History Radio / TheWarOfTheWorlds

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/war_of_the_worlds_1938_radio_panic.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:300: [[NewMediaAreEvil ...but not really]].]]

The single most (in)famous broadcast in American radio history.

When Creator/OrsonWelles needed to come up with a HalloweenEpisode for the October 30, 1938 broadcast of his Creator/{{CBS}} radio program ''Radio/TheMercuryTheatreOnTheAir'', he decided to adapt Creator/HGWells's 1898 novel ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds'' to a contemporary American setting. Rather than presenting a straight radio play like all of the previous ''Mercury Theatre'' broadcasts, for this episode the program started out as what seemed like a regular night of dance music, [[WeInterruptThisProgram until they started breaking in]] with news of strange explosions on the surface of Mars... followed by reports of a meteorite landing in rural New Jersey...

As the on-air "reporters" breathlessly described large alien tripods emerging from the cylindrical "meteorites" and commencing to destroy the American countryside with heat-rays, many listeners believed that an actual AlienInvasion was taking place, and thus a nationwide panic ensued... or so the UrbanLegends say, at least. Later research indicates there was little to no actual panic and the [[https://slate.com/culture/2013/10/orson-welles-war-of-the-worlds-panic-myth-the-infamous-radio-broadcast-did-not-cause-a-nationwide-hysteria.html anxious reports that ran in the next day's newspapers]] were an attempt by said newspapers to sell more copies, while discrediting radio as a medium --see NewMediaAreEvil below. However, the story's more complex than that. What people believed, and continue to believe, ''about'' the broadcast is as important as the idea that people believed the broadcast itself. The legend of this program has become part of American folklore.

The broadcast has been re-created several times:
* [[https://historyradio.org/2017/01/21/the-war-of-the-worlds-in-ecuador/ in 1949 in Quito, Ecuador]] directed by and starring Leonardo Páez, a familiar and beloved voice on Radio Quito; journalist, broadcaster, actor, director, singer-songwriter, poet and playwright. He used a Spanish-language version of the script written for a production in Chile which reportedly had also caused a brief panic. This also had the cooperation of Quito's local newspaper, as they were both owned by the same company. One of the big differences here was that Radio Quito was extremely popular, didn't have as many competitors as CBS, and was highly respected along with the paper as the most trusted news sources. For a few days before the event, they ran announcements of a live radio concert featuring Duo Benitez Valencia, an extremely popular folk band, to ensure that lots of people would be listening. They also planted small stories in the paper about unusual phenomenon being observed on Mars and in the skies over Quito. [[https://cuencahighlife.com/war-worlds-1949-radio-play-remake-deadly-result-ecuador/ The result was incredible]] - the invasion story was believed on a massive scale. When the deception was revealed, those fooled turned angry and set fire to the building that housed both the newspaper and radio station. Emergency responders did not arrive until much later - because they had been dispatched to the out-of-the-way location of the supposed alien landing. Six people died (including Páez's girlfriend) and many more were injured, either in the fire, trying to escape the fire, or at the hands of an angry mob. Páez managed to escape unharmed, went into hiding for three months, and was eventually exonerated.
* an [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zzEGD1ESr8 updated version by WKBW]] in Buffalo, New York in 1968. Which -- despite the station running advertisements beforehand and putting up disclaimers during the broadcast -- ended up causing a panic in its own right. The broadcast was so convincing, in fact, that the Canadian Army reportedly sent troops to numerous bridges along the border, prepared to help fight off the "invaders".
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXTEUM4OF7Q WKBW again in 1971]].
* a 50th anniversary edition on Creator/{{NPR}} [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIeYnoutthU in 1988]], directed by Radio/FiresignTheatre alumnus David Ossman and starring Creator/JasonRobards as Prof. Pierson, with a supporting cast including Creator/SteveAllen, Creator/ReneAuberjonois, and Creator/HectorElizondo.
* a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffB29LYR5Go 1994 revival on KCRW]] in Los Angeles, featuring a nearly all ''Franchise/StarTrek'' cast (including Creator/LeonardNimoy as Prof. Pierson, Gates [=McFadden=] as reporter [[GenderFlip Carla Phillips]], and Creator/DwightSchultz, Creator/ArminShimerman, Creator/BrentSpiner and Creator/WilWheaton in various roles) and directed by John de Lancie.
* a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNhodx4Oxbk&t=12s 1998 version on WGRF]] in Buffalo, New York, incorporating elements from the 1953 film (sound effects, dialogue, and a character named Clayton Forrester). Needless to say, the broadcast included several disclaimers throughout reminding the audience that it was pure fiction to prevent a recurrence of the WKBW panic from 30 years prior.
* a 2002 version on XM Satellite Radio, hosted by Radio/GlennBeck.

