It happened 77 years ago tonight. The Martians landed in an obscure New Jersey hamlet called Grovers Mill, an inspired brainchild of Orson Wells, 23, the genius director of The Mercury Theater on the Air. The CBS radio network broadcast the adaptation of H.G. Wells 1898 novel “The War of the Worlds” the day before Halloween, an occasion to scare listeners, but its impact was way beyond what anyone anticipated. Circumstances made it easier for people, accustomed to hearing on radio bad news from Europe and disasters aplenty at home, to believe what they heard. The popular Edgar Bergen show on NBC — being a ventriloquist on radio must have been a snap — cut from a comedy skit to a singer which gave everyone so inclined a chance to channel surf. They didn’t hear the beginning of the Wells show that explained it was entertainment.
One of the actors who played a newsman went to the CBS library and listened to the real radio reporting of the Hindenburg disaster at Lakehurst, N.J. The German airship crashed the year before; it was still fresh in the minds of listeners. The show was presented without commercials because it had no sponsors so to a late-comer listener it sounded like a continuing news broadcast of bulletins and updates, like what we see on cable TV these days when news breaks.
Some were convinced the Martians were really German soldiers sent by Hitler to overrun the country. CBS was flooded with calls and Wells ordered to deliver a station break, but he was on a roll and delayed it 10 minutes. By this time the invasion had rolled across most of The Garden State, leaving death and mayhem in its wake.
After the uproar, CBS apologized and Wells acted like he was sorry. Even the explanation was typical Wells: “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.” He probably wasn’t all that sorry because after all the publicity he went on to be a Hollywood star.
The Mercury Theater did all right too. A company based in Camden, N.J., about 35 miles down the road from Grovers Mill, Campbell Soup, signed on as sponsor.
Having heard about this all my life, and even studied it in college, I took a ride out to Grovers Mill, which is near Trenton. The only reminder of its night in the international spotlight was in a park. A sign on a business tells visitors they’re in the right place. Such a quiet little place to have been the epicenter of such panic. More proof that still water runs deep.
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