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"Archive on 4"; Orson Welles
Topic Started: Oct 28 2013, 11:11 PM (1,840 Views)
May-Cee

Another great doc by Christopher Frayling - about the famous Welles radio version of "The War Of The Worlds" (which went out on the Halloween weekend 75 years ago).

I'd always half-known that all those stories about "mass panic" in New Jersey and people jumping off bridges were rubbish.
It seems that, in the end, about twenty people were treated for shock.

But Welles, being the brilliant showman he was, obviously played up the whole event.

They found a nice bit of archive audio of Welles and yer man himself, HG Wells, talking about it on a US radio station.
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rumbaba
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Yes, I always thought it was hyped up, never believed the mass panic stories.
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caissier
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Yes, very good programme. The thing about the mass panic was undermined by the pointing out that the Martians were supposed to have launched off from Mars and then were attacking New Jersey (?) all within half an hour. Some people might have tuned in half way through and thought it was a news bulletin though. It was interesting that it was maybe modelled on the eye-witness reporting of the crash of the Hindenberg ..... and rather more on a fictional radio drama .... Air War? ..... done in a verite style.

(HG Wells wrote a book called War in the Air which describes and attack on New York by a German airship fleet which completely destroys the city .... written 1900 - 1910 I think. )

It was interesting, too, in accounting for the talented early ability of Orson Welles.
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