War of the Worlds (radio)

"The War of the Worlds" was a Halloween episode of the radio series ''The Mercury Theatre on the Air'' directed and narrated by Orson Welles as an adaptation of H. G. Wells in 1926, which Welles later said gave him the idea for "The War of the Worlds". A 1927 drama aired by Adelaide station 5CL depicted an invasion of Australia using the same techniques and inspired reactions similar to those of the Welles broadcast.

Welles was also influenced by the ''Columbia Workshop'' presentations "The Fall of the City", a 1937 radio play in which Welles played the role of an omniscient announcer, and "Air Raid", an as-it-happens drama starring Ray Collins that aired October 27, 1938. Welles had previously used a newscast format for "Julius Caesar" (September 11, 1938), with H. V. Kaltenborn providing historical commentary throughout the story.

"The War of the Worlds" broadcast used techniques similar to those of ''The March of Time,'' the CBS news documentary and dramatization radio series. Welles was a member of the program's regular cast, having first performed on it in March 1935. ''The Mercury Theatre on the Air'' and ''The March of Time'' shared many cast members and sound effects chief Ora D. Nichols.

Welles discussed his fake newscast idea with producer John Houseman and associate producer Paul Stewart; together, they decided to adapt a work of science fiction. They considered adapting M. P. Shiel's '' The Purple Cloud'' and Arthur Conan Doyle's '' The Lost World'' before purchasing the radio rights to ''The War of the Worlds''. Houseman later suspected Welles had never read it.

Koch worked on adapting novels and wrote the first drafts for the Mercury Theatre broadcasts "Hell on Ice" (October 9), "Seventeen" (October 16), and "Around the World in 80 Days" (October 23). Wood, Bret, ''Orson Welles: A Bio-Bibliography.'' Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1990 On October 24, he was assigned to adapt ''The War of the Worlds'' for broadcast the following Sunday night.

On the night of October 25, 36 hours before rehearsals were to begin, Koch telephoned Houseman in what the producer characterized as "deep distress": Koch said he could not make ''The War of the Worlds'' interesting or credible as a radio play, a conviction echoed by his secretary Anne Froelick, a typist and aspiring writer whom Houseman had hired to assist him. With only his own abandoned script for ''Lorna Doone'' to fall back on, Houseman told Koch to continue adapting the Wells fantasy. He joined Koch and Froelick to work on the script through the night. On the night of October 26, the first draft was finished on schedule.

On October 27, Stewart held a cast reading of the script, with Koch and Houseman making necessary changes. That afternoon, Stewart made an acetate recording without music or sound effects. Welles, immersed in rehearsing the Mercury stage production of ''Danton's Death'' scheduled to open the following week, played the record at an editorial meeting that night in his suite at the St. Regis Hotel. After hearing "Air Raid" on the ''Columbia Workshop'' earlier that same evening, Welles thought the script was dull. He stressed the importance of adding news flashes and eyewitness accounts to the script to create a sense of urgency and excitement.

Houseman, Koch, and Stewart reworked the script that night, increasing the number of news bulletins and using the names of real places and people whenever possible. On October 28, the script was sent to Davidson Taylor, executive producer for CBS, and the network legal department. Their response was that the script was "too" credible and its realism had to be toned down. As using the names of actual institutions could be actionable, CBS insisted on about 28 changes in phrasing. "Under protest and with a deep sense of grievance we changed the Hotel Biltmore to a nonexistent ''Park Plaza'', '' Transamerica Radio News'' to ''Inter-Continental Radio News'', the ''Columbia Broadcasting Building'' to ''Broadcasting Building''," Houseman wrote. "The United States Weather Bureau in Washington, D.C." was changed to "The Government Weather Bureau," "Princeton University Observatory" to "Princeton Observatory," "McGill University" in Montreal to "Macmillan University" in Toronto, "New Jersey National Guard" to "State Militia," " United States Signal Corps" to "Signal Corps," "Langley Field" to "Langham Field," and "St. Patrick's Cathedral (Manhattan), St. Patrick's Cathedral" to "the cathedral."

