I am not talking about Tom Cruise here. This is the real deal. Orson Welles. Man, what a voice he had.
On today's date in 1938, Welles set the U.S. into panic mode with his broadcast of "War of the Worlds"--a realistic radio dramatization of a Martian invasion of Earth.
"War of the Worlds" was not planned as a radio hoax, but way back then, before the days of television, Sunday evening was "prime-time" and millions of Americans gathered every week around their radios to listen to their favourite shows. Most had listened to The Shadow featuring Welles for several years by this time.
The radio play was written to sound realistic, with announcers introducing musical acts, and periodically news announcers intrupted the broadcast to bring updates on a large meteor that had crashed into a farmer's field in Grovers Mills, New Jersey.
The updates soon took on a frantic and paniced air, much like the famous radio description of the great Hindenberg crash, as the events evolved into the Martian invasion, destroying and killing as they made their way through New York.
The radio play was extremely realistic, with Welles employing sophisticated sound effects and his actors doing an excellent job portraying terrified announcers and other characters. As many as a million radio listeners believed that a real Martian invasion was underway, panic broke out across the country.
People jammed highways seeking to escape the alien marauders. People begged police for gas masks to save them from the toxic gas and asked electric companies to turn off the power so that the Martians wouldn't see their lights and some suggest that paniced citizens even commited suicide rather than fall into Martian hands.
When news of the panic reached the broadcasting studio, Welles had to go on the air and reiterate the show was just a story and not real. It took a while to calm the nation down again.
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