War of the Worlds Radio Documentary Part 1

I found this on an old cassette-NPR's 50th anniversay radio documentary of the legendary 1938 Orson Wells panic broadcast. This program was originally aired on October 30th, 1988.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Orson
• Wells
• War
• of
• the
• Worlds
• NPR
• 1988

[buchan23]

Punked a whole nation. Outstanding.

[daweller]

Orson Wells, the original troll.

[AlostheVampirePrince]

No matter what you think, you have no choice but to give him a round of applause.

[1Openminded1]

@daweller hahaha

[cha5]

"The question has persisted, did he do it on purpose?"

Yes. Welles had said twenty years later in the 1950s that he had in effect 'trolled' the radio audience because he didn't like the fact people would believe anything coming out of that box. I believe I had read somewhere that WOTW's author H.G. Wells had publicly tore into Welles for using his original story to cause a panic, but he also personally congratulated him on his resourcefulness in pulling it off.

[2010californa]

@yesiamawizardjonny you.........

[FrozDOEUF]

Pretty interesting video, american people were crazy lol.

[TheCrazyMexican0]

I'm 17 but I still think that this is the greatest prank played on a nation. When I heard this, I thought it was boring at first but then when the "aliens" appeared I could see how people back then could've panicked

[Schutte2717]

People jumped off buildings. Pretty terrifying.



[yellowhue30]

I think the anger would be rooted mainly in embarrassment. Imagine all of the people who panicked, instantly throttled from whatever social status they had achieved in life, now thought to be raving lunatics based on that single over-reaction to a fictional radio program. Damn right they were mad...

[TheFrontrowkid]

Although there was panic and some overreactions, there were no deaths due to suicide or mass panic. Once the public found out the truth, they became angry at the way they were fooled. It was this embarrassment which led CBS to decree that no future drama or mystery program be presented so as to mislead the listeners. Many shows had the disclaimer that the names of persons or places in the story were ficititious and had no resemblance to reality.

[TheFrontrowkid]

It wasn't the storyline so much that panicked people. It was the on-the-spot news format that was just coming into radio. This gave the storyline a modern day approach. Listeners had already heard the routine broadcast of a dirigible landing turn into an instant tragedy. Also Kenny Delmar, an actor who impersonated FDR on radio, did the "voice" as the Secretary of the Interior. But in their panic, listeners heard FDR trying to calm them. To understand what happened, you had to be there.