We’re back with another edition of Urban Legend: Fact or Fiction. In this chapter, we are going to dive into one of the most complex legends to date, the panic caused by Orson Welles’ broadcast of “War of The Worlds.”
The Story
On October 30th, 1938 Welles’ Mercury Theater on the Air decided to play a prank on its audience by adapting H. G. Wells’ 1898 novel “The War of the Worlds.” The book tells the story of a Martian invasion in Great Britain around the turn of the 20th century. Where the aliens easily overtake the British army with their advanced weaponry, heat-ray, and poisonous black smoke. However, they are eventually killed off by diseases since they have no immunity to them. Creating a powerful satire of British imperialism.
But Welles and the Mercury Theater put a bit of a twist on the classic sci-fi novel. They framed their radio broadcast adaptation as real news coverage and set the whole thing in Grover’s Mill, New Jersey. On the night of the broadcast, panic ensued because people thought NJ was really being invaded by Martians. Because of this phone lines were jammed, roads were flooded with people trying to get to safety, there were riots in the street, and some people chose to end their lives.
Or did they?
Is it Real?
Normally we hold this question until the end but in this case, there is no point. Yes, Welles’ broadcast of “War of The Worlds” did cause many to panic. How many people freaked out and how severe it was is still up for debate. However, it seems everyone agrees that this radio play didn’t take anyone’s life.
Variants
Most people’s knee-jerk reaction to this story is “How were people in 1938 so dumb?” To understand how a radio broadcast of a condensed version of a sci-fi novel could have caused such chaos several things need to be considered. The first and probably the most important thing is that radio was still a very new medium. So not only were consumers still feeling it out, but the legislation was as well. In the early days of radio, there was a ban on most pre-recorded materials. Those regulations didn’t loosen up until Herbert Morrison recorded the Hindenburg explosion, in 1937.1 Ironically, that same recording heavily inspired the way the Mercery Theater framed their fictitious disaster.
The second major factor is that the show was presented as breaking news. This happened only one month after the Munich crisis and with World War 2 looming, listeners were used to hearing breaking news alerts followed by some new, previously believed impossible, crisis.2 The way Welles structured the broadcast also played into this.
Like the original novel, this script for the broadcast was divided into two acts with the first 2/3rds devoted to fake news bulletins about the Martian invasion. The second act uses a series of lengthy monologues and dramatic scenes from the perspective of a lone survivor (Welles). Since the broadcast wasn’t evenly broken up this meant that listeners who tuned in late had to wait 40 minutes for the second disclaimer that the show was fiction. This also meant that there was not a normal break for station identification at 8:30 PM. This inadvertently added to the authenticity of the broadcast since it fed the narrative that this was breaking news.
The question of how many people tuned in that night is still highly debated. Radiolab estimates that about 12 million people were tuned in when the broadcast came on the air and “about 1 in every 12 … thought it was true and … some percentage of that 1 million people ran out of their homes.”
It also turns out that the Hooper rating service was calling homes that night for its national ratings survey. They determined that only two percent of the potential audience were listening to Welles’ show. Also, some CBS affiliate stations preempted the Mercury Theater on The Air for local programming, further hindering its reach.
At the time Welles was still relatively unknown and the Mercery Theather had just gotten renewed despite its low ratings. That night, the show was up against the much more popular “The Chase and Sanborn Hour,” which some listeners initially tuned in for before switching to Mercury Theater. What this meant was most audience members missed the introduction where it was said to be fiction, and that it took place 1939, not the present. Those switching from “The Chase and Sanborn Hour,” came in during an announcement from a “Harvard professor.”
Pacing also helped sell the illusion that this was real. The show began with live music and frequent interruptions by the station about the invasion. Dragging the story out to a snail’s pace, better selling that this was a real event. Later, it helped audiences swallow the faster pace of the invasion itself since the Martians conquered New Jersey in about 30 minutes. While there is probably no protocol for aliens invading, we would hope a state could last for at least an hour.
“We made a special effort to make our show as realistic as possible,” Welles said on a 1955 episode of “Orson Welles’ Sketch Book.” “That is, we reproduced all the radio effects, not only sound effects. Well, we did on the show exactly what would have happened if the world had been invaded. We had a little music playing and then an announcer coming on and saying, ‘Excuse me, we interrupt this program to bring you an announcement from Jersey City. . . .’”
We see this slow down in pacing again in the scene where our on-the-scene reporter Philips (Frank Readick) is describing what is going on. Screams are heard, then 6 seconds of silence before an announcement that they lost connection with Grover’s Mill. Then 10 seconds of piano music. Imagine coming into that on the radio with no context.
It’s also worth noting that Washington State had a coincidental power failure during the broadcast. This caused several families to run because the threat was significantly more believable to that audience.
“I had conceived the idea of doing a radio broadcast in such a manner that a crisis would actually seem to be happening,” Welles explained in a 1960 court deposition. “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.”
Another thing that helped sell it was a statement given by the “Secretary of the Interior,” voiced by Kenny Delmar. Except Delmar, at the behest of Welles, did an impression of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. At the time impersonations of the president were a hot-button issue due to shows like “The March Of Time” which blended news and dramatizations to get around pre-recorded material regulations. It did not matter that Delmar was introduced as the Secretary of the Interior, audiences heard FDR, so he was FDR.
Some listeners even believed that a disaster was taking place but didn’t believe it was by aliens. Instead deciding that reporters must be mistaken and the invasion was being perpetrated by another country. This would have made sense given the political climate at the time. The Radio project interviewed 135 people who all tuned in late, only 28 figured out it was fake.
