# "War of the Worlds" 1938: the panic that wasn't **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 31, 2013, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-1938-the-panic-that-wasnt/672724 "2013-10-31T05:26:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![installLSC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/54ee81/32.png) [@installLSC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/installLSC)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2013, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-1938-the-panic-that-wasnt/672724/1 "2013-10-31T05:26:00Z")
[This intriguing article](http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/did-the-war-of-the-worlds-radio-broadcast-really-caus-1453582944) claims that media accounts of mass panic in 1938 over the “War of the Worlds” Orson Wells broadcast in 1938 were wildly overblown. ---
**Author:** ![yendis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ed8c4c/32.png) [@yendis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yendis)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2013, 9:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-1938-the-panic-that-wasnt/672724/2 "2013-10-31T09:21:30Z")
That’s what I read in various textbooks in University a decade ago. The panic caused by the broadcast is a myth created by mass media. And that myth making is why the case is studied not the fictional reaction to the broadcast itself. Annoyingly I recently threw out my old textbooks that covered this issue so I can’t refer to them to get more detail. ---
**Author:** ![AClockworkMelon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aclockworkmelon/32/10803_2.png) [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2013, 10:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-1938-the-panic-that-wasnt/672724/3 "2013-10-31T10:58:04Z")
When I was in school under a decade ago I remember the books treating the event like it actually happened, and not as an example of myth-making, for one piece of anecdotal evidence. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2013, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-1938-the-panic-that-wasnt/672724/4 "2013-10-31T12:07:22Z")
That the panic was a real thing, and not the misremembered media myth of several decades later can be gleaned from Howard Cantril’s book **The Invasion from Mars** , which was published only two years after the broadcast, in 1940: > **[The Invasion From Mars](https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Invasion_From_Mars.html?id=2c2-k6AvQtQC&hl=en)** > > On Halloween night 1938, Orson Welles broadcast a radio adaptation of the H. G. Wells fantasy, The War of the Worlds. What listeners heard sounded so realistic that at least a million were frightened by word that "strange creatures" from... [http://www.war-ofthe-worlds.co.uk/invasion\_from\_mars.htm](http://www.war-ofthe-worlds.co.uk/invasion_from_mars.htm) Cantril was a psychologist, and his book gives details of the events following the broadcast, obviously obtained within two years of the events > **[Hadley Cantril](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadley_Cantril)** > > Albert Hadley Cantril, Jr. (16 June 1906 – 28 May 1969) was an American psychologist from the Princeton University, who expanded the scope of the field. > Cantril made "major contributions in psychology of propaganda; public opinion research; applications of psychology and psychological research to national policy, international understanding, and communication; developmental psychology; psychology of social movements; measurement and scaling; humanistic psychology; the psychology of perception; a... Certainly there are myths about the events of that night. Howard Koch’s own book, **The Panic Broadcast** , has a picture of a local farmer holding a shotgun, which looks staged. Stories about people shooting at the Grovers Mill water tower (which is conical, and frankly looks pretty weird) thinking it was a Martian tripod seem to be false. In any event, the water town – without bullet holes – is still standing there. Cantril’s book, by the way, seems to be the first place to reprint Koch’s radio script in full, thirty years before Koch published the script with his memories of it in 1970. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2013, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-1938-the-panic-that-wasnt/672724/5 "2013-10-31T12:48:02Z")
Had a look at two of the the Socolow articles. If he was trying to say that “not a majority of people in the US was in a frenzy”, then he’s right, but I don’t think that was ever in doubt. He says that people admitted to being “frightened” by the broadcast, but that this isn’t the same as “panicked”. This actually makes the point, though – people today, hearing the broadcast, wouldn’t be “frightened”. They’d be suspicious of a story about an invasion from Mars (it took something more plausible to frighten people for the 1983 _Special Bulletin_) And that he only quoted people who were frightened in his book? What else _would_ he quote? Who does a study like this and quotes mainly the people who weren’t taken in? The point isn’t supposed to be that _everyone_ believed it, or even a _majority_ of people believed it – there were plenty of skeptics who changed the radio dial and found no mention of Martian invaders on other stations, or who listened a little longer and heard the part that was obviously a radio play (_before_ the station break). There’s even a hilarious editorial cartoon that ran afterwards showing people going to the police and reporting events on radio sitcoms as if they were happening. The point is that there certainly were a lot of people who heard this and believed it to be real, and acted accordingly, just as there had been in England years earlier with its panic broadcast, or on the two occasions in South America when War of the Worlds dramatizations were done. You can’t gloss over them by saying that they’re “media myths”. Especially when you consider that, in the 1949 Quito business there were deaths and buildings burned: [http://www.war-ofthe-worlds.co.uk/war\_worlds\_quito.htm](http://www.war-ofthe-worlds.co.uk/war_worlds_quito.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2013, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-1938-the-panic-that-wasnt/672724/6 "2013-10-31T16:23:11Z")
