The War of the Worlds is an amazing title if you want to sell your book. And The War of the Worlds did sell. Around the time Wells was working on War of the Worlds, Kurd Lasswitz was working on Auf zwei Planeten, which literally translates to On Two Planets.

The complete radio playProblems playing this file? The War of the Worlds' is an episode of the American radio drama anthology series directed and narrated by actor and future filmmaker as an adaptation of 's novel (1898). It was performed and broadcast live as a Halloween episode at 8 p.m. On Sunday, October 30, 1938, over the radio network.

The episode became famous for allegedly causing panic among its listening audience, though the scale of that panic is disputed, as the program had relatively few listeners.The one-hour program began with the theme music for the Mercury Theatre on the Air and an announcement that the evening's show was an adaptation of The War of the Worlds. Orson Welles then read a prologue which was closely based on the opening of H.

Wells' novel modified slightly to move the story's setting to 1939. For about the next twenty minutes, the broadcast was presented as a typical evening of radio programming being interrupted by a series of news bulletins. The first few news flashes occur during a presentation of 'live' music and describe a series of odd explosions observed on Mars, followed by a seemingly unrelated report of an unusual object falling on a farm in. The musical program returns briefly before being interrupted by a live report from Grover's Mill, where police officials and a crowd of curious onlookers have surrounded the strange cylindrical object that fell from the sky. The situation escalates when Martians emerge from the cylinder and attack using a heat-ray, which the panicked reporter at the scene describes until his audio feed abruptly goes dead. This is followed by a rapid series of increasingly alarming news updates detailing a devastating alien invasion taking place around the world and the futile efforts of the U.S.

Military to stop it. The first portion of the show climaxes with another live report from a Manhattan rooftop as giant Martian war machines release clouds of poisonous smoke across New York City.

The reporter on the scene describes desperate citizens fleeing as the smoke approaches his location until he coughs and falls silent, after which the program took its first break. During the second half of the show, the style shifts to a more conventional format and follows a survivor (played by Welles) dealing with the aftermath of the invasion and the ongoing Martian occupation of Earth. As in the original novel, the story ends with the discovery that the Martians have been defeated by microbes rather than by humans.Welles's 'War of the Worlds' broadcast has become famous for supposedly tricking some of its listeners into believing that a Martian invasion was actually taking place due to the 'breaking news' style of storytelling employed in the first half of the show. The illusion of realism was furthered because the Mercury Theatre on the Air was a sustaining show without commercial interruptions, and the first break in the program came almost 30 minutes after the introduction. Popular legend holds that some of the radio audience may have been listening to with and tuned in to 'The War of the Worlds' during a musical interlude, thereby missing the clear introduction indicating that the show was a drama; however, contemporary research suggests that this happened only in rare instances.: 67–69In the days after the adaptation, widespread outrage was expressed in the media.

The program's news-bulletin format was described as deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the broadcasters and calls for regulation by the. Nevertheless, the episode secured Welles's fame as a dramatist. Contents.Production 'The War of the Worlds' was the 17th episode of the CBS Radio series, which was broadcast at 8 pm ET on Sunday, October 30, 1938.: 390, 394 tells the story of a Martian invasion of Earth. The novel was adapted for radio by, who changed the primary setting from 19th-century England to the contemporary United States, with the landing point of the first Martian spacecraft changed to rural, an unincorporated village in.The program's format was a simulated live newscast of developing events. The first two-thirds of the hour-long play is a contemporary retelling of events of the novel, presented as news bulletins interrupting programs of dance music. 'I had conceived the idea of doing a radio broadcast in such a manner that a crisis would actually seem to be happening,' Welles later said, 'and would be broadcast in such a dramatized form as to appear to be a real event taking place at that time, rather than a mere radio play.'

This approach was similar to 's Broadcasting the Barricades, about a riot overtaking London, that was broadcast by the in 1926, which Welles later said gave him the idea for 'The War of the Worlds'. The sims pet stories installation code. The New York Times headline from October 31, 1938Producer John Houseman noticed that at about 8:32 pm ET, CBS supervisor Davidson Taylor received a telephone call in the control room. Taylor left the studio and returned four minutes later, 'pale as death', as he had been ordered to interrupt 'The War of the Worlds' broadcast immediately with an announcement of the program's fictional content. However, by the time the order was given, the program was already less than a minute away from its first scheduled break, and the fictional news reporter played by actor was choking on poison gas as the Martians overwhelmed New York.: 404Actor recalled sitting in the anteroom after finishing his on-air performance. 'A few policemen trickled in, then a few more.

Soon, the room was full of policemen and a massive struggle was going on between the police, page boys, and CBS executives, who were trying to prevent the cops from busting in and stopping the show. It was a show to witness.'

