Welles shocks a nation
Peter Hoskin 11:58amIt's 70 years to the day since Orson Welles pulled one of the grandest media stunts in history. His Mercury Theatre radio adaptation of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds was broadcast on 30 October, 1938, and - thanks largely to its faux-news bulletin construction - it convinced swathes of its listeners that an alien invasion was actually taking place (the main headline of the following day's New York TImes: "Radio listeners in panic, taking war drama as fact"). I've embedded the first ten minutes of the programme below, although you can download the whole thing here. It's a great listen, particularly with Halloween just around the corner...
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Travis Bickle
October 30th, 2008 12:26pm Report this comment70 years on and, with the cheerleading of the BBC and the opposition not being heard, people are still being conned by the media, with Gordon Brown following Gene Barry and Tom Cruse as the hero, none of whom did anything to save the world.
Ruairidh
October 30th, 2008 12:57pm Report this commentWhy does someone always feel the need to make a party political message on every post. You could write a coffee house entry on the fashion trends within Peruvian art-house cinema and someone like Travis would come on here and draw a parallel with Brown et al. It does rather limit the breadth of conversation.
William Norton
October 30th, 2008 1:05pm Report this commentRuairidh - you must admit though, that Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have done absolutely nothing for Peruvian art-house cinema...
Travis Bickle
October 30th, 2008 1:39pm Report this commentRuairidh
Well it did cause you to reply, which in my book helps, rather than limits, conversation. However, since we are being conned by the media as far as the great leader is concerned I apologise to nobody for mentioning this.
Sadly I am unable to comment on South American cinema, although I expect all the party leaders are equally as ignorant on the subject, is that apolitical enough for you?
peace and love, as a famous beatle once said a hundredfold.
mac
October 30th, 2008 2:36pm Report this commentPete,
Thanks for the link, particularly as I haven't listened to the Welles production in full before.
Ruairdh mentioned Peruvian cinema, and it's interesting that the 1938 panic in the US was repeated in the 1940s in South America when the play was broadcast there.
I remember very clearly the excellent BBC serialisation in the late 1960s - even if it did, I think, omit the Thunderchild's demise, an event captured so vividly on the cover of the Jeff Wayne LP.
@Ruairidh: you are perhaps a little unfair to coffeehousers, given that Pete's recent blog on horror films attracted seven posts and only the last of them 'went political'!
H. Pattison-Appleton
October 30th, 2008 2:43pm Report this commentBetween 1993 and 1997, just four films were made and released in Peru. Today, however, more films than ever are being produced in Peru. 2006, for instance, saw a dozen or more features made. A resurgence that is wholly attributable to Chancellor G. Brown's decision to invest monies from bullion sales into the fledgling S.American film industry. Presumably, the enormous profits generated by these globally reknowned films will be used to reduce the UK's PSBR.
Ruairidh
October 30th, 2008 4:41pm Report this commentYou do have a point William, and I concede that Messers Brown and Darling have done nothing for the Peruvian film industry. A shocking oversight.
And Mac - yes it was perhaps a little unfair and many a post has escaped this treatment but it does seem to me that one or two posters have a Brown paranoia that seems him as the cause of everything that's wrong with the world.
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