Everything about The War Of The Worlds Radio totally explained
The War of the Worlds was an episode of the
American radio drama anthology series
Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a
Halloween special on
October 30,
1938 and aired over the
CBS Radio network. Directed by
Orson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of
H. G. Wells' classic novel
The War of the Worlds.
The first half of the 60-minute broadcast was presented as a series of news bulletins, which suggested to many listeners that an actual
Martian invasion was in progress (Because the
Mercury Theatre on the Air was at that time a 'sustaining show' [withoutsponsorship], the broadcast had no commercial interruption). Some fled their homes; others merely were terrified. The news-bulletin format was decried as cruelly deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast, but the episode launched Welles to fame.
Welles's adaptation is arguably the most well-known radio dramatic production in history. It was one of the
Radio Project's first studies.
Background
H. G. Wells's novel is about an alien invasion of Earth, set in
Woking, England at the end of the
19th century. The radio play's story was adapted by and written primarily by
Howard Koch, with input from Orson Welles and the staff of
CBS's
Mercury Theatre On The Air. The action was transferred to contemporary
Grover's Mill, a community that has since been annexed by
West Windsor Township,
New Jersey, and the radio program's format was meant to simulate a live
newscast of developing events. To this end, Welles played recordings of
Herbert Morrison's radio reports of the
Hindenburg disaster for actor Frank Readick and the rest of the cast, to demonstrate the mood he wanted.
About half of the 55-and-a-half-minute play was a contemporary retelling of the events of the novel, presented as a series of news bulletins in
documentary style. This approach to radio drama wasn't exactly new.
Fr. Ronald Knox's satirical "newscast" of a riot overtaking London over the
British Broadcasting Company in
1926 had taken a similar approach (and created much the same effect upon its audience). Welles had himself also been influenced by the
Archibald MacLeish dramas
The Fall of The City and
Air Raid, the former using Welles himself in the role of a live radio news reporter. But the approach had never been done before with as much continued verisimilitude and the innovative format has been cited as a key factor in the confusion that would follow.
Plot Summary
The program, broadcast from the 20th floor at 485 Madison Avenue (in
New York City), started with an introduction excerpted from the novel, describing the intentions of the aliens and noting that the adaptation was set in 1939, a year ahead of the actual broadcast. The program continued as an apparently ordinary music show (actually the CBS orchestra under the direction of
Bernard Herrmann), which was occasionally interrupted by news flashes. Initially, the news is of weather irregularities, and strange explosions sighted on Mars. Orson Welles makes his first appearance as "famous
astronomer" Professor Richard Pierson, who expresses skepticism about life on Mars.
The news reports grew more frequent and increasingly ominous after a "meteorite" lands in New Jersey. A crowd gathers at the landing site, and the events are related by reporter "Carl Philips." The "meteorite" is revealed as a Martian rocket capsule, and the Martians incinerate curious onlookers with their "
Heat-Rays." (Later surveys indicate that many listeners heard only this portion of the show before contacting neighbors or family to inquire about the broadcast. Many of these people contacted others in turn, leading to rumors and later confusion.)
More Martian ships land, and proceed to wreak havoc throughout the United States, destroying bridges and railroads, and spraying a
poison gas into the air. An unnamed
Secretary of the Interior advises the nation on the growing conflict. (The "secretary" was originally intended to be a portrayal of
Franklin D. Roosevelt, then President, but CBS insisted this detail, among others, be changed. The "secretary" did, however, sound very much like Roosevelt as the result of directions given to actor
Kenny Delmar by Welles.)
Military forces begin to attack the Martians, but are unable to fight them off. People flee or gather in churches to pray as the Martian machines head towards
New York City, spraying poison gas in the air.
This section ends famously: a news reporter (played by
Ray Collins), broadcasting from atop the CBS building, describes the Martian invasion of New York City — "great machines" wading across the
Hudson River, poison smoke drifting over the city, people running and diving into the
East River "like rats", others "falling like flies" — until he, too, succumbs to the poison gas. Finally, a despairing
ham radio operator is heard calling out, "2X2L calling CQ ... Isn't there anyone on the air? Isn't there anyone on the air? Isn't there ... anyone?"
The last portion of the broadcast was a
monologue and
dialog, with Welles returning as Professor Pierson, describing the devastated aftermath of the attacks. The story ends, as does the novel, with the Martians falling victim to earthly germs and bacteria.
