New York Times, Monday 31 October 1938
New York Times, Monday 31 October 1938
- part 1 -
RADIO LISTENERS IN PANIC – WAR DRAMA TAKEN AS FACT!
Many Flee Homes To Escape ‘Gas Raid From Mars’
Phone Calls Swamp Police At Broadcast Of Wells Fantasy
A wave of mass hysteria seized thousands of radio listeners throughout the nation between 8.15 and 9.30 last night when a broadcast of a dramatization of H.G. Wells’ fanatsy, “The War of the Worlds”, led thousands to believe that an interplanetary conflict had started with invading Martians spreading wide death and destruction in New Jersey and New York.
The broadcast, which disrupted households, interrupted religious services, created traffic jams and clogged communication systems, was made by Orson Welles, who as the radio character, “The Shadow”, used to give “the creeps” to countless child listeners. This time at least a score of adults required medical treatment for shock or hysteria.
In Newark, in a single block at Heddon Terrace and Hawthorne Avenue, more than twenty families rushed out of their houses believing a gas raid was on. Some even began moving household furniture.
Throughout New York families left their homes., some to flee to near-by parks. Thousands of persons called the police, newspapers and radio stations here and in other cities of the United States and Canada seeking advice on protective measures against the raids.
The programma was produced by Mr. Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air over station WABC and the Columbia Broadcasting System’s coast-to-coast network from 8 to 9 o’clock.
The radio play, as presented, was to simulate a regular radio programma with a “break in” for the material of the play. The radio listeners, apparently, missed or did not listen to the introduction, which was: “The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air in ‘The War of the Worlds’ by H.G. Wells.”
They also failed to associate the programma with the newspaper listing of the programme, announced as “Today: 8.00-9.00 Play: H.G. Wells’s ‘War of the Worlds’ – WABC.” They ignored three additional announcements made during the broadcast emphasizing its fictional nature.
Mr. Welles opened the programme with a description of the series of which it is a part. The simulated programme began. A weather report was given prosaically. An announcer remarked that the programme would be continued from a hotel, with dance music. For a few moments a dance programme was given in the usual manner. Then there was a “break in” with a “flash” about a professor at an observatory noting a series of gas explosions on the planet Mars.
News bulletins and scenes broadcast followed reporting, with the technique in which the radio had reported actual events, the landing of a “meteor” near Princeton, N.J., “killing” 1,500 persons, the discovery that the “meteor” was a “metal cylinder” containing strange creatures from Mars armed with “death rays” to open hostilities against the inhabitants of the Earth.
Despite the fantastic nature of the reported “occurrences”, the programme, coming after the recent war scare in Europe and a period in which the radio frequently had interrupted regularly scheduled programmes to report developments in the Czechoslovak situation, caused fright and panic throughout the area of the broadcast.
Soon the stations taking the programme were getting calls from listeners or persons who had heard of the broadcast. Many sought first to verify the reports. But large numbers, obviously in a state of terror, asked how they could follow the broadcast’s advice and flee from the city, whether they would be safer in the “gas raid” in the cellar or on the roof, how they could safeguard their children, and many of the questions which had been worrying residents of London and Paris during the tense days before the Munich agreement.
So many calls came to newspapers and so many newspapers found it advisable to check on the reports despite their fantastic content, that the Associated Press sent out the following at 8.45 p.m.:
“Note to Editors: Queries to newspapers from radio listeners throughout the United States tonight, regarding a reported meteor fall which killed a number of New Jerseyites, are the result of a studio dramatisation. The A.P.”
Similarly, police teletype systems carried notices to all stationshouses, and police short-wave radio stations notified police radio cars that the event was imaginary.
MESSAGE FROM THE POLICE
The New York Police sent out the following:
“To all receivers: Station WABC informs us that the broadcast just concluded over the station was a dramatization of a play. No cause for alarm.”
The New Jersey State Police tetetyped the following:
“Note to all receivers – WABC broadcast as drama re this section being attacked by residents of Mars, Imaginary affair.”
