![]() Orson Welles joined him in the final rewrite, and somewhere along the line the key modernization occurred: use of the present tense and the addition of staccato-like news bulletins to plot the course of the Martians’ progress toward Manhattan. But chief Mercury writer Howard Koch considered the book so antiquated as to be laughable and set busily to work rewriting. Wells’s 1898 fantasy, The War of the Worlds, was scheduled. In September the “Mercury Theatre” moved into its regular time slot, opposite the hugely popular “Chase and Sanborn Hour,” starring Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Bergen usually pulled in about 35 percent of the audience, while the “Mercury Theatre” would average 3.6 percent.Īnd so the stage was set for one of the most bizarre events in broadcast history.įor the Halloween program on October 30, 1938, H. Programs based on Treasure Island, A Tale of Two Cities, The 39 Steps, Jane Eyre, and others followed in weekly sixty-minute installments. With a cast that included Agnes Moorhead, Joseph Cotten, Martin Gabel, and Welles, the “Mercury Theatre on the Air” premiered on radio with Bram Stoker’s Dracula on July 11, 1938. Here he created-as director, writer, and actor-the quintessence of what imaginative radio drama could be. Wells’s work with the Mercury Theatre would be his most innovative effort on radio. The company enjoyed such success that Welles persuaded CBS to hire them to present a series of plays adapted from masterpieces. ![]() Welles’s theater work brought him into contact with John Houseman, and in late 1937 he and Houseman took over the tiny Comedy Theatre and ensconced their drama troupe in the newly renamed Mercury Theatre. Even before Welles became well known, his ability to take on roles requiring any accent or age made him one of the most sought-after actors on radio he once said that by 1935 he never earned “less than $1,000 a week as an unnamed, anonymous radio actor.” In 1937 he was chosen to be Lamont Cranston, the millionaire playboy who foiled evildoers by night in the adventure serial “The Shadow.” (Q: “Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of man?” A: “The Shadow knows…ha-ha-ha!”) Orson Welles first appeared on radio in 1934–1935, in NBC’s “The March of Time,” a kind of dramatized newsreel for radio sponsored by Time magazine. You can listen to the War of the World's broadcast, on this blog post, from the Smithsonian's "Around The Mall" blog. This article is excerpted from her book, On the Air: Pioneers of American Broadcasting. In this blog post, Henderson tells us more about Orson Welles and his historic broadcast. ![]() The event is free and open to the public please meet in the museum’s F Street Lobby. This day marks the seventieth anniversary of the Halloween radio broadcast that panicked America. as National Portrait Gallery historian Amy Henderson discusses Orson Welles and plays some selections from War of the Worlds. Join us on Friday, October 31, at 1:00 p.m. This portrait is on display in the "20th Century American's" exhibition, on the museum's third floor. Orson Welles is pictured here in a radio studio, at about the time he produced The War of the Worlds. As viewers listened to aliens taking over Manhattan, panic set in, and Welles had to interrupt the broadcast to assure listeners it was not real. Many tuned in late, missing the announcement that the program was fiction. ![]() Wells’s fantasy War of the Worlds (1898). On Halloween night of 1938, Orson Welles brought to the airwaves the now-classic H. Orson Welles / By unidentified artist, c.1938 / Gelatin silver print / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
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