On October 29, Stewart rehearsed the show with the sound effects team and gave special attention to crowd scenes, the echo of cannon fire, and the sound of boat horns in New York Harbor.

In the early afternoon of October 30, Bernard Herrmann and his orchestra arrived in the studio, where Welles had taken over production of that evening's program.

To create the role of reporter Carl Phillips, Frank Readick went to the record library and repeatedly played the recording of Herbert Morrison (announcer), Herbert Morrison's dramatic radio report of the Hindenburg disaster, ''Hindenburg'' disaster. Stewart worked with Herrmann and the orchestra to sound like a dance band, and became the person Welles later credited as being largely responsible for the quality of "The War of the Worlds" broadcast.Joseph McBride (writer), McBride, Joseph, ''What Ever Happened to Orson Welles? A Portrait of an Independent Career.'' Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2006,

Welles wanted the music to play for unbearably long stretches of time.Leaming, Barbara, ''Orson Welles, A Biography.'' New York: Viking Press, Viking, 1985 The studio's emergency fill-in, a solo piano playing Suite bergamasque, Debussy and Fantaisie-Impromptu, Chopin, was heard several times. "As it played on and on," Houseman wrote, "its effect became increasingly sinister—a thin band of suspense stretched almost beyond endurance. That piano was the neatest trick of the show." The dress rehearsal was scheduled for 6 pm.

"Our actual broadcasting time, from the first mention of the meteorites to the fall of New York City, was less than forty minutes," wrote Houseman. "During that time, men travelled long distances, large bodies of troops were mobilized, cabinet meetings were held, savage battles fought on land and in the air. And millions of people accepted it—emotionally if not logically."

Cast

The cast of "The War of the Worlds" appears in order as first heard in the broadcast.
* Announcer – Dan Seymour (announcer), Dan Seymour
* Narrator – Orson Welles
* First studio announcer – Paul Stewart
* Meridian Room announcer – William Alland
* Reporter Carl Phillips – Frank Readick
* Professor Richard Pierson – Orson Welles
* Second studio announcer – Carl Frank
* Mr. Wilmuth – Ray Collins
* Policeman at Wilmuth farm – Kenny Delmar
* Brigadier General Montgomery Smith – Richard Wilson (producer), Richard Wilson
* Mr. Harry McDonald, vice president in charge of radio operations – Ray Collins
* Captain Lansing of the Signal Corps – Kenny Delmar
* Third studio announcer – Paul Stewart
* Secretary of the Interior – Kenny Delmar
* 22nd Field Artillery Officer – Richard Wilson
* Field artillery gunner – William Alland
* Field artillery observer – Stefan Schnabel
* Lieutenant Voght, bombing commander – Howard Smith (actor), Howard Smith
* Bayonne radio operator – Kenny Delmar
* Langham Field radio operator – Richard Wilson
* Newark radio operator – William Herz
* 2X2L radio operator – Frank Readick
* 8X3R radio operator – William Herz
* Fourth studio announcer, from roof of Broadcasting Building – Ray Collins
* Fascist stranger – Carl Frank
* Himself – Orson Welles

Broadcast

Plot summary

"The War of the Worlds" begins with a paraphrase of s:The War of the Worlds/Book 1/Chapter 1, the beginning of the novel, updated to contemporary times. The announcer introduces Orson Welles:

We know now that in the early years of the 20th century, this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own. We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns, they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacence, people went to and fro over the earth about their little affairs, serene in the assurance of their dominion over this small spinning fragment of solar driftwood which by chance or design man has inherited out of the dark mystery of Time and Space. Yet across an immense ethereal gulf, minds that are to our minds as ours are to the beasts in the jungle, intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. In the 39th year of the 20th century came the great disillusionment. It was near the end of October. Business was better. The timeline of events preceding World War II, war scare was over. More men were back at work. Sales were picking up. On this particular evening, October 30th, the Crossley ratings, Crossley service estimated that 32 million people were listening in on radios…

