On the morning of Oct. 31, 1938, American newspapers coast-to-coast ran headlines describing the mass panic resulting from a CBS radio broadcast the previous night. Terrified listen ers, believing the dramatized play to be real, thought they were witnessing an alien invasion and subsequent attack on the small town of Grover’s Mill, New Jersey. Phone calls to radio stations, newspaper offices, and the police convinced many that the broadcast caused a national hysteria. A story too silly to be taken seriously was, and the resulting panic became national news. In all of pop culture history, this is one of the most fascinating and bizarre stories you will ever hear.
In 1938, Mercury Theatre on the Air was a low-budget radio program that featured adaptations of literary classics. The show had been on the air for 17 weeks. The program was hosted by Orson Welles, the now wellknown actor, director, screenwriter, producer, and pioneer of radio and film. He was then just a young and upcoming radio personality.
Halloween week found Welles wanting to do something different with the program. He had the idea of presenting a radio broadcast in dramatized form so that it appeared to be a real event taking place. Welles presented this idea to his producer and director and they decided to base their radio drama on the science fiction nov el The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells.
