By ELYSE HAYES
Today marks the 60th anniversary of Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast.
“The War of the Worlds” was a radio drama adapted from H.G. Wells’ novel about Martians attacking the earth. It was broadcast on Oct. 30, 1938 from WABC’s Mercury Theatre.
Many listening to the radio program thought that the “news flash” that interrupted the play was real.
The announcer reported that a meteor from Mars had landed in Princeton, N.J., killing 1,500 people.
“A wave of mass hysteria seized thousands of radio listeners between 8:15 and 9:30 o’clock last night,” The New York Times reported the following day.
The newspaper reported that its switchboard recieved 875 calls.
One man told The New York Times that he fled his home after tuning in to the program.
“When I got to the street there were hundreds of people milling around in panic. Most of us ran toward Broadway and it was not until we stopped taxi drivers who had heard the entire broadcast on their radios that we knew what it was all about. It was the most asinine stunt I ever heard of,” he said.
Although the program was introduced as a fictional play, listeners that missed the beginning thought that the interruption of a breaking news flash was real instead of part of the story.
“The only people who were duped were those who tuned in later,” said Sherry Baker, BYU professor of communications.
One of the reasons that so many believed the attack was real was that radio was a trusted source of information at the time, Baker said. Radio was a new medium in the ’30s, and people liked listening to it because they felt like someone was talking to them.
At a time when many people distrusted the newspapers, they trusted the human voice, Baker said.
“(Listeners) didn’t have any reason to be skeptical,” she said.
Since the broadcast, several sequels have been written and movies produced. It has also prompted research of the psychology of mass hysteria.
The original script of the radio broadcast can be found at www.scifi.com.
The Science Fiction channel will broadcast the 1953 movie “The War of the Worlds” as well as “Orson the Alien: The untold story behind `The War of the Worlds'” tonight. Check local listings for times.