The [Slate article](http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/history/2013/10/orson_welles_war_of_the_worlds_panic_myth_the_infamous_radio_broadcast_did.single.html) is basically a tease for an expensive new book on the subject, so I’m assuming that none of the proper nuances are there. I’ve got both the Cantril book and the Koch book and went through Newspaper Archive to look at contemporary articles and headlines for a project of my own. My take is that the panic was somewhere between the two extremes. People did get spooked; there was not a nationwide uprising. Someone may have gotten into an auto accident trying to flee; nobody committed suicide. The program was a low-rated “sustainer” - i.e. a prestige product put on without commercial sponsorship opposite a high-rated juggernaut; people still channel hopped in those days just like today and may have switched over when the singing started. And word of mouth counted for a lot even in the days of telephones. That’s why the game of repeating a message until it gets garbled in a funny fashion is called telephone. Only the last is really convincing. If a friend calls you up and screams that the Martians are killing people, then what do you do? Some of you may check the radio and hear nothing out of the ordinary; some of you might turn to the station mentioned and hear sounds of battle; some of you might go directly through the door without bothering to open it first. It doesn’t take many of the latter to be noticeable. You get the same thing when a bright light appears in the sky from a meteor or advertising balloon. Here it would be nationwide. Every local paper was able to find examples. People did react. We may have exaggerated how many and how severely, but it wasn’t invented out of whole cloth. The United Press story said: > [@](#): > > In Indianapolis an unidentified woman ran down the main aisle of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, crying: “The world is coming to an end.” The Congregation was hastily dismissed. In Toledo, O. three person fainted at telephones trying to call police. In Chicago, persons ran out of restaurants without finishing their meals. In Salt Lake City, residents packed their belongings and were only dissuaded from fleeing their homes by proof it was entertainment. But in the east, hysteria ran riot. Headline in the [Twin Falls] Idaho Evening Times: “Air Program/Caused Fear/in So. Idaho” The Associated Press story is the source for many of the “panic” reports: > [@](#): > > Some apartments houses in New York were emptied hurriedly by frantic listeners to the program - and by second and third hand reports that multiplied the impending peril. A women in Pittsburgh tried suicide, saying “I’d rather die this way than live.” … Switchboards in newspaper offices and police stations were swamped with calls from terrified people, many of them weeping. Some said they could smell gas and see the flames started by the attackers. … All over the metropolitan area people jumped into their automobiles and headed for open spaces… > > There wasn’t a Martian in sight and the hysteria ended almost as quickly as it started. We know from recent experiences that even in a world of instant communications and omnipresent cameras, the first reports of anything newsworthy are garbled and exaggerated. That was even more true then. Without reading the book, I can’t say how the authors make their case. If they leave it as there was less hysteria for a shorter amount of time without any real damages, then I have to agree. If they try to make the case there was no hysteria, then their standards are too high. And they need to explain why it kept happening. An unpublished paragraph of my own: > [@](#): > > Troops were mobilized against the presumed Martians in 1944 when a Santiago, Chile, radio station did a local adaptation. [Bartholomew, Skeptical Enquirer] Nor could war jitters explain “most of the population of Quito [Ecuador]” rushing into the streets in 1949 when the radio station there broadcast its version. [New York Times, Feb. 14, 1949, p1] Police and other authorities received hundreds of calls in Buffalo in 1971 [New York Times, Nov. 1, 1971] and Providence in 1975, [New York Times, July 18, 1975] although no one retaliated against the radio station as in Quito, which was burned down with a loss of 15 lives after the hoax was revealed. That’s real and that’s news. ---
