We interrupt this Tumblr to bring you a special
bulletin: in 1938, Martians invaded…New Jersey! At least, that was the plot of
the now-infamous radio adaptation of War of the Worlds,directed
and narrated by Orson Welles.
On October 30, 1988, All Things Considered commemorated
the 50th anniversary of the radio show by interspersing new interviews with excerpts from the
radio drama. CBS publicity manager Hal Davis recalled, “Every phone began
ringing at once and everybody was hysterical.” CBS’s president, William
Paley, claimed, “the whole country was bursting wide open.”
As War of the Worlds radio dramatist Howard Koch told @npr in 1988, “I am
disappointed in the gullibility of the American people, politically as well as
in this instance, that they accept the most outrageous things as truth.”
Photo: New York Daily News front page October 31, 1938. Credit: New York Daily News Archive/Getty Images