From one New York theatre a manager reported that a throng of theatre-goers had rushed from his theatre as a result of the broadcast. He said that the wives of two men in the audience, having heard that broadcast, called the theatre and insisted that their husbands be paged. This spread the “news” to others in the audience.
The switchboard of THE NEW YORK TIMES was overwhelmed by the calls. A total of 875 were received. One man who called from Dayton, Ohia asked, “What time will it be the end of the world?” A caller from the suburbs said that he had had a houseful of guests and they had all rushed out to the yard for safety.
Warren Dean, a member of the American Legion living in Manhattan, who telephoned to verify the “reports”, expressed indignation which was typical of that of many callers.
“I’ve heard a lot of radio programmes, but I’ve never heard anything as rotten as that,” Mr. Dean said. “It was too realistic for comfort. Everybody in my house was agitated by the news.”
At 9 o’clock a woman walked into the West 47th Street police station dragging two children, all carrying extra clothing. She said she was ready to leave the city. Police persuaded her to stay.
A garbled version of the reports reached the Dixie Bus Terminal, causing officials there to prepare to change their schedule on comfirmation of “news” of an accident at Princeton on the New Jersey route. Miss Dorothy Brown at the terminal sought verification, however, when the caller refused to talk with the dispatcher, explaining to her that “the world is coming to an end and I have a lot to do.”
HARLEM SHAKEN BY THE NEWS
Harlem was shaked by the “news”. Thirty men and women rushed into the West 123rd Street police station and twelve into the West 135th Street station saying they had their household goods packed and were ready to leave Harlem if the police would tell them were to go to be “evacuated”. One man insisted he had heard “the President’s voice” over the radio advising all citizens to leave the cities.
The parlour churches in the Negro district, congregations of the smaller sects meeting on the ground floors of brownstone houses, took the “news” in their stride as less faithful parishioners rushed in with it, seeking spiritual consolation. Evening services became “end of the world” prayer meetings in some.
One man ran into the Wadsworth Avenue Police Station in Washington Heights, white with terror, shouting that enemy planes were crossing the Hudson River and asking what he could do. A man came into the West 152nd Street Station, seeking traffic directions.
The broadcast became a rumour that spread through the district, and many persons stood on street corners hoping for a sight of the “battle” in the skies.
In Queens the principal question asked of the switchboard operators at Police Headquarters was whether “the wave of poison gas will reach as far as Queens.” Many said they were packed and ready to leave Queens when told to do so.
Samuel Tishman of 100 Riverside Drive was one of the multitude that fled into the street after hearing part of the programme. He declared that hundreds of persons evacuated their homes fearing that the “city was being bombed”.
“I came home at 9.15 p.m., just in time to receive a telephone call from my nephew who was frantic with fear. He told me the city was about to be bombed from the air and advised me to get out of the building at once. I turned on the radio and heard the broadcast which corroborated what my nephew had said, so I gathered up a few personal belongings and ran to the elevator. Whe I got to the street there were hndreds of pople milling about in panic. Most of us ran towards Broadway and it was not until we stopped taxi drivers who had heard the entire broadcast on their radios that we kewn what it was all about. It was the most asinine stunt I ever heard of.”
“I heard that broadcast and almost had a heart attack,” said Louis Winkler in 1322 Clay Avenue, the Bronx. “I didn’t tune it in until it was half over, but when I heard the names and titles of Federal, State and municipal officials, and when the ‘Secretary of the Interior’ was introduced, I was convinced it was the McCoy. I ran out into the street with scores of others, and found people running in all directions. The whole thing came over as a news broadcast and in my mind it was a pretty crummy thing to do.”
The Telegraph Bureau switchboard at police headquarters in Manhattan, operated by thirteen men, was so swamped with calls from apprehensive citizens inquiring about the broadcast that police business was seriously interfered with.
Headquarters, unable to reach the radio station by telephone, sent a radio patrol car there to ascertain the reason for the reaction to the programme. When the explanation was given, a police message was sent to all precincts in the five boroughs advising the commands of the cause.
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