After the play, Welles breaks character to remind listeners that the broadcast was only a Halloween concoction, the equivalent of dressing up in a sheet and saying "boo" like a ghost. Popular mythology holds that this "disclaimer" was added to the broadcast at the insistence of CBS executives as they became aware of the panic inspired by the program; in fact, it appears in Howard Koch's working script for the radio play as presented in his 1968 book
The Panic Broadcast.
Public reaction
Many people missed or ignored the opening credits of the program, and in the atmosphere of growing tension and anxiety in the days leading up to
World War II, took it to be a news broadcast. Contemporary newspapers reported that panic ensued, with people fleeing the area, and others thinking they could smell the poison gas or could see the flashes of the lightning in the distance.
Professor Richard J. Hand cites studies by unnamed historians who "calculate[d] that some six million heard the CBS broadcast; 1.7 million believed it to be true, and 1.2 million were 'genuinely frightened'". While Welles and company were heard by a comparatively small audience (in the same time period, rival network NBC's audience was an estimated 30 million), the uproar that followed was anything but minute: within a month, there were about 12,500
newspaper articles about the broadcast or its impact, while
Adolf Hitler cited the panic, as Hand writes, as "evidence of the decadence and corrupt condition of democracy."
Edgar Bergen and
Don Ameche, who were continuing their
Chase & Sanborn Hour broadcast at the same time on NBC, are often credited with "saving the world". It is said that many startled listeners were reassured by hearing their familiar tones on a neighbouring station.
Aftermath
In the aftermath of the reported panic, a public outcry arose, but CBS informed officials that listeners were reminded throughout the broadcast that it was only a performance. Welles and the Mercury Theatre escaped punishment, but not censure, and CBS had to promise never again to use the "we interrupt this program" device for dramatic purposes. Some find this fact hard to accept considering that many radio commercials to this very day start with the phrase, "We interrupt this program".
A study by the
Radio Project discovered that some of the people who panicked presumed that Germans — not Martians — had invaded. Other studies have suggested that the extent of the panic was exaggerated by contemporary media.
When a meeting between H.G. Wells and Orson Welles was broadcast on
Radio KTSA San Antonio on
October 28,
1940, Wells expressed a lack of understanding of the apparent panic and suggested that it was, perhaps, only pretense, like the American version of
Halloween, for fun. The two men and their radio interviewer joked about the matter, though clearly with some embarrassment. KTSA, as a CBS affiliate, had carried the original broadcast.
Both the
War of the Worlds broadcast and the panic it created have become textbook examples of
mass hysteria and the delusions of crowds.
In
1988, during the weekend nearest the fiftieth anniversary of the broadcast,
West Windsor Township, in which Grovers Mills is located, held a "Martian festival" to mark the occasion. Designed solely to attract tourist revenue, this event included "Martians" firing harmless "ray guns" and various carnival rides and hucksters' stalls. The
New Yorker magazine covered this event with a review beginning "It's not every day we get to see the Martians invade..."
Conspiracy theory
It has been suggested in recent years that the
War of the Worlds broadcast was actually a
psychological warfare experiment. In the 1999 documentary,
Masters of the Universe: The Secret Birth of the Federal Reserve, writer Daniel Hopsicker claims that the
Rockefeller Foundation actually funded the broadcast, studied the ensuing panic, and compiled a report that was only available to a chosen few. A variation of this conspiracy theory has the
Radio Project and the
Rockefeller Foundation as conspirators. In a
theatrical trailer for his film
F For Fake, Welles joked about such theories, jesting that the broadcast indeed "had secret sponsors".
While
Mercury Theater on the Air had no commercial sponsor, both
CBS and the
Rockefeller Foundation were contracting the leading
crowd psychology researchers of the time;
CBS had
Edward Bernays, the
Rockefeller Foundation had
Ivy Lee. With the involvement of
Frank Stanton in the
Radio Project and his position in the
CBS research department, it's possible the "creative curiosity" of Orson Welles came from conversations within these business circles. A detailed documentary on these circles and the ideas behind social manipulation was made by the
BBC called,
The Century of the Self.
There has been continued speculation that the panic generated by the
War of the Worlds broadcast has inspired officials to frantically cover up
unidentified flying object evidence, avoiding a similar panic. In fact, U.S. Air Force Captain
Edward J. Ruppelt, the first head of UFO investigatory
Project Blue Book wrote, "The [U.S.government's] UFO files are full of references to the near mass panic of October 30, 1938, when Orson Welles presented his now famous
The War of the Worlds broadcast."
