"The War of the Worlds" was a Halloween episode of the radio series The Mercury Theatre on the Air directed and narrated by Orson Welles as an adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds (1898) that was performed and broadcast live at 8 pm ET on October 30, 1938, over the CBS Radio Network. The episode is famous for inciting a panic by convincing some members of the listening audience that a Martian invasion was taking place, though the scale of panic is disputed, as the program had relatively few listeners.
Edward Roscoe Murrow was an American broadcast journalist and war correspondent. He first gained prominence during World War II with a series of live radio broadcasts from Europe for the news division of CBS. During the war he recruited and worked closely with a team of war correspondents who came to be known as the Murrow Boys.
Without Warning is an American television film directed by Robert Iscove. It follows a duo of real-life reporters covering breaking news about three meteor fragments crashing into the Northern Hemisphere. It aired on CBS on October 30, 1994, and is presented as if it were an actual breaking news event, complete with remote reports from reporters. The executive producer was David L. Wolper, who produced a number of mockumentary-style films since the 1960s. The movie was heavily influenced by Orson Welles' 1938 The War of the Worlds radio broadcast, but just like said broadcast, Without Warning caused a nationwide panic.
William Lawrence Shirer was an American journalist, war correspondent, and historian. His The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a history of Nazi Germany has been read by many and cited in scholarly works for more than 60 years; its fiftieth anniversary was marked by a new edition of the book.
The Mercury Theatre was an independent repertory theatre company founded in New York City in 1937 by Orson Welles and producer John Houseman. The company produced theatrical presentations, radio programs and motion pictures. The Mercury also released promptbooks and phonographic recordings of four Shakespeare works for use in schools.
The Night That Panicked America is an American made-for-television drama film that was originally broadcast on the ABC network on October 31, 1975. The telefilm dramatizes events surrounding Orson Welles' famous — and infamous – War of the Worlds radio broadcast of October 30, 1938, which had led some Americans to believe that an invasion by Martians was occurring in the area near Grover's Mill in West Windsor, New Jersey.
Robert Trout was an American broadcast news reporter who worked on radio before and during World War II for CBS News. He was regarded by some as the "Iron Man of Radio" for his ability to ad lib while on the air, as well as for his stamina, composure, and elocution.
Howard E. Koch was an American playwright and screenwriter who was blacklisted by the Hollywood film studio bosses in the 1950s.
Alexander Scourby was an American film, television, and voice actor and narrator known for his deep and resonant voice and Mid-Atlantic accent. He is best known for his film role as the ruthless mob boss Mike Lagana in Fritz Lang's The Big Heat (1953), and is also particularly well-remembered in the English-speaking world for his landmark recordings of the entire King James Version audio Bible, which have been released in numerous editions. He later recorded the entire Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Scourby was an accomplished narrator, including for 18 episodes of National Geographic Specials from 1966 to 1985. Scourby recorded 422 audiobooks for the blind, which he considered his most important work.
Grovers Mill is an unincorporated community located within West Windsor in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It is centered around the intersection of Clarksville Road and Cranbury Road, adjacent to the community's mill-pond. It is 4 miles (6 km) southeast of Princeton, 6 miles (10 km) northwest of Hightstown, and 12 miles (19 km) northeast of Trenton, the state capital.
The Murrow Boys, or Murrow's Boys, were the CBS radio broadcast journalists most closely associated with Edward R. Murrow during his time at the network, most notably in the years before and during World War II.
Studio One is an American anthology drama television series that was adapted from a radio series. It was created in 1947 by Canadian director Fletcher Markle, who came to CBS from the CBC. It premiered on November 7, 1948, and ended on September 29, 1958, with a total of 467 episodes over the course of 10 seasons.
H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds is a 2005 direct-to-video independent science fiction action horror-thriller film version adaptation of H. G. Wells's 1898 novel of the same name about a Martian invasion of southern England. This version was produced by the independent film company Pendragon Pictures. Unlike the adaptations set in the current day United States, this was the first film set in the novel's original 1898 Victorian England. In 2012, a re-formatted, re-worked version of the film was released as War of the Worlds – The True Story.
The year 1938 saw a number of significant events in radio broadcasting.
The War of the Worlds was a radio drama, originally aired by Buffalo, New York radio station WKBW 1520 on October 31, 1968. It was a modernized version of the original radio drama aired by CBS in 1938.
Orson Welles' Sketch Book is a series of six short television commentaries by Orson Welles for the BBC in 1955. Written and presented by Welles, the 15-minute episodes present the filmmaker's commentaries on a range of subjects. Welles frequently draws from his own experiences and often illustrates the episodes with his own sketches.
Ceiling Unlimited (1942–1944) is a CBS radio series created by Orson Welles and sponsored by the Lockheed-Vega Corporation. The program was conceived to glorify the aviation industry and dramatize its role in World War II.
This is a comprehensive listing of the radio programs made by Orson Welles. Welles was often uncredited for his work, particularly in the years 1934–1937, and he apparently kept no record of his broadcasts.
Radio is what I love most of all. The wonderful excitement of what could happen in live radio, when everything that could go wrong did go wrong. I was making a couple of thousand a week, scampering in ambulances from studio to studio, and committing much of what I made to support the Mercury. I wouldn't want to return to those frenetic 20-hour working day years, but I miss them because they are so irredeemably gone.
The Mercury Theatre on the Air is a radio series of live radio dramas created and hosted by Orson Welles. The weekly hour-long show presented classic literary works performed by Welles's celebrated Mercury Theatre repertory company, with music composed or arranged by Bernard Herrmann. The series began July 11, 1938, as a sustaining program on the CBS Radio network, airing Mondays at 9 pm ET. On September 11, the show moved to Sundays at 8 pm.
