Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre on the CBS Radio Network presented "War of the Worlds". A number of those who tuned into the broadcast mistook it for an actual newscast and believed that Martians had landed in New Jersey and were invading the country.
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72 Years Ago Tonight - October 30, 1938
- Thread starter Cincinnati Kid
- Start date
Cincinnati Kid said:
One of those urban legends that seems to appeal to media types. A few people panicked, mostly in close knit city neighborhoods in the Northeast. Most everybody tuned into the extremely popular Chase and Sanborn Hour with Edgar Bergen (Candice's father) and Charlie McCarthy on NBC. The Mercury Theater was a sustaining (they couldn't get a sponsor) on what, at the time, was the much smaller, weaker CBS network. CBS knew they could not compete with Bergen-McCarthy (10 years later, CBS got them away from NBC in the "talent raids), so they put on a high-brow public service drama program. People who listened to the Mercury Theater broadcast did not panic. About the time the Martians were landing and coming out of their space craft, Bergen-McCarthy put on an opera singer and people started "dial surfing." They came across CBS and did not know what the !@#$ was going on. So, some of them went out on the front stoop and started asking neighbors. Those neighbors started asking neighbors and the result was the classic "telephone game." Some of those neighbors of neighbors did panic. A testimony to the power of rumors, not of media. But saying radio caused the panic makes a better story, especially for media types.
Both Orson and Edgar/Charlie aired from 8-9 PM EST (standard time had returned everywhere
by the end of September). Did "War Of The Worlds" air live 5-6 PM PST? Did CBS then allow a
live show to be transcribed (disc-recorded) for the left coast? It's common knowledge that most
shows did a live repeat three hours later (or at times, four) for the Pacific Time Zone, but with
the media circus that descended upon Welles and his group after the 8 PM ET show, would they
even have attempted a live rebroadcast?
by the end of September). Did "War Of The Worlds" air live 5-6 PM PST? Did CBS then allow a
live show to be transcribed (disc-recorded) for the left coast? It's common knowledge that most
shows did a live repeat three hours later (or at times, four) for the Pacific Time Zone, but with
the media circus that descended upon Welles and his group after the 8 PM ET show, would they
even have attempted a live rebroadcast?
According to this website, the following appeared in The Oregon Journal:
"An invasion of the earth by inhabitants of Mars will be the imaginary theme of Orson Welles, when the 'Mercury Theatre On The Air' broadcasts an adaptation of H.G. Wells' 'War of The Worlds' over KOIN today at 5 p. m."
oldiesfan6479 said:
Many shows did a live repeat, not "most." The Pacific networks of CBS, NBC (NBC Orange) and Don Lee-Mutual were often semi-autonomous. They did West Coast shows for West Coast sponsors, not heard in the East. And a national sponsor had to be willing to pick up the extra cost of doing a repeat broadcast (i.e., talent, facilities, line charges). The Mercury Theater was a sustaining show (meaning not sponsored). It had a small audience. Stations had the option not to carry it and run something local instead (like WEEI). So, the show was not heard in other markets besides Boston. The Oregon program listing makes sense: It's not likely CBS would pay to do a repeat on a show generating no income. I'd be curious to know what CBS was feeding its Pacific network at 8pm PST that night. The linked article doesn't say. In all likelihood, the Chase and Sanborn Hour would have done a live repeat for the West Coast. The show was very popular, had a big budget and the sponsor was based in San Francisco.
...I'll have to check my copy of that evening's Chase & Sanborn Hour, but I recall the singer as having been Dorothy Lamour, most certainly not of an operatic type. In the first segment, they featured Nelson Eddy, most certainly an operatic tenor, and one of the most popular performers in radio at the time, so perhaps that's what you're thinking of with the operatic angle...MattParker said:
My source is Cantril, Hadley. "The Invasion from Mars." (1940) A landmark communications research study.Ultimajock said:
Dorothy Lamour was a regular on the Chase & Sanborn Hour at this time.
I think this has been posted before, but here is a recording of a conversation between Orson Welles and H.G. Wells a couple of years after the War of the Worlds broadcast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUdghSMTXsU
It's amazing how much mileage Welles was able to get for years afterwards for something that was so insignificant at the time. The only person I can think of that even comes close was Tony Schwartz at the "daisy commercial." More than anything else, Welles excelled at hyping himself and his genius. He also knew what evil lurks in the hearts of men.