The radio program begins as a simulation of a normal evening radio broadcast featuring a weather report and music by "Ramon Raquello and His Orchestra" live from a local hotel ballroom. After a few minutes, the music is interrupted by several news flashes about strange gas explosions on Mars. An interview is arranged with reporter Carl Phillips and Princeton University, Princeton-based astronomy professor Richard Pierson, who dismisses speculation about life on Mars. The musical program returns temporarily but is interrupted again by news of a strange meteorite landing in Grover's Mill, New Jersey. Phillips and Pierson are dispatched to the site, where a large crowd has gathered. Philips describes the chaotic atmosphere around the strange cylindrical object, and Pierson admits that he does not know exactly what it is, but that it seems to be made of an extraterrestrial metal. The cylinder unscrews, and Phillips describes the tentacled, horrific "monster" that emerges from inside. Police officers approach the Martian (War of the Worlds), Martian waving a flag of truce, but it and its companions respond by firing a Heat-Ray, heat ray, which incinerates the delegation and ignites the nearby woods and cars as the crowd screams. Phillips's shouts about incoming flames are cut off mid-sentence, and after a moment of dead air, an announcer explains that the remote broadcast was interrupted due to "some difficulty with [their] field transmission".

After a brief "piano interlude", regular programming breaks down as the studio struggles with casualty and fire-fighting updates. A shaken Pierson speculates about Martian technology. The New Jersey National Guard of the United States, state militia declares martial law and attacks the cylinder; a captain from their field headquarters lectures about the overwhelming force of properly-equipped infantry and the helplessness of the Martians until Tripod (The War of the Worlds), a tripod rises from the pit, which obliterates the militia. The studio returns and describes the Martians as an invading army. Emergency response bulletins give way to damage and evacuation reports as thousands of refugees clog the highways. Three Martian tripods from the cylinder destroy power stations and uproot bridges and railroads, reinforced by three others from a second cylinder that landed in the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, Great Swamp near Morristown, New Jersey, Morristown. The United States Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of the Interior reads a brief statement trying to reassure a panicked nation, after which it is reported that more explosions have been observed on Mars, indicating that more war machines are on the way.

A live connection is established to a field artillery battery in the Watchung Mountains. Its gun crew damages a machine, resulting in a release of poisonous Black smoke (The War of the Worlds), black smoke, before fading into the sound of coughing. The lead plane of a wing of bombers from Langley Field, Langham Field broadcasts its approach and remains on the air as their engines are burned by the heat ray and the plane dives on the invaders in a last-ditch suicide attack. Radio operators go active and fall silent: although the bombers manage to destroy one machine, the remaining five spread black smoke across the New Jersey Meadowlands, Jersey Marshes into Newark, New Jersey, Newark.

Eventually, a news reporter broadcasting from atop the CBS Building, Broadcasting Building describes the Martian invasion of New York City – "five great machines" wading the Hudson River, Hudson "like [men] wading through a brook", black smoke drifting over the city, people diving into the East River "like rats", others in Times Square "falling like flies". He reads a final bulletin stating that Martian cylinders have fallen all over the country, then describes the smoke approaching his location until he suffocates and collapses, leaving only the sounds of the city under attack in the background. A ham radio operator is heard calling, "2X2L calling CQ, New York. Isn't there anyone on the air? Isn't there anyone on the air? Isn't there... anyone?"

After a period of silence announcer Dan Seymour says:

You are listening to a CBS presentation of Orson Welles and the ''Mercury Theatre on the Air'', in an original dramatization of ''The War of the Worlds'' by H. G. Wells. The performance will continue after a brief intermission. This is the Columbia Broadcasting System.