During the signoff theme, the phone began ringing. Houseman picked it up and the furious caller announced he was mayor of a Midwestern town, where mobs were in the streets. Houseman hung up quickly: 'For we were off the air now and the studio door had burst open.' : 404The following hours were a nightmare.

The building was suddenly full of people and dark-blue uniforms. Hustled out of the studio, we were locked into a small back office on another floor. Here we sat incommunicado while network employees were busily collecting, destroying, or locking up all scripts and records of the broadcast. Finally, the Press was let loose upon us, ravening for horror. How many deaths had we heard of? (Implying they knew of thousands.) What did we know of the fatal stampede in a Jersey hall?

(Implying it was one of many.) What traffic deaths? (The ditches must be choked with corpses.) The suicides? (Haven't you heard about the one on Riverside Drive?) It is all quite vague in my memory and quite terrible.: 404, head of, was quickly summoned to the office, 'and there bedlam reigned', he wrote:The telephone switchboard, a vast sea of light, could handle only a fraction of incoming calls. The haggard Welles sat alone and despondent.

'I'm through,' he lamented, 'washed up.' I didn't bother to reply to this highly inaccurate self-appraisal.

I was too busy writing explanations to put on the air, reassuring the audience that it was safe. I also answered my share of incessant telephone calls, many of them from as far away as the Pacific Coast.: 47–48. After 'The War of the Worlds' broadcast, photographers lay in wait for Welles at the all-night rehearsal for Danton's Death at the (October 31, 1938)Because of the crowd of newspaper reporters, photographers, and police, the cast left the CBS building by the rear entrance. Aware of the sensation the broadcast had made, but not its extent, Welles went to the Mercury Theatre where an all-night rehearsal of Danton's Death was in progress. Shortly after midnight, one of the cast, a late arrival, told Welles that news about 'The War of the Worlds' was being flashed in. They immediately left the theatre, and standing on the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street, they read the lighted bulletin that circled the New York Times building: ORSON WELLES CAUSES PANIC.: 172–173Some listeners heard only a portion of the broadcast and, in the tension and anxiety prior to, mistook it for a genuine news broadcast. Thousands of those people rushed to share the false reports with others or called CBS, newspapers, or the police to ask if the broadcast was real.

Many newspapers assumed that the large number of phone calls and the scattered reports of listeners rushing about or even fleeing their homes proved the existence of a mass panic, but such behavior was never widespread.: 82–90, 98–103Future host had announcing duties that night for CBS affiliate. As panicked listeners called the studio, Paar attempted to calm them on the phone and on air by saying: 'The world is not coming to an end. When have I ever lied to you?' When the listeners started charging Paar with 'covering up the truth', he called WGAR's station manager for help. Oblivious to the situation, the manager advised Paar to calm down and said that it was 'all a '.In a 1975 interview with radio historian, radio actor recalled being one of several actors recruited to answer phone calls at CBS's New York headquarters.In, phone lines and electricity suffered a short circuit at the Superior Portland Cement Company's. Residents were unable to call neighbors, family, or friends to calm their fears.

Reporters who heard of the coincidental blackout sent the story over the, and soon, Concrete was known worldwide. Welles takes questions from reporters at a press conference the day after the broadcast, on October 31, 1938Welles continued with the rehearsal of Danton's Death (scheduled to open November 2), leaving shortly after dawn October 31. He was operating on three hours of sleep when CBS called him to a press conference. He read a statement that was later printed in newspapers nationwide and took questions from reporters:: 173, 176 Question: Were you aware of the terror such a broadcast would stir up?Welles: Definitely not.

The technique I used was not original with me. It was not even new. I anticipated nothing unusual.

Question: Should you have toned down the language of the drama?Welles: No, you don't play murder in soft words. Question: Why was the story changed to put in names of American cities and government officers?Welles: H. Wells used real cities in Europe, and to make the play more acceptable to American listeners we used real cities in America. Of course, I'm terribly sorry now.: 174In its editions of October 31, 1938, the reported that three Arizona affiliates of CBS ( in, in and KSUN in ) had originally scheduled a delayed broadcast of 'The War of the Worlds' that night; CBS had shifted The Mercury Theater on the Air from Monday nights to Sunday nights on September 11, but the three affiliates preferred to keep the series in its original Monday slot so that it would not compete with NBC's top-rated. However, late on that Sunday night, CBS contacted KOY and KTUC owner Burridge Butler and instructed him not to air the program the following night.Within three weeks, newspapers had published at least 12,500 articles about the broadcast and its impact,: 61 but the story dropped from the front pages after a few days.

