Orson Welles, 1938

WELLS, H. G. (1866-1946) and Orson WELLES (1915-1985). War of the Worlds. [New York:] Mercury Theatre on the Air / Columbia Broadcasting System, 30 October 1938.

Mimeograph typescript. 49 pages, 280 x 218 mm (marginal tears and separation to first and last pages, some marginal toning on early pages in the series).

Mars attacks! The script for one of the most famous broadcasts in the history of radio.

"Mercury Theater on the Air," Orson Welles' weekly hour-long series of live radio dramas, aired Howard Koch's riveting adaptation of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds in October 1938. The premise was this: what began as a live musical performance was interrupted with periodic and increasingly urgent "news flashes" reporting "several explosions of incandescent gas, occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars." The program quickly became a ghastly account of a Martian invasion of New York City, calling for residents to evacuate. The dramatization was so realistic–particularly to those who missed the beginning introduction–that it purportedly caused a national uproar. The New York Times headline the following day read: "Radio Listeners in Panic, Taking War Drama as Fact; Many Flee Homes to Escape 'Gas Raid From Mars."

After receiving a deluge of phone calls from petrified radio listeners, police officers arrived at CBS studios where they were thought to have confiscated all copies of the script. The present copy, however, comes from the collection of Hubert J. Bernhard, who was working at the time as a reporter for the New York Journal American. After the broadcast he visited the studio and casually asked the receptionist if she had a copy of the script–she pulled this one out of her desk and handed it over.

While apparently no one died in the panic that had ensued, the episode did prompt the federal government to require future broadcasts to periodically remind listeners that they were, in fact, listening to a fiction. Orson Welles, who was only 23 at the time, apologized the next day. Provenance: Hubert J. Bernhard – (by descent to) Andrew Bernhard.