Description
The original broadcast that panicked the nation! The actual broadcast by the Mercury Theatre on the Air as heard over the Columbia Broadcasting System, October 30, 1938. The most thrilling drama ever broadcast from the famed Howard Koch script!
H.G. Wells’ American novel The War of the Worlds was published in 1898, and told the fictional story of an alien invasion through an unidentified narrator. Welles would go on to adapt this story into a fictional news broadcast, centering in on Martians landing in New Jersey. On October 30, 1938, Welles went on air, reading from Wells’ novel for the station’s Halloween broadcast. The infamous broadcast became one of the most well known phenomena in radio history. Some counter this as merely a myth, however, radio was the main source of news in the 1930s, and the argument of translation always comes into play. The program used sounds and explosions to sell the experience, and with Welles’ talent being raised by the stage, the program was a hit.
According to Los Angeles Daily News, only two percent of the nation was actually listening to Welles’ broadcast when it aired, and it was actually the local newspapers that used the “fake news” report to assert an attack on radio as a valid source of information. Radio was the equivalent of what social media news is today — a pool of uncapped information with no definitive bottom. The War of the Worlds aired on CBS Radio and KNX in Los Angeles, and would go on to air on KNX’s Halloween special for decades to come.
An authentic first edition…never before released! Complete, not a dramatic word cut! Script by Howard Koch from the famous H.G. Wells novel…featuring the most famous performance from The Mercury Theatre On The Air!
*This album has been electronically re-channeled to simulate stereo. Condition is excellent, no scratches nor wear.
Sleeve: 4001
Labels: SY 5241
Labels: LW 401
The Longines Symphonette Society 1968