The incident was dramatized in "The Night America Trembled", a 1957 episode of ''Westinghouse Studio One'', and ''The Night That Panicked America'', a 1975 MadeForTVMovie co-starring Creator/JohnRitter; and touched upon in feature films like Creator/WoodyAllen's ''Film/RadioDays'' (1987) and even in cartoons like Creator/BobClampett's ''WesternAnimation/KittyKornered'' (1946) and ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS18E4TreehouseOfHorrorXVII Treehouse of Horror XVII]]" (2006). Two episodes of Music/{{Negativland}}'s weekly KPFA radio happening ''Over the Edge'', helmed by master culture jammer Don Joyce, focused on the program as an example of "[[https://archive.org/details/OTE_20060518_How_Radio_Was_Done_3_-_WOTWW How Radio Was Done]]" (2006) and a 1999 examination of how we discern [[https://archive.org/details/OTE_19990200_True_and_False true from false]] information in modern life. It was analyzed in a [[http://www.radiolab.org/story/91622-war-of-the-worlds/ hysterically funny episode]] of NPR's ''Radiolab'' in 2008, talking about the power of mass media and humanity's need for storytelling. The historical events and situations that set up this incident are described in PBS' 2013 ''[[Series/TheAmericanExperience American Experience]]'' episode "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1iLFp6XyPY The War of the Worlds]]". There's more in A. Brad Schwartz's 2015 book ''Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles' War of the Worlds & the Art of Fake News''.

This incredibly innovative broadcast is the TropeMaker for HalloweenEpisode, DeadlineNews, PhonyNewscast, ThisJustIn, WeAreExperiencingTechnicalDifficulties, and WeInterruptThisProgram.

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!!Tropes:

