Scary...
11/1/2007 6:38 AM
“We know now that in the early years of the twentieth century this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man's, and yet as mortal as his own. We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
With infinite complacence people went to and fro over the earth about their little affairs, serene in the assurance of their dominion over this small, spinning fragment of solar driftwood which, by chance or design, man has inherited out of the dark mystery of Time and Space.
Yet across an immense ethereal gulf, minds that are to our minds as ours are to the beasts in the jungle, intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.
In the thirty-ninth year of the twentieth century came the great disillusionment. It was near the end of October. Business was better. The war scare was over. More men were back at work. Sales were picking up. On this particular evening, October 30th, the Crosley service estimated that thirty-two million people were listening in on radios.”

Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater performed “War of the Worlds” on October 30, 1938 triggering one of the greatest hoaxes and one of my favorite Halloween traditions. I’ve only marveled at it more ever since. Read the paragraphs above again. Marvel at their writing. People don’t write like this anymore. Wells and Welles words intertwine perfectly making it hard to pick out where one had stopped and the other had started. It’s `nearly Shakespeare in my book and like Shakespeare it’s even better when spoken properly. Listen to Welles read it and note his inflections and his perfect use of pauses.

Oh and he was 23 when he did it.

When I was 23, I was shilling cameras; taking what ever meager cash I had buying comic books and dark beer at Pat McCurdy shows.

Welles had his timing impeccable. Planning the first “report” to air at the 12 minute mark coinciding when another popular radio show went to their first musical interlude and people began scanning the dial on their radios. The “reaction” has been disputed on the lowest level several thousand people used to hearing World War II reports bought into it completely. There were statements read announcing that it was just a radio show. Nothing else. The flip side to that is that none of these “announcements were read between the 12 minute and 40 minute marks which is when a majority of the “report” portion of the drama was broadcast. To imply that Welles didn’t think he knew what he was doing is to say you don’t understand Welles at all. Afterward in the storm of newspaper articles and public chastising Orson Welles issued an “apology”. I’m sure its out there on the intertube somewhere. But its very tongue in cheek and knowing Welles mastery of the language you can tell he’s laughing at us for buying it. Its even alluded to in the movie “RKO280” with Live Schriber half smiling his way through the press conference.

When I was a wee tiny radworld, mother radworld sat me down to listen to this show one Halloween and I’ve been smitten ever since. When I was living in my squalor, at the age of 23, I happened upon a CD of the production at a gas station in Milwaukee. I bought it immediately and I listened to it for several nights following. Why? Because I’m not only a radio geek but a Welles geek and it was like crack to me. Now with the advent of an Ipod that can quite easily house every piece of music I have ever wanted to own (I have the Bugs Bunny Square Dance on it). Every Halloween Orson and his hoax are a few clicks away. He then closes it out with…

“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 thing. We annihilated the world before your very ears, and utterly destroyed the C.BS. 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.”