Referenced the broadcast in a speech in Munich on November 8, 1938.: 161 Welles later remarked that Hitler cited the effect of the broadcast on the American public as evidence of 'the corrupt condition and decadent state of affairs in democracy'.Bob Sanders recalled looking outside the window and seeing a traffic jam in the normally quiet, a crossroads of Cranbury and Clarksville Roads. Radio Digest reprinted the script of 'The War of the Worlds' 'as a commentary on the nervous state of our nation after the ' – prefaced by an editorial cartoon by Les Callan of The Toronto Star (February 1939)Later studies indicate that many missed the repeated notices about the broadcast being fictional, partly because The Mercury Theatre on the Air, an unsponsored CBS cultural program with a relatively small audience, ran at the same time as the NBC 's popular featuring ventriloquist. At the time, many Americans assumed that a significant number of Chase and Sanborn listeners changed stations when the first comic sketch ended and a musical number by began and then tuned in 'The War of the Worlds' after the opening announcements, but historian A. Brad Schwartz, after studying hundreds of letters from people who heard 'The War of the Worlds', as well as contemporary audience surveys, concluded that very few people frightened by Welles's broadcast had tuned out Bergen's program. 'All the hard evidence suggests that The Chase & Sanborn Hour was only a minor contributing factor to the Martian hysteria,' he wrote. In truth, there was no mass exodus from to Orson Welles that night.' : 67–69 Because the broadcast was unsponsored, Welles and company could schedule breaks at will, rather than arranging them around advertisements.

As a result, the only notices that the broadcast was fictional came at the start of the broadcast and about 40 and 55 minutes into it.A study by the discovered that fewer than one third of frightened listeners understood the invaders to be aliens; most thought that they were listening to reports of a German invasion or of a natural catastrophe.: 180, 191 'People were on edge', wrote Welles biographer. 'For the entire month prior to 'The War of the Worlds', radio had kept the American public alert to the ominous happenings throughout the world. The was at its height.

For the first time in history, the public could tune into their radios every night and hear, boot by boot, accusation by accusation, threat by threat, the rumblings that seemed inevitably leading to a world war.' : 164–165CBS News chief Paul White wrote that he was convinced that the panic induced by the broadcast was a result of the public suspense generated before the Munich Pact. 'Radio listeners had had their emotions played upon for days. Thus they believed the Welles production even though it was specifically stated that the whole thing was fiction'.: 47'The supposed panic was so tiny as to be practically immeasurable on the night of the broadcast. Radio had siphoned off advertising revenue from print during the Depression, badly damaging the newspaper industry. So the papers seized the opportunity presented by Welles’ program to discredit radio as a source of news.

The newspaper industry sensationalized the panic to prove to advertisers, and regulators, that radio management was irresponsible and not to be trusted.' Extent Historical research suggests the panic was far less widespread than newspapers had indicated at the time. 'The panic and mass hysteria so readily associated with 'The War of the Worlds' did not occur on anything approaching a nationwide dimension', media historian W. Joseph Campbell wrote in 2003. He quotes Robert E.

Bartholomew, an authority on mass panic outbreaks, as having said that 'there is a growing consensus among sociologists that the extent of the panic. Was greatly exaggerated'.That position is supported by contemporary accounts.

'In the first place, most people didn't hear the show,' said, later president of CBS. Of the nearly 2,000 letters mailed to Welles and the after 'The War of the Worlds,' currently held by the and the, roughly 27% came from frightened listeners or people who witnessed any panic. After analyzing those letters, A. Brad Schwartz concluded that although the broadcast briefly misled a significant portion of its audience, very few of those listeners fled their homes or otherwise panicked. The total number of protest letters sent to Welles and the FCC is also low in comparison with other controversial radio broadcasts of the period, further suggesting the audience was small and the fright severely limited.: 82–93Five thousand households were telephoned that night in a survey conducted by the company, the main radio ratings service at the time. Only 2% of the respondents said they were listening to the radio play, and no one stated they were listening to a news broadcast.

About 98% of respondents said they were listening to other radio programming ( The Chase and Sanborn Hour was by far the most popular program in that timeslot) or not listening to the radio at all. Further shrinking the potential audience, some CBS network affiliates, including some in large markets such as 's, had pre-empted The Mercury Theatre on the Air, in favor of local commercial programming.Ben Gross, radio editor for the, wrote in his 1954 memoir that the streets were nearly deserted as he made his way to the studio for the end of the program. Producer John Houseman reported that the Mercury Theatre staff was surprised when they were finally released from the CBS studios to find life going on as usual in the streets of New York.: 404 The writer of a letter that published later likewise recalled no panicked mobs in the capital's downtown streets at the time. 'The supposed panic was so tiny as to be practically immeasurable on the night of the broadcast', media historians Jefferson Pooley and Michael Socolow wrote in on its 75th anniversary in 2013; 'Almost nobody was fooled'.According to Campbell, the most common response said to indicate a panic was calling the local newspaper or police to confirm the story or seek additional information.