The last third of the program is performed in a standard radio drama format consisting of dialogue and monologue. It focuses on Professor Pierson, who survives the attack on Grover's Mill and is attempting to make contact with other humans. In Newark, he encounters an opportunistic militiaman who holds fascist ideals and declares his intent to use Martian weaponry to take control of both species; saying that he wants no part of "his world", Pierson leaves the stranger with his delusions. His journey ends in the ruins of New York City, where he discovers that the Martians have died – as with the novel, they fell victim to earthly pathogenic Microorganism, germs, to which they had no Immunity (medical), immunity. Life returns to normal, and Pierson finishes writing his recollections of the invasion and its aftermath.

Closing statement

After the conclusion of the play, Welles reassumed his role as host and told listeners that the broadcast was intended to be merely a "holiday offering", the equivalent of the Mercury Theater "dressing up in a sheet, jumping out of a bush and saying, 'Boo!'" and stated that while they had "annihilated the world and utterly destroyed CBS before your very ears... you will be relieved I hope to hear that both institutions are still open for business." He ended the program by assuring listeners that, "If your doorbell rings and there's nobody there, that was no Martian; it's Halloween." Popular mythology holds that the disclaimer was hastily added to the broadcast at the insistence of CBS executives to quell the supposed panic inspired by the program, but it was actually added by Welles at the last minute, and he delivered it over Taylor's objections, who feared that reading it on the air would expose the network to legal liability.

Announcements

Radio programming charts in Sunday newspapers listed "The War of the Worlds". On October 30, 1938, ''The New York Times'' included the show in its "Leading Events of the Week" ("Tonight – Play: H. G. Wells' 'War of the Worlds'") and published a photograph of Welles with some of the Mercury players, captioned, "Tonight's show is H. G. Wells' 'War of the Worlds'".

Announcements that "The War of the Worlds" is a dramatization of a work of fiction were made on the full CBS network at four points during the broadcast: at the beginning, before the middle break, after the middle break, and at the end. The middle break was delayed 10 minutes to accommodate the dramatic content.

Another announcement was repeated on the full CBS network that same evening at 10:30 pm, 11:30 pm, and midnight: "For those listeners who tuned in to Orson Welles's ''Mercury Theatre on the Air'' broadcast from 8 to 9 pm Eastern Standard Time tonight and did not realize that the program was merely a modernized adaptation of H. G. Wells' famous novel ''War of the Worlds'', we are repeating the fact which was made clear four times on the program, that, while the names of some American cities were used, as in all novels and dramatizations, the entire story and all of its incidents were fictitious."Hadley Cantril, Cantril, Hadley, Hazel Gaudet, and Herta Herzog, ''The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic: with the Complete Script of the Famous Orson Welles Broadcast''. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1940.

Public reaction

The show went on the air shortly after 8:00 pm ET. At 8:32, Houseman noticed Taylor step out of the studio to take a telephone call in the control room, who returned four minutes later looking "pale as death", as he had been ordered to immediately interrupt "The War of the Worlds" broadcast with an announcement of the program's fictional content. By the time the order was given, the fictional news reporter played by Ray Collins was choking on poison gas as the Martians overwhelmed New York and the program was less than a minute away from its first scheduled break, which proceeded as previously planned.

Actor Stefan Schnabel recalled sitting in the anteroom after finishing his on-air performance. "A few policemen trickled in, then a few more. Soon, the room was full of policemen and a massive struggle was going on between the police, page boys, and CBS executives, who were trying to prevent the cops from busting in and stopping the show. It was a show to witness."

During the sign-off theme, the phone began ringing. Houseman picked it up and the furious caller announced he was mayor of a Midwestern town, where mobs were in the streets. Houseman hung up quickly, "[f]or we were off the air now and the studio door had burst open."