Remakes and re-airings
Since the original Mercury Theatre broadcast of
The War of the Worlds, there have been many re-airings, remakes, reenactments and new dramatizations of the original broadcast.
In February 1949, Leonardo Paez and Eduardo Alcaraz produced a Spanish-language version of Welles's 1938 script for broadcast on Radio Quito in
Quito, Ecuador. The broadcast set off general panic in the city. Police and fire brigades rushed out of town in order to engage the supposedly alien invasion force. After it was revealed that the broadcast was a work of fiction, the panic transformed into a riot and hundreds of townspeople attacked the building housing Radio Quito and
El Comercio, the local newspaper. (In the days preceding the broadcast,
El Comercio had participated in the hoax by publishing false news reports of unidentified objects appearing in the skies above Ecuador.) The riot resulted in six deaths, including those of Paez's girlfriend and nephew. Paez slipped out of the building and fled to Venezuela, never to return to Ecuador.
Many stations air the original program as a Halloween tradition. Since at least the 1970s,
KNX in
Los Angeles has re-aired the show, as have many other stations, particularly those that regularly air
old time radio programs.
Perhaps the most famous remake was by
WKBW in
Buffalo, NY, which aired
a modernized update in
1968, produced by the station's news department. In this version, which was revised for airing in
1971 and
1975, Martians invaded the
Niagara Falls area. Like the original, this realistic version also inspired listener panic, despite reassurances throughout the broadcast that it was only a dramatization.
PBS also aired a remake on the 50th anniversary of the Mercury Theatre play in
1988. It starred
Jason Robards,
Steve Allen (who as a youth listened to the 1938 broadcast),
Douglas Edwards,
Scott Simon and
Terry Gross and was nominated for a
Grammy Award for "Best Spoken Word or Nonmusical Recording"
In
1994 the L.A. Theater Works'
The Play's the Thing and
KPCC rebroadcast the original radio play before a live audience, featuring actors from the various
Star Trek television shows, including
Leonard Nimoy,
Wil Wheaton,
Gates McFadden,
Brent Spiner, and
Armin Shimerman.
John de Lancie served as the director.
On
October 31,
2002, talk show host
Glenn Beck did his own live version on his
nationally-syndicated radio program.
XM Satellite Radio has broadcast an updated version in recent years titled "Not From Space", in which Microsoft's
Bill Gates is one of the Martians.
Since
2005, students from
WXOU radio (at
Oakland University in
Rochester Hills, MI) perform the radio drama live. It was begun by WXOU host Richard Luzenski on his film music program "Cinema Serenade."
WTBQ radio in upstate New York aired local versions in 2006 and 2007, using a slightly modified script with local actors from the
Air Pirates Radio Theatre
.
On
October 30,
2006,
Camden County College's
WDBK in
Blackwood,
New Jersey aired a new version of the broadcast performed by the current staff. The new version was updated and set in West Windsor Township, as well as Blackwood and the surrounding towns. The broadcast was a finalist in the CBI Awards in 2007.
In cooperation with KMHL Broadcasting, War of the Worlds will be performed as a radio drama directed by Paula Nemes and Maureen Keimig in Marshall, Minnesota. This production will be broadcast for three days, starting on Wednesday, October 29th, 2008, at 7pm CST (the final broadcast will air on Halloween night, also at 7pm).
(External Link)
Television
On
September 9,
1957, CBS's prestigious live television program,
Studio One, opened its tenth season with
Nelson Bond's The Night America Trembled, the first dramatization of the public panic to the radio adaptation of Wells' novel. The hour-long production was narrated by
Edward R. Murrow and featured such future stars as
Ed Asner,
James Coburn,
Warren Oates, and
Warren Beatty.
A
1975 television movie for
ABC, Howard Koch and
Nicholas Meyer's The Night That Panicked America, also dramatizes the public's panicked reaction to the broadcast but comes across as a fairly standard disaster movie (albeit one in which the disaster is assumed rather than actual). The production included
Vic Morrow,
Meredith Baxter,
Michael Constantine,
John Ritter,
Will Geer, and
Tom Bosley.
Influence
It is sometimes said that the news of the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor was first received in skepticism by the American public, as a consequence of the radio performance.
Amazingly enough, the drama has been rewritten to apply to other locations and rebroadcast, with similar results:
- A 1944 broadcast in Santiago, Chile caused panic, including mobilization of troops by the governor.