That, he writes, is an indicator that people were not generally panicking or hysterical. 'The call volume perhaps is best understood as an altogether rational response.' Some New Jersey media and law enforcement agencies received up to 40% more telephone calls than normal during the broadcast. Newspaper coverage and response. — Orson Welles to friend and mentor Roger Hill, February 22, 1983As it was late on a Sunday night in the, where the broadcast originated, few reporters and other staff were present in newsrooms. Most newspaper coverage thus took the form of stories, which were largely anecdotal aggregates of reporting from its various bureaus, giving the impression that panic had indeed been widespread. Many newspapers led with the Associated Press's story the next day.The of pointed out that the situation could have been even worse if most people had not been listening to Edgar Bergen's show: 'Charlie McCarthy last night saved the United States from a sudden and panicky death by hysteria.'

On November 2, 1938, the Australian newspaper characterized the incident as 'mass hysteria' and stated that 'never in the history of the United States had such a wave of terror and panic swept the continent'. Unnamed observers quoted by The Age commented that 'the panic could have only happened in America.' Editorialists chastised the radio industry for allowing that to happen. The response may have reflected newspaper publishers' fears that radio, to which they had lost some of the advertising revenue that was scarce enough during the, would render them obsolete. In 'The War of the Worlds,' they saw an opportunity to cast aspersions on the newer medium: 'The nation as a whole continues to face the danger of incomplete, misunderstood news over a medium which has yet to prove that it is competent to perform the news job,' wrote, the newspaper industry's trade journal.'

S papers called on broadcasters to police themselves, lest the government step in, as Iowa Senator proposed a bill that would have required all programming to be reviewed by the FCC prior to broadcast (he never actually introduced it). Others blamed the radio audience for its credulity. Noting that any intelligent listener would have realized the broadcast was fictional, the opined, 'it would be more tactful to say that some members of the radio audience are a trifle retarded mentally, and that many a program is prepared for their consumption.'

Other newspapers took pains to note that anxious listeners had called their offices to learn whether Martians were really attacking.Few contemporary accounts exist outside newspaper coverage of the mass panic and hysteria supposedly induced by the broadcast. Justin Levine, a producer at in Los Angeles, wrote in a 2000 history of the FCC's response to hoax broadcasts that 'the anecdotal nature of such reporting makes it difficult to objectively assess the true extent and intensity of the panic.

Bartholomew sees this as yet more evidence that the panic was predominantly a creation of the newspaper industry. Research In a study published in book form as The Invasion from Mars (1940), Princeton professor calculated that some six million people heard 'The War of the Worlds' broadcast.: 56 He estimated that 1.7 million listeners believed the broadcast was an actual news bulletin and, of those, 1.2 million people were frightened or disturbed.: 58 Media historians Jefferson Pooley and Michael Socolow have since concluded, however, that Cantril's study has serious flaws. Its estimate of the program's audience is more than twice as high as any other at the time. Cantril himself conceded that, but argued that unlike, his estimate had attempted to capture the significant portion of the audience that did not have home telephones at that time. Since those respondents were contacted only after the media frenzy, Cantril allowed that their recollections could have been influenced by what they read in the newspapers. Claims that Chase and Sanborn listeners, who missed the disclaimer at the beginning when they turned to CBS during a commercial break or musical performance on that show and thus mistook 'The War of the Worlds' for a real broadcast inflated the show's audience and the ensuing alleged panic, are impossible to substantiate.Apart from his admittedly-imperfect methods of estimating the audience and assessing the authenticity of their response, Pooley and Socolow found, Cantril made another error in typing audience reaction. Respondents had indicated a variety of reactions to the program, among them 'excited', 'disturbed', and 'frightened'.

However, he included all of them with 'panicked', failing to account for the possibility that despite their reaction, they were still aware the broadcast was staged. 'Those who did hear it, looked at it as a prank and accepted it that way,' recalled researcher Frank Stanton.Bartholomew grants that hundreds of thousands were frightened, but calls evidence of people taking action based on their fear 'scant' and 'anecdotal'.

Indeed, contemporary news articles indicate that police were swamped with hundreds of calls in numerous locations, but stories of people doing anything more than calling authorities involved mostly only small groups. Such stories were often reported by people who were panicking themselves.Later investigations found much of the alleged panicked responses to have been exaggerated or mistaken. Cantril's researchers found that contrary to what had been claimed, no admissions for shock were made at a Newark hospital during the broadcast; hospitals in New York City similarly reported no spike in admissions that night. A few suicide attempts seem to have been prevented when friends or family intervened, but no record of a successful one exists.