* AdaptationalBadass: The Martians, despite going up against more contemporary military technology (United States National Guardsmen equipped with [[GasMaskMooks gas masks]] and [[GatlingGood machine-guns]], military airplanes, etc.), manage to prove much more durable and threatening than in the original novel, and without having the force-fields they are depicted with in later film adaptations.
** For example, only ''one'' fighting-machine is brought down in combat [[hottip:*:In the book, one is gunned down by artillery fire, and two or three others are destroyed by a warship]], and it took an artillery barrage ''and'' a bomber plane [[HeroicSacrifice crashing into it]] to eliminate it. Also, the Black Smoke is deployed before said machine is destroyed, and it's shown to render gas masks useless. And the real kicker is that the very first fighting-machine deployed by the Martians was pitted alone against an army of 7,000 National Guardsmen that were all using rifles and machine-guns, and left only 120 known survivors.
* AfterTheEnd: The last third of the one-hour show quits the PhonyNewscast format, and follows Pierson as he writes in his journal about his harrowing trip from Grover's Mill to New York City. He sees one living person the whole way.
* AndNowForSomethingCompletelyDifferent: About forty minutes in, the narrative changes completely to the aforementioned professor writing in his journal, and then briefly follows the professor and a stranger discussing Martian theories before returning to the journal again.
* AudioAdaptation: Of the famous novel.
* BattleDiscretionShot: When the first of the Martian fighting-machines rises from the cylinder, the radio feed from the National Guard stationed at Grover's Mill is conveniently cut short ''right before'' the soldiers open fire on the machine, and we are instead treated with a report on the aftermath of what turned out to be a CurbStompBattle (that the ''Martian'' won) from the CBS studio.
* CirclingVultures: They draw Pierson's attention to the corpses of the Martian invaders, lying around an abandoned New York after the Martians died from Earth-bound microbes.
* CommercialBreakCliffhanger: Averted. As ''The Mercury Theatre of the Air'' didn't have a sponsor, there didn't need to be a break in the program for advertisements; this helped keep up the {{Kayfabe}} of the broadcast. The only break acts as a transition between the faux-radio program and Pierson's AfterTheEnd narration.
* ContrivedCoincidence: Phillips the news correspondent conducts an interview with Professor Pierson live on the air, discussing the mysterious gas explosions on Mars. Then objects are observed to be falling from the sky and landing in rural New Jersey--just a few miles from the observatory, conveniently allowing Pierson and Phillips to go there and report.
* DeadlineNews:
** Carl Phillips, reporting live from Grover's Mill, is burned to death mid-sentence by a Martian heat ray.
** The reporter in New York narrates the advance of the Martian tripods until he is killed by their poison gas. The broadcast goes to DeadAir, then one voice comes on, repeatedly asking if anyone is out there.
* DecoyProtagonist: At first, Carl Phillips the news reporter appears to be this story's counterpart to the unnamed protagonist of the novel, with Professor Pierson the astronomer being the [[SacrificialLamb Ogilvy]] stand-in. Then it gets subverted, when Carl Phillips is found incinerated by the Martians' Heat-Ray, and Pierson fills the role of protagonist after being shown to survive the attack.
* EmergencyPresidentialAddress: Averted by ExecutiveMeddling. It was originally intended for the unnamed Secretary of the Interior[[note]]It would have been Harold Ickes, who really [[https://youtu.be/G2Tk87amlxQ?t=1m29s didn't sound much like Roosevelt]].[[/note]] to be President UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt, but CBS objected to this detail. That didn't stop Welles from having the actor imitate Roosevelt's voice.
* EverybodysDeadDave: In the radio drama, large numbers of people are killed, either by heat rays or poison gas spewed from the alien spaceships. Several "field reporters" make note of this fact before they, too, succumb to the imminent danger. After a cutaway where a reporter describes millions of fleeing New Yorkers dying en masse — falling victim to gas clouds or falling into the Hudson River to commit suicide — a ham radio operator desperately calls out, "2X2L calling CQ. Isn't there anyone on the air? Isn't there anyone on the air?! Isn't there ... anyone???!!!"
* FaceDeathWithDignity: The radio reporter in New York[[note]]played by ''Series/PerryMason'''s Ray Collins[[/note]], who narrates the advance of the Martian tripods into the city, knowing perfectly well he's going to die. ("This is the end, now.")
* {{Foreshadowing}}: The opening narration, adapted from the beginning of the novel, muses on how we were watched by the Martians as we might watch "the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water". In the end it is those creatures that destroy the Martians.
* FoundFootage: A UrExample and perhaps the only radio version of this trope.
* HalloweenEpisode: Aired on October 30, 1938, and explicitly intended as the Halloween episode of Welles' radio show, as he says during his sign-off.
* HorrorDoesntSettleForSimpleTuesday: The supposed Martian invasion begins on the night before Halloween.
* {{Kayfabe}}: Welles was concerned that ''War of the Worlds'' was such a well-known antique that bored audiences would tune out, so he repeatedly emphasized realistic portrayals and the "radio news" format. He was mostly occupied with the theatrical play he was putting on at the same time, so left it to the cast and crew to do the WorldBuilding necessary to make it fully believable.