- A February 12 1949 broadcast in Quito, Ecuador panicked tens of thousands. Some listeners, enraged at the deception, set fire to the radio station and the offices of El Comercio, the capital's leading newspaper, killing twenty people. The property damage was estimated at $350,000. Three officials charged with responsibility for the broadcast were arrested.
Because of the panic in the
1930s and
1940s associated with this radio play, U.S. TV networks have deemed it necessary to post bulletins to their viewing audience to inform them some TV stories were in fact fictional drama, and not really happening. Disclaimers of this sort were shown during broadcasts of the
1983 television movie
Special Bulletin, and again during the
1994 telefilm,
Without Warning, both of which were dramas disguised as realistic news broadcasts (
Without Warning, presenting Earth being hit by three meteor fragments, acknowledged that it was a tribute to
War of the Worlds and was broadcast on CBS TV on the 56th anniversary of the radio broadcast). NBC placed disclaimers in an October
1999 TV movie dramatizing the possible disastrous effects of the
Y2K bug even though it was obviously drama and was unlikely to be confused with reality.
On
February 16,
1991, a popular
Estonian TV satire show
Wigla Sou reported, using the "we interrupt this program" device similar to Orson Welles, that the government of Finland has voided the bills of one hundred
Finnish Markka, most common hard currency banknote in Estonia of that time, when local
Soviet ruble wasn't trusted because of high inflation. That was obvious parody of recent Soviet currency reform, but thousands of people believed the report and rushed to get rid of their 100 markka bills, some selling their currency many times under the market prices. The TV reporters Ivar Vigla and Felix Undusk received later threats from angry people who had sold their currency cheaply, while local currency profiteers cheered their unexpected high profits this day.
On
December 22,
1991, the popular student-run satire TV show
Ku-Ku on the Bulgarian state channel
Kanal 1 broadcast reports of an accident in the Bulgarian
Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant, in an attempt to draw attention to the lack of preparedness for such an accident. The report's impact was heightened due to people's memory of the
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster and its incomplete coverage by official media during events of
1986. The show used actual TV news reporters because actors from the show were popular and would have been easily recognized. Reminders of the program's fictional nature were broadcast during music video breaks but largely ignored. There were reports about people taking iodine pills in order to protect their thyroid glands from absorbing radiation. In the aftermath, the show was canceled, but trial charges against director, screenwriter and producer were dismissed.
In
2005, Danish radio station P2 announced their plan to broadcast a remake of the original broadcast on September 3rd. As the broadcast was about to start, an announcer interrupted the show to report on a fake story about a biological terrorist attack on
Copenhagen.
In
2006, a false
Belgian news bulletin, broadcasted by
RTBF, reported that the
Dutch-speaking
Flanders region of the country had declared its
independence from Belgium, and led to widespread panic in
French-speaking Belgium. It was actually a hoax inspired by Orson Welles's adaptation of
The War of the Worlds. See
2006 Belgian Secession Hoax.
Possible influence on Welles
A
2005 BBC report suggested that Welles' idea and style may have been influenced by an earlier
1926 hoax broadcast by
Ronald Knox on
BBC Radio. Knox's broadcast also mixes breathless reporting of a revolution sweeping across London with dance music and sound effects of destruction. Moreover, Knox's broadcast also caused a minor panic among listeners who didn't know that the program was fictional.
A somewhat similar hoax from 1874 used wild animals rather than aliens claiming that they were escaping from
New York Central Park Zoo and this also seems to have generated some public panic.
References in fiction
In literature » *Arthur C. Clarke's and Michael Crichton's Sphere cites the Orson Welles broadcast as an example of why, in the event of an actual alien arrival, it would be more prudent to anticipate mass panic on the part of humanity rather than wonder and awe. There has been similar speculation for decades in ufology: that the War of the Worlds broadcast is the reason evidence supporting the reality of unidentified flying objects has been suppressed.
*The 1968 novel Sideslip by Ted White and Dave Van Arnam takes place in an alternative history where aliens (quite different from Wells' and Welles' Martians) took advantage of the confusion following the broadcast to carry out an actual invasion, and ruled Earth for three decades (until overthrown thanks to the intervention of an intrepid private eye from our own reality). » *The War of the Worlds Murder(External Link) by Max Allan Collins was published by Berkley in 2005, blending fact and fiction for an exciting tale where Orson Welles is accused of murder and teams with The Shadow writer Walter Gibson to clear his name.