A Washington Post claim that a man died of a heart attack brought on by listening to the program could not be verified. One woman filed a lawsuit against CBS, but it was soon dismissed.The FCC also received letters from the public that advised against taking reprisals. Singer urged the commission not to overreact, as 'censorship would retard radio immeasurably.' The FCC not only chose not to punish Welles or CBS but also barred complaints about 'The War of the Worlds' from being brought up during license renewals. 's 2004 ' remains far more significant in the history of broadcast regulation than Orson Welles' trickery,' wrote media historians Jefferson Pooley and Michael Socolow. Meeting of Welles and Wells and Orson Welles met for the first and only time in late October 1940, shortly before the second anniversary of the Mercury Theatre broadcast, when they both happened to be lecturing in, Texas. On October 28, 1940, the two men visited the studios of radio for an interview by Charles C.

Shaw,: 361 who introduced them by characterizing the panic generated by 'The War of the Worlds': 'The country at large was frightened almost out of its wits'.H.G. Wells expressed good-natured skepticism about the actual extent of the panic caused by 'this sensational Halloween spree,' saying: 'Are you sure there was such a panic in America or wasn't it your Halloween fun?' Orson Welles appreciated the comment: 'I think that's the nicest thing that a man from England could say about the men from Mars. Hitler made a good deal of sport of it, you know.

It's supposed to show the corrupt condition and decadent state of affairs in democracy, that 'The War of the Worlds' went over as well as it did. I think it's very nice of Mr. Wells to say that not only I didn't mean it, but the American people didn't mean it.' When Shaw interjected that there was 'some excitement' that he did not wish to belittle, Welles asked him, 'What kind of excitement?

Wells wants to know if the excitement wasn't the same kind of excitement that we extract from a practical joke in which somebody puts a sheet over his head and says 'Boo!' I don't think anybody believes that that individual is a ghost, but we do scream and yell and rush down the hall. And that's just about what happened.' 'That's a very excellent description,' Shaw said.' You aren't quite serious in America, yet,' said Wells.

'You haven't got the war right under your chins. And the consequence is you can still play with ideas of terror and conflict. It's a natural thing to do until you're right up against it.' 'Until it ceases to be a game,' Welles said, a phrase that Wells repeated in agreement.with Nazi Germany for more than a year.Authorship As the 's second theatre season began in 1938, Orson Welles and John Houseman were unable to write the Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcasts on their own. They hired, whose experience in having a play performed by the in Chicago led him to leave his law practice and move to New York to become a writer. Koch was put to work at $50 a week, raised to $60 after he proved himself.: 390 The Mercury Theatre on the Air was a sustaining show, so in lieu of a more substantial salary, Houseman gave Koch the rights to any script he worked on.: 175–176A condensed version of the script for 'The War of the Worlds' appeared in the debut issue of Radio Digest magazine (February 1939), in an article on the broadcast that credited 'Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre players'. The complete script appeared in The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic (1940), the book publication of a study directed by psychologist.

Welles strongly protested Koch being listed as sole author since many others contributed to the script, but by the time the book was published, he had decided to end the dispute.: 176–179Welles did seek legal redress after the CBS TV series presented its top-rated broadcast, ', on September 9, 1957. Hosted by, the live presentation of 's documentary play recreated the 1938 performance of 'The War of the Worlds' in the CBS studio, using the script as a framework for a series of factual narratives about a cross-section of radio listeners. No member of the Mercury Theatre is named. The courts ruled against Welles, who was found to have abandoned any rights to the script after it was published in Cantril's book. Koch had granted CBS the right to use the script in its program.' As it developed over the years, Koch took some cash and some credit,' wrote biographer Frank Brady.

'He wrote the story of how he created the adaptation, with a copy of his script being made into a paperback book enjoying large printings and an album of the broadcast selling over 500,000 copies, part of the income also going to him as copyright owner.' : 179 Since his death in 1995, Koch's family has received from adaptations or broadcasts.The book, The Panic Broadcast, was first published in 1970. The best-selling album was a sound recording of the broadcast titled Orson Welles' War of the Worlds, 'released by arrangement with Manheim Fox Enterprises, Inc.' The source discs for the recording are unknown. Welles told Peter Bogdanovich that it was a poor-quality recording taken off the air at the time of broadcast – 'a pirated record which people have made fortunes of money and have no right to play.'

Welles received no compensation. Welles often invokes 'The War of the Worlds' as host of Who's Out There? (1975), an documentary short film by about the likelihood of life on other planetsInitially apologetic about the supposed panic his broadcast had caused (and privately fuming that newspaper reports of lawsuits were either greatly exaggerated or totally fabricated ), Welles later embraced the story as part of his personal myth. 'Houses were emptying, churches were filling up; from to there was wailing in the streets and the rending of garments,' he told years later.: 18CBS, too, found reports ultimately useful in promoting the strength of its influence. It presented a fictionalized account of the panic in ', a 1957 episode of the television series, and included it prominently in its 2003 celebrations of CBS's 75th anniversary as a television broadcaster.