The following hours were a nightmare. The building was suddenly full of people and dark-blue uniforms. Hustled out of the studio, we were locked into a small back office on another floor. Here we sat incommunicado while network employees were busily collecting, destroying, or locking up all scripts and records of the broadcast. Finally, the Press was let loose upon us, ravening for horror. How many deaths had ''we'' heard of? (Implying they knew of thousands.) What did ''we'' know of the fatal stampede in a Jersey hall? (Implying it was one of many.) What traffic deaths? (The ditches must be choked with corpses.) The suicides? (Haven't you heard about the one on Riverside Drive?) It is all quite vague in my memory and quite terrible.

Paul White (journalist), Paul White, head of CBS News, was quickly summoned to the office, "and there bedlam reigned", he wrote:

The telephone switchboard, a vast sea of light, could handle only a fraction of incoming calls. The haggard Welles sat alone and despondent. "I'm through," he lamented, "washed up." I didn't bother to reply to this highly inaccurate self-appraisal. I was too busy writing explanations to put on the air, reassuring the audience that it was safe. I also answered my share of incessant telephone calls, many of them from as far away as the Pacific Coast.White, Paul W., ''News on the Air''. New York: Harcourt (publisher), Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1947

Because of the crowd of newspaper reporters, photographers, and police, the cast left the CBS building by the rear entrance. Aware of the sensation the broadcast had made, but not its extent, Welles went to the Mercury Theatre where an all-night rehearsal of ''Danton's Death'' was in progress. Shortly after midnight, one of the cast, a late arrival, told Welles that news about "The War of the Worlds" was being flashed in Times Square. They immediately left the theatre, and standing on the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street, they read the lighted bulletin that circled the ''New York Times'' building: ORSON WELLES CAUSES PANIC.

Some listeners heard only a portion of the broadcast and, in the tension and anxiety prior to World War II, mistook it for a genuine news broadcast. Thousands of them shared the false reports with others or called CBS, newspapers, or the police to ask if the broadcast was real. Many newspapers assumed that the large number of phone calls and the scattered reports of listeners rushing about or fleeing their homes proved the existence of a mass panic, but such behavior was never widespread.

Future ''The Tonight Show, Tonight Show'' host Jack Paar had announcing duties that night for Cleveland CBS affiliate WHKW, WGAR. As panicked listeners called the studio, he attempted to calm them on the phone and on air by saying: "The world is not coming to an end. Trust me. When have I ever lied to you?" When the listeners started to accuse Paar with "covering up the truth", he called WGAR's station manager for help. Oblivious to the situation, the manager advised Paar to calm down and said that it was "all a tempest in a teapot".

In a 1975 interview with radio historian Chuck Schaden, radio actor Alan Reed recalled being one of several actors recruited to answer phone calls at CBS's New York headquarters.

In Concrete, Washington, phone lines and electricity suffered a short circuit at the Superior Portland Cement Company's electrical substation, substation. Residents were unable to call neighbors, family, or friends to calm their fears. Reporters who heard of the coincidental blackout sent the story over the newswire, and Concrete was known worldwide.

Welles continued with the rehearsal of ''Danton's Death'', leaving shortly after the dawn of October 31. He was operating on three hours of sleep when CBS called him to a press conference. He read a statement that was later printed in newspapers nationwide and took questions from reporters:

:Question: Were you aware of the terror such a broadcast would stir up?
Welles: Definitely not. The technique I used was not original with me. It was not even new. I anticipated nothing unusual.
:Question: Should you have toned down the language of the drama?
Welles: No, you don't play murder in soft words.
:Question: Why was the story changed to put in names of American cities and government officers?
Welles: H. G. Wells used real cities in Europe, and to make the play more acceptable to American listeners we used real cities in America. Of course, I'm terribly sorry now.

In its October 31, 1938, edition, the ''Tucson Citizen'' reported that three Arizona affiliates of CBS (KFYI, KOY in Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix, KTUC in Tucson, Arizona, Tucson and KSUN in Bisbee, Arizona, Bisbee) had originally scheduled a delayed broadcast of "The War of the Worlds" that night; CBS had shifted ''The Mercury Theater on the Air'' from Monday nights to Sunday nights on September 11, but the three affiliates preferred to keep the series in its original Monday slot so that it would not compete with NBC's top-rated ''Chase and Sanborn Hour''. However, late that night, CBS contacted KOY and KTUC owner Burridge Butler and instructed him not to air the program the following night.

