Post Description

The War of the Worlds Genre  Radio drama
Running time  60 minutes
Home station  CBS Radio
Starring  

    Orson Welles
    Frank Readick
    Kenny Delmar
    Ray Collins

Announcer  Dan Seymour
Writer(s)  

    Howard Koch (adaptation)
    Anne Froelick
    H.G. Wells (novel)

Director(s)  Orson Welles
Producer(s)  John Houseman
Orson Welles
Exec. producer(s)  Davidson Taylor (for CBS)
Narrated by  Orson Welles
Recording studio  Columbia Broadcasting Building, 485 Madison Avenue, New York
Air dates  since October 30, 1938
Opening theme  Piano Concerto No. 1, by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

The War of the Worlds is an episode of the American radio drama anthology series The 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 actor and future filmmaker Orson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds (1898).

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), adding to the program's 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 and panic by certain listeners, who had believed the events described in the program were real.[1] The program's news-bulletin format was described as cruelly deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast. The episode secured Welles's fame.