'The legend of the panic,' according to Jefferson and Socolow, 'grew exponentially over the following years. It persists because it so perfectly captures our unease with the media's power over our lives.'

In 1975, aired the television movie, depicting the effect the radio drama had on the public using fictional, but typical American families of the time.The New Jersey, where is located, commemorated the 50th anniversary of the broadcast in 1988 with four days of festivities including art and planetarium shows, a panel discussion, a parade, burial of a time capsule, a dinner dance, film festivals devoted to H. Wells and Orson Welles, and the dedication of a bronze monument to the fictional Martian landings.

See also:Since the original Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast of 'The War of the Worlds', many re-airings, remakes, re-enactments, parodies, and new dramatizations have occurred. Many American radio stations, particularly those that regularly air programs, re-air the original program as a Halloween tradition. Some notable examples include:. A version produced in February 1949 by Leonardo Paez and Eduardo Alcaraz for Radio Quito in, reportedly set off panic in the city.

Police and fire brigades rushed out of town to engage the supposed alien invasion force. After it was revealed that the broadcast was fiction, the panic transformed into a riot. Hundreds attacked Radio Quito and El Comercio, a local newspaper that had participated in the hoax by publishing false reports of unidentified objects in the skies above Ecuador in the days preceding the broadcast. The riot resulted in at least seven deaths, including those of Paez's girlfriend and nephew.

Paez moved to after the incident. An aired several times between 1968 and 1975 on radio in Buffalo, New York. On the 50th anniversary of the radio play, on October 30, 1988, a remake was aired, originated by, picked up by 150 stations, produced by Judith Walcutt of Otherworld Media, recorded outdoors at, directed by, who updated Howard Koch's original script, to make it sound like modern public radio, with Koch's approval and starring,.

It was nominated for a for Best Spoken Word or Nonmusical Recording. In 1994, and station broadcast the original play before a live audience. Most of the cast for this production had appeared in one of more incarnation of, including,. De Lancie directed. It was accompanied by an original sequel called 'When Welles Collide' co-written by de Lancie and Nat Segaloff featuring the same cast as themselves. On October 30, 2002, collaborated with conservative talk-show host for a live recreation of the broadcast, using Koch's original script and airing on the channel, as well as on Beck's 100 AM/FM affiliates.

In 2003, the parties were sued for by Koch's widow, but settled under undisclosed terms. On October 30, 2013, re-aired the show, introduced by with a documentary on the 1938 radio show's production. On November 12, 2017, a new opera based on 'War of the Worlds' premiered at and outdoors in. The music was composed by, commissioned by the, directed by, and narrated by.Parodies.

In 1982 Warp of the Worlds by SHOCKWAVE, out of KFAI in Minneapolis. Written by Kate Worley and Jerry Stearns. Performed live at Minicon. They Came for The Candy, by The Radio Pirates out of Madison, WI.

A half-hour produced by Scott Dikkers and written by Jay Rath. The 2006 ' episode 'The Day the Earth Looked Stupid', released in 2006, takes the idea of the mass panic, despite it being fake, but in the end once everyone realizes it was a hoax and they won't fall for it again, it turns out that aliens have successfully invaded Earth. The episode ends with the two aliens confused as to why they weren't hailed as the liberators of Earth, after destroying.Alternative versions. The movie, set many years later, assumes the invasion was real and that Welles and the others were forced to claim the invasion was fiction.See also., a 2016 comedy film that takes place on the night of the broadcast and how a small New Jersey town reacts to what they thought was an impending alien invasionNotes. Welles said, 'I got the idea from a BBC show that had gone on the year before sic when a Catholic priest told how some Communists had seized London and a lot of people in London believed it. And I thought that'd be fun to do on a big scale, let's have it from outer space—that's how I got the idea.' .

Biographer Frank Brady claims that Welles had read the story in 1936 in, a of 'weird-dramatic and supernatural stories' that reprinted it from.: 162 However, there is no evidence that The Witch's Tales, which only ran for two issues, or its accompanying radio series ever featured The War of the Worlds.: 33References. New York:. ^ Pooley, Jefferson; Socolow, Michael (October 28, 2013).

Retrieved November 1, 2013. ^ Schwartz, A. New York: Hill and Wang. ^ Schwartz, A. Brad (May 6, 2015). Retrieved October 10, 2015.

The Museum of Hoaxes. Retrieved February 13, 2018. Wilkes, David (October 12, 2011). Retrieved February 13, 2018.