Within three weeks, newspapers had published at least 12,500 articles about the broadcast and its impact, but the story dropped from the front pages after a few days. Adolf Hitler referenced the broadcast in a speech in Munich on November 8, 1938. Welles later remarked that Hitler cited the effect of the broadcast on the American public as evidence of "the corrupt condition and decadent state of affairs in democracy".

Bob Sanders recalled looking outside the window and seeing a traffic jam in the normally quiet Grover's Mill, New Jersey, at the intersection of Cranbury and Clarksville Roads.

Causes

Later studies indicate that many people missed the repeated notices about the broadcast being fictional, partly because ''The Mercury Theatre on the Air'', an unsponsored CBS cultural program with a relatively small audience, ran at the same time as the NBC Red Network's popular ''Chase and Sanborn Hour'' featuring ventriloquist Edgar Bergen. At the time, many Americans assumed that a significant number of ''Chase and Sanborn'' listeners changed stations when the first comic sketch ended and a musical number by Nelson Eddy began, tuning in to "The War of the Worlds" after the opening announcements. Historian A. Brad Schwartz, after studying hundreds of letters from people who heard "The War of the Worlds" as well as contemporary audience surveys, concluded that very few people frightened by Welles's broadcast had tuned out Bergen's program. "All the hard evidence suggests that ''The Chase & Sanborn Hour'' was only a minor contributing factor to the Martian hysteria," he wrote. "...in truth, there was no mass exodus from Charlie McCarthy to Orson Welles that night." Because the broadcast was unsponsored, Welles and company could arbitrarily schedule breaks instead of arranging them around advertisements; as a result, the only notices that the broadcast was fictional came at the start of the broadcast and about 40 and 55 minutes into it.

A study by the Radio Project discovered that less than one third of frightened listeners understood the invaders to be aliens; most thought that they were listening to reports of a German invasion or of a natural catastrophe. "People were on edge", wrote Welles biographer Frank Brady (writer), Frank Brady. "For the entire month prior to 'The War of the Worlds', radio had kept the American public alert to the ominous happenings throughout the world. The Munich Agreement, Munich crisis was at its height.... For the first time in history, the public could tune into their radios every night and hear, boot by boot, accusation by accusation, threat by threat, the rumblings that seemed inevitably leading to a world war."Frank Brady (writer), Brady, Frank, ''Citizen Welles: A Biography of Orson Welles''. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1989

CBS News chief Paul White wrote that he was convinced that the panic induced by the broadcast was a result of the public suspense generated before the Munich Pact. "Radio listeners had had their emotions played upon for days.... Thus they believed the Welles production even though it was specifically stated that the whole thing was fiction".

"The supposed panic was so tiny as to be practically immeasurable on the night of the broadcast. ... Radio had siphoned off advertising revenue from print during the Depression, badly damaging the newspaper industry. So the papers seized the opportunity presented by Welles’ program to discredit radio as a source of news. The newspaper industry sensationalized the panic to prove to advertisers, and regulators, that radio management was irresponsible and not to be trusted."

Extent

Historical research suggests the panic was significantly less widespread than newspapers had indicated at the time. "[T]he panic and mass hysteria so readily associated with 'The War of the Worlds' did not occur on anything approaching a nationwide dimension", American University media historian W. Joseph Campbell wrote in 2003. He quoted Robert E. Bartholomew, an authority on mass panic outbreaks, as having said that "there is a growing consensus among sociologists that the extent of the panic... was greatly exaggerated".