*The Doomsday Conspiracy by Sidney Sheldon makes a mention of this event, using it as a way for one of the U.S. Generals to justify withholding information from the public to prevent a mass panic. » *In Kim Newman's short story "The Other Side of Midnight" (set in his alternate history Anno Dracula series), the Mercury Theatre is said to have aired a version of H. G. Wells' (fictional) The Flowering of the Strange Orchid, convincing the country that "writhing vampire blossoms" were overrunning America.
In film » *In the 1984 movie The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, the plot hinges around an alien race of Red Lectroids whose arrival on earth in Grover's Mill, New Jersey instigates Orson Welles' The War of the Worlds radio broadcast, with the aliens hypnotizing Welles and causing him to pass the broadcast off as a drama, when it was indeed factual. Their later cover is that of employees of a fictional defense contracting company called Yoyodyne.
*In the 1990 film Spaced Invaders, a crew of rather dimwitted Martians intercepts radio signals from a rebroadcast of the performance and believes the entire Martian invasion fleet is moving in, leading them to land on Earth and get stranded, setting up the plot of the film. » *The episode is briefly referred to in the 1989 film Radio Days by Woody Allen.
*A similar realistic-looking "hoax" was a 1977 British science fiction movie titled Alternative 3 which was presented as a science documentary, though the credits showed a production date of April Fool's Day. To this day, there are many who contend the events documented in Alternative 3 were at least partly factual. » *The 1946 Looney Tunes cartoon Kitty Kornered briefly spoofs the incident.
In television » *The War of the Worlds TV series also incorporated a similar premise. In an episode taking place in Grover's Mill during the 50th anniversary of the broadcast, it's revealed that Orson Welles was hired by the government to orchestrate the broadcast in order to cover up what was a reconnaissance mission by the same aliens who would launch an all-out war 15 years later.
*The X-Files episode "War of the Coprophages" parodied the 1938 panic as a small town called "Miller's Grove" (a reference to the Welles program's "Grover's Mill") is seized by fear of an invading horde of tiny robot cockroaches. » *In a Halloween episode of Hey Arnold, Arnold and Gerald conduct their own radio broadcast in an attempt to scare the residents of Arnold's boarding house much like Orson Welles did. They also trick their 4th grade class, who were all trick-or-treating as aliens, into visiting Arnold's house precisely after the broadcast had finished. However, the broadcast is inadvertently picked up by a paranormal investigator, who mistakes it for legitimate and re-broadcasts it across the city as a real news bulletin. The water tower covered with Christmas lights also resulted in an electricity breakdown that made the broadcast even more believable. » *A Doctor Who audio drama titled Invaders from Mars is set in New York City at the time of the broadcast, with unusual events occurring in the city's underworld, which mirror the radio story.
*The 1992 BBC TV Halloween special Ghostwatch was similar in its shocking displays of a haunted house in North London. » *An Animaniacs segment starring Pinky and the Brain, "Battle for the Planet", featured a plan to recreate the broadcast in hopes of actually taking over the world during the panic. However, the Brain fails to realize that the public has grown more sophisticated in viewing such material, especially considering the amateurish effort the pair attempt, and no one takes it seriously (The character of The Brain is based on Orson Welles himself)
*In an episode of The Flintstones, there was a publicity stunt in the form of a Halloween radio broadcast about a coming invasion of the Way-Outs, which was really just a Beatles-like music group wearing odd costumes. Much of Bedrock was scared, but the fear was exacerbated by Fred trying to get to the Water Buffalo Lodge in his secret spaceman costume. Eventually, the broadcaster is forced by the police to explain his previous announcements were fictitious. » *The British children's cartoon Budgie the Little Helicopter featured an episode where the characters (who are anthropomorphic aircraft) are mistaken as spacecraft during a stormy night by a driver listening to a Welles-esque radio drama, leading to local panic.
*In "Madeline and the Spider Lady", an episode of the animated series The New Adventures of Madeline, the girls played around in an 'unused' radio studio and acted out a phony news broadcast concerning giant polka-dotted ants who were attacking New York, and got broadcast when a technician at the station accidentally hits a lever and switched the broadcast from the Spider Lady drama to the girls' phony news report. What follows is mass hysteria similar to those reported as the outcome of the Orson Welles War of the Worlds radio drama broadcast. » *A similar plot was used in the short lived animated series adoption of the American Dennis the Menace comic strip, in which Dennis and his cohorts visit a radio station studio to record a radio play for a school project. Unfortunately, in this version, Martians did really try to invade earth, but the plans were foiled by the coincidence of Dennis' play accidentally leaking out to the public after Ruff accidentally flips a lever and causes the recording to be broadcast. The panicking townspeople drive off the aliens, who were counting on the element of surprise.