Welles, Orson, and Peter Bogdanovich,. HarperAudio, September 30, 1992. Audiotape 4A 6:25–6:42., Radio Recall, April 2013. ^, Citizen Welles: A Biography of Orson Welles.

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1989. ^, Orson Welles: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1990.

Fielding, Raymond (1978). The March of Time, 1935–1951. New York: Oxford University Press. P. 13. ^;; (1992). New York: Publishers.

Ashley, Mike; Parnell, Frank H. 'The Witch's Tales'.

In Tymn, Marshall B.; Ashley, Mike (eds.). Science fiction, fantasy, and weird fiction magazines. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.

Pp. 742–743. Ashley, Mike (2000). The time machines: the story of the science-fiction pulp magazines from the beginning to 1950: the history of the science-fiction magazine. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Pp. 104–105. Gosling, John (2009). Waging The war of the worlds: a history of the 1938 radio broadcast and resulting panic, including the original script. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co.

February 15, 1935. Retrieved November 1, 2018.

Well-posted New Yorkers say this Idea traces to Herbert Moore's Transamerica Radio News-which used the Havas Agency as a new. source without telling.

The Bernard Herrmann Society. Retrieved October 22, 2014., What Ever Happened to Orson Welles? A Portrait of an Independent Career. Lexington, Kentucky:, 2006,.

Leaming, Barbara, Orson Welles, A Biography. New York:, 1985. Retrieved October 19, 2014. ^. Wellesnet, October 26, 2008.

Retrieved October 19, 2014. Treaster, Joseph B., July 29, 1982. Accessed December 3, 2017.

Seymour was the announcer who, in Orson Welles's famous 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds, terrified listeners with realistic bulletins on Martian invaders.' . Koch, Howard (1970). The Panic Broadcast: Portrait of an Event.

Boston: Little, Brown and Company. ^, Hazel Gaudet, and, The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic: with the Complete Script of the Famous Orson Welles Broadcast. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1940. Retrieved November 3, 2018.

Retrieved November 3, 2018. results, search (September 30, 1997). Fighting for the First Amendment: Stanton of CBS vs. Congress and the Nixon White House. Retrieved November 3, 2018.

Retrieved November 3, 2018. ^ Jeff Miller. History of American Broadcasting. Retrieved October 28, 2014. Vallance, Tom (March 25, 1999). Retrieved March 5, 2015.

^ White, Paul W., News on the Air. New York:, 1947. (2010). 'Chapter 23 – The Great Depression'. The Unfinished Nation.

P. 615. ^ Schwartz, A. Brad (April 27, 2015).

Retrieved October 19, 2015. (reprint). October 31, 1938. In Newark, in a single block at Heddon Terrace and Hawthorne Avenue, more than 20 families rushed from their houses with wet handkerchiefs and towels over their faces to flee what they believed a gas raid. Some began moving household furniture.

Throughout New York, families left their homes, some to near-by parks. Thousands of persons called the police, newspapers, and radio stations here and in other cities of the United States and Canada, seeking advice on protective measures against the raids. ^ Campbell, W. Berkeley: University of California Press. Getting it wrong.

(2004). Duty, Honor, Applause: America's Entertainers in World War II, Part 810.

P. Yabba Dabba Doo! By Alan Reed and Ben Ohmart, page 58; BearManor Media, 2009.

November 2, 2011, at the MyNorthwest.com. Accessed 10–31–11.

Retrieved November 25, 2017. Tucson Citizen, edition of October 31, 1938, accessed on microfilm at the Tucson Public Library. (PDF). The Mercury Theatre Radio Programs, Digital Deli. Retrieved January 12, 2014. Representative news headlines from October 31, 1938.

^. October 28, 1940.

Retrieved September 26, 2014. ^. Ross Lawhead (blog), September 17, 2012. Retrieved September 26, 2014. Retrieved November 3, 2018. November 1, 2013.

Retrieved November 3, 2018. Retrieved November 3, 2018. 's episode. Bartholomew, Robert E.

(November–December 1998). Skeptical Inquirer. Retrieved January 1, 2014. Tarbox, Todd (2013). Orson Welles and Roger Hill: A Friendship in Three Acts.

Albany, Georgia: BearManor Media. P. 53. Clodfelter, Tim (April 5, 2017). Retrieved April 5, 2017.

Vic.: Fairfax. November 2, 1938. Retrieved March 8, 2014.

Mass Communication Theory: Foundations, Ferment, and Future, by Stanley J. Baran, Dennis K. Davis.

^ Levine, Justin;; 52 Fed Comm L J 2, 273–320, 278n28; March 1, 2000; retrieved November 5, 2013. Bartholomew, Robert; Radford, Benjamin (2012).: McFarland. Retrieved November 4, 2013. ^ Bartholomew, Robert E. Little Green Men, Meowing Nuns and Head-Hunting Panics: A Study of Mass Psychogenic Illness and Social Delusion. Jefferson, North Carolina: Macfarland & Company. Letters of Note, September 9, 2009.