That position is supported by contemporary accounts. "In the first place, most people didn't hear [the show]," said Frank Stanton (executive), Frank Stanton, later president of CBS. Of the nearly 2,000 letters mailed to Welles and the Federal Communications Commission after "The War of the Worlds", currently held by the University of Michigan and the National Archives and Records Administration, roughly 27% came from frightened listeners or people who witnessed any panic. After analyzing those letters, Schwartz concluded that although the broadcast briefly misled a significant portion of its audience, not many of them fled their homes or otherwise panicked. The total number of protest letters sent to Welles and the FCC was also low in comparison with other controversial radio broadcasts of the period, suggesting that the audience was small and the fright severely limited.

5,000 households were telephoned that night in a survey conducted by the C. E. Hooper company, the main radio ratings service at the time. Two percent of the respondents said they were listening to the radio play, and no one stated they were listening to a news broadcast. About 98% of respondents said they were listening to other radio programming (''The Chase and Sanborn Hour'' was by far the most popular program in that timeslot) or not listening to the radio at all. Further shrinking the potential audience, some CBS network affiliates, including some in large markets such as Boston metropolitan area, Boston's WEZE, WEEI, had pre-empted ''The Mercury Theatre on the Air'', in favor of local commercial programming.

Ben Gross, radio editor for the ''New York Daily News'', wrote in his 1954 memoir that the streets were nearly deserted as he made his way to the studio for the end of the program. Houseman reported that the Mercury Theatre staff was surprised when they were finally released from the CBS studios to find life going on as usual in the streets of New York. The writer of a letter that ''The Washington Post'' published later likewise recalled no panicked mobs in the capital's downtown streets at the time. "The supposed panic was so tiny as to be practically immeasurable on the night of the broadcast", media historians Jefferson Pooley and Michael J. Socolow wrote in ''Slate (website), Slate'' on its 75th anniversary in 2013; "Almost nobody was fooled".

According to Campbell, the most common response said to indicate a panic was calling the local newspaper or police to confirm the story or seek additional information. That, he writes, is an indicator that people were not generally panicking or hysterical. "The call volume perhaps is best understood as an altogether ''rational'' response..." Some New Jersey media and law enforcement agencies received up to 40% more telephone calls than normal during the broadcast. AT&T Corporation telephone operators in New York City recalled in 1988 that "every light" on the "half block long" switchboard lit up after the broadcast stated that the Martians were crossing the George Washington Bridge, while operators in Princeton and Missoula, Montana were asked what the invaders looked like. They described callers "crying and screaming", asking whether dead bodies were near the operators, "begging us to get connections to their families ... before the world came to an end". "The people believed it. They really believed it that night", one concluded.

Newspaper coverage and response

As it was late on a Sunday night in the Eastern Time Zone, where the broadcast originated, few reporters and other staff were present in newsrooms. Most newspaper coverage thus took the form of Associated Press stories, which were largely anecdotal aggregates of reporting from its various bureaus, giving the impression that panic had indeed been widespread. Many newspapers led with the Associated Press's story the next day.

The ''Winston-Salem Journal, Twin City Sentinel'' of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, pointed out that the situation could have been even worse if most people had not been listening to Bergen's show: "Charlie McCarthy last night saved the United States from a sudden and panicky death by hysteria."

On November 2, 1938, the Australian newspaper ''The Age'' characterized the incident as "mass hysteria" and stated that "never in the history of the United States had such a wave of terror and panic swept the continent". Unnamed observers quoted by ''The Age'' commented that "the panic could have only happened in America."

Editorialists chastised the radio industry for allowing that to happen. The response may have reflected newspaper publishers' fears that radio, to which they had lost some of the advertising revenue that was scarce enough during the Great Depression, would render them obsolete. In "The War of the Worlds", they saw an opportunity to cast aspersions on the newer medium: "The nation as a whole continues to face the danger of incomplete, misunderstood news over a medium which has yet to prove that it is competent to perform the news job," wrote ''Editor & Publisher'', the newspaper industry's trade journal.

