1938/DAILY NEWS, L.P. (NEW YORK) In his wonderfully thorough study of Wells’s


novel and Welles’s broadcast, author Peter J Beck proved that there was another hoax: the mass hysteria wasn’t all that massive. His book, The War of the Worlds: from HG


Wells to Orson Welles, convincingly argues that the next day’s sensational headlines were well over the top, being purely the result of the brief time between the end of the programme and the papers’ deadlines. Later factchecking revealed that streets described as being packed with panicking citizens were in fact as quiet as usual at that time in the evening. When promoting his programme – and himself – Welles appears to have been gilding a whole garden of lilies. The episode may have made Welles’s


reputation but it was bad news for ufologists, according to a speaker at a more recent conference on unexplained aeronautical phenomena. Did the stories about the populace fleeing from the fictional aliens prompt ‘the authorities’, in an attempt to avoid any similar traffic jams of panic-stricken folk, to conceal any evidence of the actual aliens who could well be all over the place? Be that as it may, the Welles broadcast lived on, copied by other nations, each of whose creative teams customised the story to fit in with the geography of their own cities. Ecuador seems to have been the most extreme


example and, as it is an account from a British diplomat rather than Orson Welles, there is much less doubt about its accuracy. In 1949, the citizens hearing the radio broadcast about Martians invading Quito were first of all terrified then, realising they had been fooled, were so furious that they rioted and burnt the broadcaster’s premises to the ground. There were several deaths – the only ones on this earth that could rightly be attributed to Martians. Back in 1938, the broadcast had concluded: “This is Orson Welles,


1938. However, if you listen to the recording of the drama (available online today) he can be heard intoning ominously that the events were taking place “in the 39th year of the 20th century”, ie 1938. He was on surer ground by pointing out that


the play was one of a weekly series from Mercury Theatre and that announcements had been made at the beginning, middle and end of the broadcast to the effect that it was a dramatisation of the Wells novel. Move on please: nothing to hear here.


Yet once it had been made clear that there were no Martians attacking, another myth was born, thanks to the immediate headlines: “Wave of mass hysteria” (New York Times). “Thousands in Fear” (Herald Tribune). “Terror Through US” (Daily News). The incident has gone down as a demonstration of human gullibility, if not of the madness of crowds, an accidental hoax. In the same way as the first listeners came to their senses and realised the Martians could be ruled out, in due course revisionist academics came along to cast doubt on the degree of the hysteria.


ladies and gentlemen, out of character, to assure you that The War of the Worlds has no significance other than as the Halloween holiday offering it was intended to be, the Mercury Theatre’s radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying ‘boo!’” Welles, playing the newspaper editor in Citizen Kane, has the memorable line expounding his character’s instruction to get a picture of a non-existent war: “When choosing between the truth and the legend, print the legend.” And, in both cases, it was a great legend.


theJournalist | 17


SHAWSHOTS / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO


Looking back to:


1938


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