*Touched By An Angel featured parts of the original broadcast in a Halloween episode titled "The Sky Is Falling", where an old man had to deal with the trauma he endured during the nation wide panic, including the death of his father due to a misfire by a paranoid citizen. It also set the scene for the first encounter between the two leads, Monica and Tess. » *A 1989 Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Tony Danza featured a sketch in which "Da War of Da Woilds" is dramatized by Da Brooklyn Academy of Fine Art.
*The Simpsons has alluded to the broadcast several times: » :*In the episode titled "Radio Bart", Homer buys Bart a microphone that can be used to broadcast on nearby radios. One of the pranks Bart pulls is to pretend he's the leader of a Martian invasion of Earth and has eaten the president of the United States, which Homer subsequently believes.
:*In the opening sequence of "Treehouse of Horror IV", Marge interrupts Bart's Night Gallery-esque introduction to suggest he warn viewers that the episode is frightening and that "maybe they'd rather listen to that old War of the Worlds broadcast on NPR". » :*Yet another Simpsons episode, "Treehouse of Horror XVII", features a segment titled "The Day the Earth Looked Stupid", which adapts the storyline of Orson Welles' famous broadcast and takes place in Springfield circa 1938. The episode has people act like animals instead of acting suicidal. The Welles character was voiced by Maurice LaMarche, the same voice as The Brain.
*The November 4, 2007 episode of Cold Case dealt with a murder that took place during the panic surrounding the original 1938 radio broadcast. » * In the October 15, 1956 episode of I Love Lucy, "Lucy Meets Orson Wells", Lucy is shopping for scuba gear in Macy's at the same time Wells is signing record albums of his Shakespearian readings. After Lucy approaches him still wearing a Scuba mask, flippers and assorted air hoses, Wells takes one look at her and says, "My "Man from Mars" broadcast was 18 years ago...where were you?"
*"Panic", a 1997 episode of HBO's Perversions of Science, based loosely on a story from the comic book Weird Science (see below), featured Jamie Kennedy and Jason Lee as listeners confused and alarmed by a War of the Worlds-style radio broadcast. However, in this instance, Kennedy and Lee play two extra-terrestrial invaders disguised as humans, who mistakenly believe that the broadcast relates to an invasion of Earth by their own people, about which they hadn't been informed.
In radio » *An Adventures in Odyssey episode, "Terror From the Skies", is based on and makes many references to The War of the Worlds. Like Orson Welles' broadcast, it features a dramatized radio broadcast that tells about an alien invasion of Earth.
In video games » *In the video game, supporting character Para-Medic from Snake's radio frequency gives an amusing retelling of her parents' panic during the radio play.
In comics » *EC Comics did a story in Weird Science where a TV network decides to a televise a remake of the War of the Worlds broadcast. To avoid confusion, they publicize the event weeks ahead of time. Unfortunately, a real invasion occurs the same night, and as the station breaks into the hoax report with a real report, no one believes it.
*DC Comics had a similar story where Orson Welles himself learns of an actual Martian invasion, but his radio warnings are useless since no one takes them seriously because of his radio play. Fortunately, Superman realizes that Welles is serious and stops the invasion. » *In issue 11 of DC Comics' The Shadow Strikes (1989), The Shadow teams up with a radio announcer named "Grover Mills" -- a character based on the young Orson Welles -- who has been impersonating the Shadow on the radio. (Welles played The Shadow on radio prior to the War of the Worlds broadcast.)
In songs » *Queen's song Radio Gaga, which is a tribute to the medium of radio written by Roger Taylor, includes the lyrics You gave them all those old time stars / Through wars of worlds - invaded by Mars, obviously referencing the radio broadcast.
*Panic at the Disco's song Intermission plays a segment of dance music, then cuts to radio, where it features a sample of The War of the Worlds: "Due to circumstances beyond our control, we're unable to continue our broadcast..." » *Crimson Glory's song March to Glory, an introduction to their album Astronomica, contains clips from the War of the Worlds broadcast, juxtaposed with speeches by Adolf Hitler and WWII-era radio news broadcasts announcing the invasion of Normandy and the later death of Hitler. The next song on the album is entitled War of the Worlds, and is about an alien invasion.
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