** Welles guessed right that even little children knew the story. What he didn't anticipate was that while the kids caught on very quickly, they were thrilled by the modern "radio news" presentation. Among the thousands of letters received at CBS and the Mercury Theater were many from children thanking him for a great evening.
* KilledMidSentence: The at-the-scene radio reporter, Carl Phillips. Or, at least, the on-site radio equipment is destroyed while he's in mid sentence. (His charred remains are later identified.)
--> [describing the Martian death ray] "...coming this way, about twenty yards from my ri--"
** The pilot who crashes his plane into a Martian tripod has his transmission cut off mid-sentence as well.
* LargeHam:
** Welles' opening narration is ''very'' hammy. He is more restrained when performing as Professor Pierson within the program.
** Kenny Delmar, as the FDR-soundalike Secretary of the Interior, begins his speech calmly, but quickly starts chewing the scenery.
* MoodWhiplash: Terrifying reports of Martian spaceships landing on Earth? We'll get back to that in a second, but first, here's Ramon Raquello and his orchestra!
* NarratingTheObvious: This trope, usually nigh-unavoidable in radio drama, is here justified InUniverse. Usually in an audio play characters have to explicate things that they are seeing for the benefit of the audience. Thanks to the decision to stage this show as a PhonyNewscast, and a reading from Pierson's journal in Act Three, the characters are already narrating the action, which makes the whole broadcast sound more natural.
* PeopleFarms: The rather unhinged militia veteran that Pierson meets in Newark--the only living person he finds between Grover's Mill and New York City--anticipates that the good folks of soft middle-class America will submit themselves to the Martians and live on people farms.
* PhonyNewscast: UrExample, TropeMaker. This is the format for the first two-thirds of the show, as a program of dance music is interrupted by increasingly urgent news reports about gas explosions on Mars and mysterious objects plummeting to Earth in New Jersey. See WeInterruptThisProgram below.
* RealTime: For roughly the first third of the program, up to the death of reporter Phillips, as radio bulletins break the news of the Martian invasion and Phillips and Pierson race over to the site of the alien landing. Even before the PhonyNewscast portion of the show ends, the RealTime part is basically abandoned, as the show skips ahead to military confrontations with the Martians and the Martian advance on New York.
* SettingUpdate: Welles moved the setting of the story from H.G. Wells's Victorian England to the United States of TheThirties.
* SparedByTheAdaptation: Pierson, the Ogilvy {{Expy}}, survives the invasion, unlike his novel counterpart.
* StylisticSuck: Music/BernardHerrmann and his musicians were more comfortable with classical-style music, so they couldn't quite get the proper feel of the dance music interludes. But it works perfectly, because it adds an extra layer of cheesiness to Ramon Raquello's musical stylings, and makes you ''want'' to have the music interrupted by more bulletins.
* SwitchingPOV: The first part is comprised of various reports and interviews from different people. The last part follows a lone professor.
* ThisIsAWorkOfFiction: An announcement, given at the start of the broadcast and repeated at the conclusion of the "newscast" segment, informed listeners that they were listening to the ''Mercury Theatre'' dramatization of ''The War of the Worlds''.
** And, at the conclusion of the broadcast:
--->"This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen. Out of character, to assure you that ''The War of the Worlds'' has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be; the ''Mercury Theatre''[='=]s own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying, 'Boo!' Starting now, we couldn't soap all your windows and steal all your garden gates by tomorrow night, so we did the best next (''sic'') thing: we annihilated the world before your very ears and utterly destroyed the CBS. You will be relieved, I hope, to learn that we didn't mean it, and that both institutions are still open for business.\\
"So goodbye, everybody, and remember, please, for the next day or so the terrible lesson you learned tonight: that grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch, and if your doorbell rings and nobody's there, that was no Martian; it's Halloween."
* ThisJustIn: The studio begins to overflow with reports of the Martian walkers arriving and destroying power lines and transport routes.
* ToServeMan: At least part of the reason the Martians invaded is, apparently, to eat people.
--> '''Pierson''': I've seen the Martians...feed.
* WeAreExperiencingTechnicalDifficulties: After Phillips's broadcast is cut off by him being burned up by the heat ray.
* WeInterruptThisProgram: The first ten minutes of the show involves "Ramon Raquello and His Orchestra" playing Thirties dance music, with the plot occasionally interrupting to provide breaking news. Later on it changes to piano music by Debussy, in a textbook example of classical music on radio being shorthand for world-threatening disaster.
** This is one reason so many people ''did'' believe it. UsefulNotes/WorldWarI and its gas warfare was fresh in their memories, UsefulNotes/WorldWarII was brewing in Europe; America was primed for possible attacks or invasion. Regular programming experienced constant interruptions by news bulletins about Hitler's conquests. Sometimes one bulletin would be interrupted by another! So they heard "Martians", but thought it was really Nazis making it ''look'' like a Martian attack.