William Randolph Hearst's papers called on broadcasters to police themselves, lest the government step in, as Iowa senator Clyde L. Herring proposed a bill that would have required all programming to be reviewed by the FCC prior to broadcast – it was never introduced. Others blamed the radio audience for its gullibility. Noting that any intelligent listener would have realized the broadcast was fictional, the ''Chicago Tribune'' opined, "it would be more tactful to say that some members of the radio audience are a trifle retarded mentally, and that many a program is prepared for their consumption." Other newspapers noted that anxious listeners had called their offices to learn if Martians were really attacking.

Few contemporary accounts exist outside newspaper coverage of the mass panic and hysteria supposedly induced by the broadcast. Justin Levine, a producer at KFI in Los Angeles, wrote that "the anecdotal nature of such reporting makes it difficult to objectively assess the true extent and intensity of the panic".Levine, Justin
"A History and Analysis of the Federal Communication Commission's Response to Radio Broadcast Hoaxes"
52 Fed Comm L J 2, 273–320, 278n28; March 1, 2000; retrieved November 5, 2013. Bartholomew saw it as more evidence that the panic was predominantly a creation of the newspaper industry.

Research

In a study, published as ''The Invasion from Mars'' (1940), Princeton professor Hadley Cantril calculated around six million people heard "The War of the Worlds" broadcast. He estimated that 1.7 million listeners believed the broadcast was an actual news bulletin and, of those, 1.2 million people were frightened or disturbed. However, Pooley and Socolow have concluded that Cantril's study had serious flaws. Its estimate of the program's audience is more than twice as high as any other at the time. Cantril himself conceded that, but argued that unlike C. E. Hooper, Hooper, his estimate had attempted to capture the significant portion of the audience that did not have home telephones at that time. Since those respondents were contacted only after the media frenzy, Cantril admitted that their recollections could have been influenced by what they read in the newspapers. Claims that ''Chase and Sanborn'' listeners, who missed the disclaimer at the beginning when they turned to CBS during a commercial break or musical performance on that show and thus mistook "The War of the Worlds" for a real broadcast inflated the show's audience and the ensuing panic, are impossible to substantiate.

Apart from his imperfect methods of estimating the audience and assessing the authenticity of their response, Pooley and Socolow found Cantril made another error in typing audience reaction. Respondents had indicated a variety of reactions to the program, among them "excited", "disturbed", and "frightened". However, he included all of them with "panicked", failing to account for the possibility that despite their reaction, they were still aware the broadcast was staged. "[T]hose who did hear it, looked at it as a prank and accepted it that way", recalled researcher Frank Stanton.

Bartholomew admitted that hundreds of thousands were frightened, but called evidence of people taking action based on their fear "scant" and "anecdotal". Contemporary news articles indicated that police received hundreds of calls in numerous locations, but stories of people doing anything more than calling authorities involved mostly only small groups; such stories were often reported by people who were panicking themselves.

Later investigations found many of the panicked responses to have been exaggerated or mistaken. Cantril's researchers found that contrary to what had been claimed, no admissions for shock were made at a Newark hospital during the broadcast; hospitals in New York City similarly reported no spike in admissions that night. A few suicide attempts seem to have been prevented when friends or family intervened, but no record of a successful one exists. A ''Washington Post'' claim that a man died of a heart attack brought on by listening to the program could not be verified. One woman filed a lawsuit against CBS, but it was soon dismissed.

The FCC also received letters from the public that advised against taking reprisals. Singer Eddie Cantor urged the commission not to overreact, as "censorship would retard radio immeasurably". The FCC decided to not punish Welles or CBS, and also barred complaints about "The War of the Worlds" from being brought up during license renewals. "Janet Jackson's 2004 'Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy, wardrobe malfunction' remains far more significant in the history of broadcast regulation than Orson Welles' trickery," wrote Pooley and Socolow.

Meeting of Welles and Wells

H. G. Wells