The War of the Worlds (1938 Radio Broadcast)
Thursday, 7:00 pm, McCormack Observatory
Throughout the 1930s, major national traumas such as the hunt for the Lindbergh baby and the crash of the Hindenburg were brought into living rooms and parlors across the nation. Whole families would sit regularly around the radio and listen to President Roosevelt’s fireside chats. During the Munich Crisis of September 1938, more radios were sold to anxious Americans than in any previous period, as Hitler rallied his forces and the world slid inexorably toward war.
In this atmosphere of unease, Orson Welles and company broadcast their latest Mercury Theater presentation. Rather than set the story in Victorian England, the action was transplanted to contemporary America. More significantly, the story was told as a series of newsflashes that intruded without warning into what sounded like a perfectly routine program. Many people, tuning in late to the broadcast, found themselves listening to an orchestral symphony suddenly interrupted by increasingly alarming news stories.
First came reports of several explosions of “incandescent gas” observed on the planet Mars, followed by reports of a meteor impact in the unassuming little New Jersey town of Grover’s Mill. Within moments, Martians were advancing toward New York City, brushing aside American defenders and destroying dozens of familiar place names along the way. An emergency government announcement appeared to give credence to the story. Huddled about their radios, panicked listeners began to bombard local police stations with calls, and armed citizens took to the street to defend their homeland.
But nothing like that could possibly happen today, could it?
The Virginia Film Festival is pleased to spin the radio dial back to a time every bit as complex and uncertain as our own. Join us for this 70th anniversary rebroadcast of Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds, and remember not to believe everything you hear.