But one of the biggest reasons the “War of The Worlds” broadcast panic spread so far was the viewers themselves. Some people believed it was real and felt compelled to warn others, meaning the information was now coming from a frightened stranger, or a loved one. Making it much more believable than it would have been on the radio. One telephone operator in South Dakota believed the invasion and tried to call and warn as many homes as possible.3
“The most frightened, even panicked, people seem to have been the ones who heard about the ‘invasion’ from people they trusted, whether or not they heard any of the show itself,” explains A. Brad Schwartz, author of “Broadcast Hysteria,” a book on this incident “exploiting the same process that led some people astray during War of the Worlds. And I think that’s how you end up with so many Americans believing what seem, from the outside, to be absolutely insane conspiracy theories. They encountered ideas that confirmed, in some fashion, what they already believe, perhaps because someone they trusted shared it.”
Since 911 did not exist at the time listeners called the operator to verify what was going on or to tell their loved ones goodbye. The New York Times reported 875 calls that night and the Newark Evening News received 1,000. The Newark, NJ police reported almost 1000 calls, asking for gas masks or if they needed to close the windows. New Jersey Bell company received 75,000-100,000 calls over their normal traffic during the show.
According to a letter by Paul Morton, the City Manager for Trenton, NJ, to the FCC the broadcast had “completely crippled communication facilities of our police department for about three hours. I am requesting that you immediately make and investigation and do everything possible to prevent a recurrence.” [The FCC did investigate but we’ll get to that in just a bit.]
AT&T even made a mini-documentary (linked below) about that night, praising their telephone operators’ bravery for not abandoning the line. Each operator recounts the phone lines being jammed up and people in hysterics. One woman even pointed out that most weren’t looking to connect to anyone, they were looking to speak with the operator.
Once CBS got wind of the hysteria they demanded a station break to announce it was a play. Welles waited ten minutes before repeating the disclaimer that he gave at the beginning of the program. Causing the aforementioned lopsided timing between the two acts.
The Actual “War of The Worlds” Panic
In terms of the real public reaction to the broadcast, there are only a few things everyone seems to agree on. The first is that the phone lines were jammed, and there is plenty of evidence from operators to confirm that. There was an incident where a woman came into a church and charged the pulpit to warn everyone. One couple ran from their home and got on a train to Connecticut, where they had no friends or family, but believed it would be safe. As they informed other passengers the train began to panic. When it was announced that the whole thing was fiction they were relieved. Even though they had to borrow money for some fellow travelers/college students to get back home, having spent their last $6 on the tickets in the first place.
And last, there was a neighborhood of about 20 families who all fled their homes with clothes around their faces. This incident is often the exaggerated basis for reports of swarms of people fleeing with, sometimes wet, cloth around their heads.
The Aftermath of Welles’ “War of The Worlds”
The next day both the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and CBS were inundated with letters about the “War of The Worlds” broadcast. One 1940s report says that CBS received 1,800 letters, 60% were positive. This doesn’t fully track with the 1,400 of these letters that were preserved in archives with only 10% being critical. The FCC received 600 letters and 60% were critical of the show. Though, to be fair, most people don’t write the FCC to praise something. So the fact that 40% may have been positive or neutral is the anomaly here.
The FCC did investigate but found that no laws were broken. Either way, CBS agreed to take steps to avoid making fictional broadcasts sound like it was actual breaking news in the future.
The “War of The Worlds” broadcast also led to many people not believing the first reports about the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
“I was in the midst of some hymn of praise to the American cornfields or something of the kind,” said Welles, “when suddenly, a gentleman darted into the radio studio, held up his hand, and said, ‘We interrupt this broadcast to bring you an announcement: Pearl Harbor has just been attacked.’ And of course this very serious and terrible news was never believed. Not for hours, by anybody in America, because they all said, ‘Well there he goes again, really, rather bad taste, it was funny once, but not a second time’.”
Despite all the lawsuits Welles came out on top, landing a contract with a studio. He went on to make “Citizen Kane” 3 years later. A movie hailed by many as one of the greatest American films ever made.
Why Does The Myth Persist
Soon after the broadcast some newspapers did wildly exaggerate the panic which has helped the myth of mass hysteria endure. Many sources claim this was due to newspapers disliking radio since it was the new kid on the block. Plus the jealousy of newpapers often being scooped by them due to how quick its turnaround time is. By casting a shadow over people getting their news via the radio newspapers could tighten their grip around readers. While others contend it was due to how late the show aired. Since most reporters had gone home for the day, papers were short-staffed when it came to coverage. Things simply weren’t checked as thoroughly as they normally were.
While exaggerated reports about the incident didn’t help, what keeps this going after all these decades is good old-fashioned confirmation bias. “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it,” Agent Kay, “Men in Black,” 1997.
We want to believe people are stupid and panicky in large numbers, so we swallow this tale with very little probing. In terms of pop culture, this myth is up there with “they put subliminal messages in movies to make you buy stuff,” and “you only use 10% of your brain.” “Facts” like these may sound true but they’ve been debunked multiple times over.
You can check out the radio broadcast and AT&T documentary below:
Print Sources Used
- “Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News,” 2016 by A. Brad Schwartz
- “PBS American Experience: War of The Worlds,” 2013
- “Spooked!: How a Radio Broadcast and The War of the Worlds Sparked the 1938 Invasion of America,” 2018 by Gail Jarrow
