn't because Jeff Goldblum hadn't even been born yet.
Well. Even though the program was introduced by an announcement that it was just a dramatization... and even though this announcement was repeated several times throughout the show... and even though radio listings in the newspaper for that evening announced an hour-long radio play called War of the Worlds...
People across the country went nuts.
Here's a long excerpt from a much longer article that appeared in the New York Times on October 31, 1938.
"A wave of mass hysteria seized thousands of radio listeners... last night when a broadcast of a dramatization of H. G. Wells's fantasy, "The War of the Worlds," led thousands to believe that an interplanetary conflict had started with invading Martians spreading wide death and destruction in New Jersey and New York.
The broadcast... disrupted households, interrupted religious services, created traffic jams and clogged communications systems... At least a score of adults required medical treatment for shock and hysteria.
In Newark, in a single block… more than twenty families rushed out of their houses with wet handkerchiefs and towels over their faces to flee from what they believed was to be a gas raid…
Throughout New York families left their homes, some to flee to near-by parks. Thousands of persons called the police, newspapers and radio stations… seeking advice on protective measures against the raids.
The radio play, as presented, was to simulate a regular radio program with a "break-in" for the material of the play. The radio listeners, apparently, missed or did not listen to the introduction, which was: "The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air in `The War of the Worlds' by H. G. Wells."
They also failed to associate the program with the newspaper listening of the program, announced as "Today: 8:00-9:00--Play: H. G. Wells's `War of the Worlds'--WABC." They ignored three additional announcements made during the broadcast emphasizing its fictional nature.
Mr. Welles opened the program with a description of the series of which it is a part. The simulated program began... An announcer remarked that the program would be continued from a hotel, with dance music. For a few moments a dance program was given in the usual manner. Then there was a "break-in" with a "flash" about a professor at an observatory noting a series of gas explosions on the planet Mars.
News bulletins and scene broadcasts followed, reporting… the landing of a "meteor" near Princeton N. J., "killing" 1,500 persons, the discovery that the "meteor" was a "metal cylinder" containing strange creatures from Mars armed with "death rays"…
Telephone lines were tied up with calls from listeners or persons who had heard of the broadcasts. Many sought first to verify the reports. But large numbers, obviously in a state of terror, asked how they could follow the broadcast's advice and flee from the city, whether they would be safer in the "gas raid" in the cellar or on the roof, how they could safeguard their children…"
Tee hee.
Seventy years later it is kind of funny, although I definitely would have been among the first to run screaming from the room.
Anyway -- it just so happened that I own a recording of the original radio broadcast of War of the Worlds. It looks like this:
I don't know why I own this record. I bought it a long time ago, probably around the same time I bought the soundtrack to Star Wars. Even though I've forgotten why I own it, though, I remembered that I own it, and even where it was, and I showed it to Cupcake and then took her to my parents' house so she could listen to the record on a real turntable, since I haven't had one of those for years.
Frankly, she was more interested in operating the turntable and asking questions about records (what do you mean you have to turn it over?) than listening to the recording, but I feel I've done my job and I'm finished with War of the Worlds in any form.
When the group chooses Moby Dick, I'm off duty.