* a 50th anniversary edition on Creator/{{NPR}} [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIeYnoutthU in 1988]], directed by Radio/FiresignTheatre alumnus David Ossman and starring Jason Robards as Prof. Pierson, with a supporting cast including Creator/SteveAllen, Creator/ReneAuberjonois, and Creator/HectorElizondo.

* [[https://historyradio.org/2017/01/21/the-war-of-the-worlds-in-ecuador/ in 1949 in Quito, Ecuador]] by director Leonardo Páez - [[https://cuencahighlife.com/war-worlds-1949-radio-play-remake-deadly-result-ecuador/]]. He used a Spanish-language version of the script written for a production in Chile which reportedly had also caused a brief panic. This attempt also had the cooperation of Quito's local newspaper, as they were both owned by the same company. One of the big differences here was that Radio Quito had a much bigger audience, and it and the paper were highly respected as the most trusted news sources. Páez was a familiar and beloved voice; journalist, broadcaster, actor, director, singer-songwriter, poet and playwright. Also, for a few days before the event, they ran announcements of a live radio concert featuring Duo Benitez Valencia, an extremely popular folk band, to ensure that lots of people would be listening. They also planted small stories in the paper about unusual phenomenon being observed on Mars and in the skies over Quito. The result was incredible - the invasion story was believed on a massive scale. When the deception was revealed, those fooled turned angry and set fire to the building that housed both the newspaper and radio station. Emergency responders did not arrive until much later - because they had been dispatched to the out-of-the-way location of the supposed alien landing. Six people died (including Páez's girlfriend) and many more were injured, either in the fire, trying to escape the fire, or at the hands of an angry mob. Páez managed to escape unharmed, went into hiding for three months, and was eventually exonerated.

* [[https://historyradio.org/2017/01/21/the-war-of-the-worlds-in-ecuador/ in 1949 in Quito, Ecuador]] by director Leonardo Páez - this attempt also had the cooperation of Quito's local newspaper, as they were both owned by the same company. For a few days before the event, they planted small stories in the paper about unusual phenomenon being observed on Mars and in the skies over Quito. They ''also'' ran announcements of a live radio concert featuring Duo Benitez Valencia, an extremely popular folk band, to ensure that lots of people would be listening. The result was incredible - the invasion story was believed on a massive scale. When the deception was revealed, those fooled turned angry and set fire to the building that housed both the newspaper and radio station. Emergency responders did not arrive until much later - because they had been dispatched to the out-of-the-way location of the supposed alien landing. Six people died (including Páez's girlfriend) and many more were injured, either in the fire, trying to escape the fire, or at the hands of an angry mob. Páez managed to escape unharmed, but he effectively became a wanted man and left the country, never to return.

* an [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zzEGD1ESr8 updated version by WKBW]] in Buffalo, New York in 1968. Which -- despite the station running advertisements beforehand and putting up disclaimers during the broadcast -- ended up causing a panic. The broadcast was so convincing, in fact, that the Canadian Army reportedly sent troops to numerous bridges along the border, prepared to help fight off the "invaders".

* a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNhodx4Oxbk&t=12s 1998 version on WGRF]] in Buffalo, New York, aired to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the aforementioned WKBW version. Notable for incorporating elements from the 1953 film (sound effects, dialogue, and a character named Clayton Forrester). Needless to say, the broadcast included several disclaimers throughout reminding the audience that it was pure fiction to prevent what happened in 1968 from happening again.

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zzEGD1ESr8 an updated version by WKBW]] in Buffalo, New York in 1968. Which -- despite the station running advertisements beforehand and putting up disclaimers during the broadcast -- ended up causing a panic. The broadcast was so convincing, in fact, that the Canadian Army reportedly sent troops to numerous bridges along the border, prepared to help fight off the "invaders".

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zzEGD1ESr8 an updated version by WKBW]] in Buffalo, New York in 1968. Which despite running advertisements on the radio and putting up disclaimers during the broadcast ended up causing a panic.
The broadcast was so convincing that reportedly the Canadian army sent troops to numerous bridges along the border prepared to help fight off the invaders.

* a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNhodx4Oxbk&t=12s 1998 version on WGRF]] in Buffalo, New York to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the aforementioned WKBW version. Notable for incorporating elements from the 1953 film (sound effects, dialogue, and a character named Clayton Forrester). Needless to say, the broadcast included several disclaimers throughout reminding the audience that it was pure fiction to prevent what happened in 1968 from happening again.

* In 1998 [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNhodx4Oxbk&t=12s 97 Rock in Buffalo staged their own version]]. Incorporating elements from the 1953 film(sound effect, dialogue and and a character named Clayton Forrester). Needless to say, the broadcast included several disclaimers throughout reminding the audience that it was pure fiction to prevent what happened in 1968 from happening again.