October 30: This Day in TV History (DIY edition)

[Tim from Springfield IL]

I couldn't find a Stanislav Oct. 30 TDITVH when searching all the past year's threads, so apparently another DIY post is in order. I'll start off with a few birthdays, as my time is limited (I'll add more in the future--feel free to comment/add more events):

1945: Actor/director Henry Winkler (best known as the "Fonz" on "Happy Days" from 1974-84) is born in Manhattan, NY.

1963: Actress Kristina Wagner (best known in the role of Felicia Scorpio-Jones on "General Hospital" from 1984-2003) is born in Indianapolis, IN.

1970: Filmmaker, model maker and Discovery Channel's "MythBusters" host Tony Belleci is born Salvatore Paul Belleci in Monterey, CA.

 

[Ultimajock]

...of course, this was also the date in 1938 when Orson Welles produced his adaptation of the H.G. Wells novella The War of the Worlds on CBS Radio's Mercury Theatre On-The-Air and dramatised it so vividly that many listeners believed it was the real magilla. Many of the folks who hook-line-and-sinkered it had tuned over from NBC's Chase & Sanborn Hour. A few years back, I produced an installment of my own Wisconsin Public Radio series Echoes of a Century that contained an edited version of what most of the cross-tuners are likely to have heard that night; an mp3 of that program is downloadable from http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/13189. The panic inspired two notable television programs, http://www.archive.org/details/Studine_10x01_The_Night_America_Trembled the 9 September 1957 Westinghouse Studio One drama The Night America Trembled, hosted by Edward R. Murrow (and, curiously, devoid of any mention whatsoever of Orson Welles), and the 31 October 1975 ABC TV-movie The Night that Panicked America, with Paul Shenar portraying Welles...

 

[bpatrick]

I haven't seen The Night That Panicked America
in years and wonder why The History Channel or one
of the Encore channels doesn't show it on Halloween.
It's not the greatest movie, but it does give a sense of
how many people must have reacted to the broadcast.

In the meantime, Woody Allen's "Radio Days" has a
great satire of it; his Aunt Bea's boyfriend (for that night)
has taken her out for skating, oysters, and beer. On the way
home, his car runs out of gas (conveniently?), they turn on
the radio and hear about a Martian invasion, he leaves in a
panic, and she walks six miles back home to Rockaway. When
he calls the next week for another date, she tells the family
to tell him she's married a Martian. Great bit.

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

1981: The daughter of Donald Trump, and 1997 host of the Miss Teen USA pageant, Ivanka Trump, is born in NYC.