Retrieved October 18, 2014. Potter, Lee Ann (Fall 2003).

Retrieved November 3, 2013., The Theatre of Orson Welles. Lewisburg, Pennsylvania: Bucknell University Press, 1977. 'Help—Men From Mars'. Radio Digest. February 1939, pp.

113–127. Sentence of death, The night America trembled (DVD, 2002)., September 8, 1957, at YouTube. Retrieved October 21, 2014. (PDF). United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, October 3, 1962. Archived from (PDF) on March 4, 2016. Retrieved October 20, 2014.

^ McFarlin, Timothy J. (Spring 2016). 66 (3): 733+. Retrieved June 15, 2019 – via. Koch, Howard, The Panic Broadcast: Portrait of an Event.

Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1970. The radio play Invasion from Mars was now copyrighted in Koch's name ( Catalog of Copyright Entries: Third Series; Books and Pamphlets, Title Index, January–June 1971, page 1866). Hadley Cantril's The Invasion from Mars, including the radio play (titled The Broadcast), was copyrighted in 1940 by Princeton University Press. War of the Worlds. Retrieved October 28, 2014. The jacket front of the 1968 Society LP reads, 'The Actual Broadcast by The Mercury Theatre on the Air as heard over the Columbia Broadcasting System, Oct.

The most thrilling drama ever broadcast from the famed HOWARD KOCH script! An authentic first edition never before released! Complete, not a dramatic word cut!

Script by Howard Koch from the famous H. Wells novel featuring the most famous performance from The Mercury Theatre on the Air!' .

Welles, Orson, and Peter Bogdanovich,. HarperAudio, September 30, 1992. Audiotape 4A 7:08–7:42. Drew, Robert (1973).

Drew Associates. Retrieved August 19, 2016. February 10, 2008. Retrieved August 19, 2016., Township of West Windsor, Mercer County, New Jersey; Delany, Don, (PDF), Mercer Business, October 1988, pp.

Retrieved October 13, 2015. (Press release). Retrieved October 29, 2013., WGBH PBS. Retrieved October 29, 2013., (Library of Congress); retrieved June 17, 2012.

Retrieved November 3, 2018. March 7, 2008. In 1949, when Radio Quito decided to translate the Orson Welles stunt for an Ecuadorian audience, no one knew that the result would be a riot that would burn down the radio station and kill at least 7 people. Archived from on May 1, 2008. Retrieved April 24, 2008.

The Telegraph. Retrieved May 15, 2016. Retrieved November 3, 2018. Radio Ambulante. January 14, 2020.

Retrieved February 11, 2020. Koshinski, Bob. Buffalo Broadcasters Association. Archived from on September 30, 2015. Retrieved October 13, 2015.

Retrieved November 3, 2018. Michael Kernan.

(October 30, 1988) The Washington Post. ^. Retrieved November 3, 2018. Fisher, Lawrence M. (October 29, 1988). The New York Times. Retrieved September 17, 2016. Manic digger online free.

Tribune Company. Archived from on July 4, 2007. Retrieved July 31, 2007. Wilmington Star-News. October 29, 1988. Retrieved November 3, 2018 – via Google News Archive. The radio broadcast by Orson Welles and his Mercury Theater was so realistic.

Is presenting an 'anniversary production' of the Mercury Theater radio play. Retrieved November 1, 2018. L.A.

Theatre Works. Skirball Cultural Center. Retrieved November 1, 2018. Jadulang, V. UCLA Newsroom. Retrieved November 1, 2018.

Theatre Works. August 31, 2009. Archived from on June 28, 2011. Theatre Works. August 31, 2009. Archived from on June 28, 2011.

Retrieved November 3, 2018. (Press release). October 28, 2002. Retrieved September 17, 2016. Barrs, Jennifer (October 30, 2002). Retrieved June 15, 2019 – via.

Radio, Southern California Public (October 9, 2013). Retrieved November 3, 2018. Radio, Southern California Public (October 25, 2013). Retrieved November 3, 2018. Retrieved November 3, 2018.

Retrieved November 1, 2018. Retrieved November 3, 2018.Further reading. Bulgatz, Joseph (1992).

New York: Three Rivers Press. Estrin, Mark W.; Welles, Orson (2002). Orson Welles Interviews. Jackson (Miss.): University of Mississippi.

Gosling, John (2009). Waging The War of the Worlds: A History of the 1938 Radio Broadcast and Resulting Panic. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

Holmsten, Brian; Lubertozzi, Alex, eds. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks MediaFusion.

Schwartz, A. Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles's War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News.