The War of the Worlds

Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 48. Chapters: Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds, Tripod, Martian, HMS Thunder Child, Adaptations of The War of the Worlds, Heat-Ray, Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds, Treehouse of Horror XVII, List of War of the Worlds episodes, Red weed, Mor-Taxan, Flying-machine, Invaders from Mars, Black smoke, Doctor Clayton Forrester, Highlights from Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds, Handling-machine, Embankment-machine, Grover's Mill, New Jersey. Excerpt: The War of the Worlds was an episode of the American radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on October 30, 1938 and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated by Orson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds. The first two thirds of the 60-minute broadcast were presented as a series of simulated "news bulletins", which suggested to many listeners that an actual alien invasion by Martians was currently in progress. Compounding the issue was the fact that the Mercury Theatre on the Air was a 'sustaining show' (it ran without commercial breaks), thus adding to the program's quality of realism. Although there were sensationalist accounts in the press about a supposed panic in response to the broadcast, the precise extent of listener response has been debated. In the days following the adaptation, however, there was widespread outrage. The program's news-bulletin format was decried as cruelly deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast, but the episode secured Orson Welles' fame. Welles' adaptation was one of the Radio Project's first studies. H. G. Wells' original novel relates the story of an alien invasion of Earth at the end of the 19th century. The radio play's story was adapted by and written primarily by Howard Koch and Anne Froelich, with input from Orson Welles and the staff of CBS's Mercury Theatre On The Air. The action was transferred to contemporary Grover's Mill, an unincorporated village in West Windsor Township, New Jersey in the United States. The program's format was to simulate a live newscast of developing events. To this end, Welles played recordings of Herbert Morrison's radio reports of the Hindenburg disaster for actor Frank Readick and the rest of the cast, to demonstrate the mood he wanted. The first two thirds of the 55¿ minute