...one interesting fact that I just found out is that most of Arizona never got to hear the War of the Worlds broadcast on their local CBS affiliates. At the time, there were three CBS affiliates whose programming was controlled by station owner Burridge Butler (who also owned NBC Blue Network affiliate WLS Chicago and the Prairie Farmer and Arizona Farmer newspapers). Two of them were owned by Butler outright (KOY Phoenix and KTUC Tucson), and the third (KSUN Bisbee) was not owned by Butler but got its CBS programming through a direct link to the Tucson station. Butler was personally a big fan of Welles' radio work, but was dismayed when CBS moved Welles' show from Mondays to the dead Sunday slot directly against The Chase & Sanborn Hour on NBC Red. (It should also be noted that, with Arizona being in the Mountain Time Zone, most of the state's network affiliates had the choice of broadcasting either the East Coast or West Coast productions of shows that offered such an option, like Chase & Sanborn, and usually opted for the East Coast edition, in this instance airing at 6:00 local time.) Butler got permission to record the Welles series off the network line and then play it in the original Monday night time slot over KOY, KTUC and KSUN. The Arizona Daily Star, in part of its coverage of the Welles broadcast affair, carried an AP story in its 1 November 1938 editions explaining that, after the panic it had caused, CBS had ordered Butler not to broadcast the program on his Arizona stations that Monday night. As a result, if listeners didn't catch the live broadcast over KRLD Dallas or KNXX Los Angeles, they never heard the production until the commercial record albums of it started appearing on the market in the late 1950s...
trusty said:
The few folks who caused a panic were (not surprisingly) those who did not pay attention. The program was not a surprise at the time and, later into the program, Welles reiterated that it was theatre.
I actually asked my grandmother about whether she'd heard the show at the time and she said that, yes, the family listened to it live. But from the beginning. So, she could never understand what the big deal was. They all knew that it was just a story.
BRNout said:
The Nov 15 issue of Broadcasting has an article on page 15 about the broadcast and the reaction, and reproductions of several newspaper editorial cartoons a few pages earlier in the magazine. It's at
http://www.davidgleason.com/Archive BC/BC 1938/BC 1938 11 15.pdf
DavidEduardo said:
Thanks for posting that David - fascinating stuff!
The article basically confirms what my grandmother told me about it many years ago. In other words, that the media hyped up the event and that those who actually 'fell for it' were not paying attention. I was under the distinct impression from her that (at the time) they had difficulty understanding what all the fuss was about because the fact that it was just a play was mentioned several times.
Love the old ads, some great stuff in that issue - including WLS' "new" transmitter (which has definitely seen better days).
BRNout said:
Check the prior issue, IIRC, where there is an article towards the front of the book about the WLW operation at 500,000 watts...
Now if I could find more pre-'38 issues!
DavidEduardo said:
It's a shame you had to shut down the message boards due to trolling. So I'll state here what I would have posted there.
You should be given a Marconi Award (or, at the very least some Hall of Fame Distinguished Service award) for your efforts in keeping historical material around. All of your resources on davidgleason.com are more appreciated than you'll ever know.
"Simply put, I celebrated 50 years in radio in 2009, and this endeavor is a small way to preserve the memories, the heritage and the events of that industry, particularly at a time when the death of our medium is so broadly predicted."
My only quarrel is with the phrase "small way" -- it's much more than that and I, along with many others, thank you.
Bob E. Nelson said:
I totally agree with Bob - you deserve congratulations for your efforts David! Your site is an incredible treasure trove of historical broadcasting information! You have truly done a fantastic thing for anyone who is interested in broadcasting history. I have yet to scratch the surface of what's there, but could easily spend weeks reading through what you have there.
Thank you!!!
BRNout said:
You are most welcome. It's fun to put this together, and a real learning experience.
I'm in the process of making each issue of Broadcasting Magazine searchable via OCR, and splitting each into single pages for fast viewing. I'm almost through the 50's... it takes about 10 days to 2 weeks using 3 computers to do the OCR, splitting and indexing work for each decade. By some time in January, you will be able to search the 30's through 1989. This also makes the site about 250 gb in size, so just uploading is a challenge!
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