It was the most famous radio show ever, sending hundreds into a panic, and causing confusion and fear. On Halloween 1939, Orson Wells’s War of the Worlds led many to believe the Earth was actually under attack by martians. And Oct. 27, the show will be rebroadcast in it entirety on WNHN-FM 94.7 in Concord on the Classic Radio Theater at 7 p.m.
“Many listeners missed the introduction on this relatively new and unsponsored Mercury Theatre on the Air on CBS. As a result, after about 12 minutes when NBC’s Chase and Sanborn Hour went to a musical number, listeners began to see what was on other networks . . . and they found what some took it to be an actual news report,” said program host Jayme Simoes. Enter the Martians!
As the program ended, and reports of panic hit the studio, Wells offered a half-joking apology, saying that “The War of The Worlds has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be. The Mercury Theatre’s own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying Boo! Starting now, we couldn’t soap all your windows and steal all your garden gates by tomorrow night . . . so we did the next best thing. We annihilated the world before your very ears, and utterly destroyed the CBS. You will be relieved, I hope, to learn that we didn’t mean it, and that both institutions are still open for business. So goodbye everybody, and remember the terrible lesson you learned tonight. That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch, and if your doorbell rings and nobody’s there, that was no Martian . . . it’s Halloween.”
Tune in Oct. 27 at 7 p.m. to hear the original War of the Worlds on WNHN 94.7 FM. And lock the doors.