**Author:** ![TV\_time](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f17d59/32.png) [@TV\_time](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TV_time)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2013, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-1938-the-panic-that-wasnt/672724/7 "2013-10-31T17:59:54Z")
When I was in high school, i asked my father about the reaction to the broadcast. He was a student at the Naval Academy at the time and he said he was in his room studying and he heard a few people running up and down the halls and one came into his room and asked, “Didn’t you hear we’re being invaded?” My father had been listing to some other radio station and there indeed was no news about the “invasion.” The fellow wanted to know why the academy wasn’t put on alert and all the midshipmen not issued live ammunition. My father and his roommate switch over and listened to a couple of minutes of the program and found some glaring inaccuracies (things like driving out to the site miles away in just a couple of minutes, etc.) and decided not to take it too seriously. He said there were some people who got excited about the program, but usually cooler heads prevailed. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2013, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-1938-the-panic-that-wasnt/672724/8 "2013-10-31T21:22:51Z")
That PBS chose to show this “documentary” as part of its _American Experience_ series is a real black eye for both the network and the series. I tuned in to this show with interest. After a few minutes of the “testimonies” (black and white footage with 30s-era font identifying the “witnesses”) it was clear that these were actors. I did think, while watching, that the footage might be genuinely old, as it’s technically well-done. But the acting (in combination with the writing) was awkward and obvious. The blatant fakery of it all destroyed any credibility the less-staged parts of the show might otherwise have had. Why PBS is (apparently) eager to be lumped in with the “Alien Autopsy” and “Mermaids: The Body Found” filmmakers, is beyond me. ---
**Author:** ![johnspartan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a183cd/32.png) [@johnspartan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnspartan)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2013, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-1938-the-panic-that-wasnt/672724/9 "2013-10-31T21:26:11Z")
It got Ned Beach and caused a stir at Annapolis… [http://blogs.militarytimes.com/scoopdeck/tag/ned-beach/](http://blogs.militarytimes.com/scoopdeck/tag/ned-beach/) ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2013, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-1938-the-panic-that-wasnt/672724/10 "2013-10-31T22:40:12Z")
> [@Sherrerd](#): > > That PBS chose to show this “documentary” as part of its _American Experience_ series is a real black eye for both the network and the series. > > I tuned in to this show with interest. After a few minutes of the “testimonies” (black and white footage with 30s-era font identifying the “witnesses”) it was clear that these were actors. I did think, while watching, that the footage might be genuinely old, as it’s technically well-done. But the acting (in combination with the writing) was awkward and obvious. The blatant fakery of it all destroyed any credibility the less-staged parts of the show might otherwise have had. > > Why PBS is (apparently) eager to be lumped in with the “Alien Autopsy” and “Mermaids: The Body Found” filmmakers, is beyond me. It said at the end all the testimony was direct quotes from real people. That it was in black and white distinguished it from the present day people which was done in color. Did you think that someone actually filmed that couple who got out of bed to listen to the radio? It did get lots of coverage at the time, as the contemporary newspapers indicated, and it did get Welles his Hollywood gig. And I knew Grover’s Mill before I moved near to it. In that area of New Jersey there are lots of little towns that have lost their identity and are no more than street signs. Grover’s Mill might be the most famous. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2013, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-1938-the-panic-that-wasnt/672724/11 "2013-10-31T23:03:21Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Did you think that someone actually filmed that couple who got out of bed to listen to the radio? The point I was trying to make was that such scenes are cheesy fakery that don’t belong in an _American Experience_ documentary, but on the basic cable schlock-“science” channels. Even the use of genuine stock footage of people listening to radios, etc., was poorly handled in my view, in that it was implicitly being passed off as something it was not (as real reactions to the Mercury Theatre presentation, in this case, which of course it could not have been). It’s as if the PBS decision-makers who bought this show believed that viewers couldn’t assimilate information about those 1938 events without seeing filmed footage. It was insulting. > [@Voyager](#): > > It said at the end all the testimony was direct quotes from real people. Even that is a distortion. If you look at the PBS-site material about the show, you’ll see that the scripts read by the actors were _not_ verbatim quotes from actual letters, but were “adapted” by the makers of the “documentary.” [Making War of the Worlds | American Experience | Official Site | PBS](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/bonus-video/worlds-making/) (The Slate article mentions this, as well.) ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2013, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-1938-the-panic-that-wasnt/672724/12 "2013-11-01T03:57:11Z")
> [@Sherrerd](#): > > The point I was trying to make was that such scenes are cheesy fakery that don’t belong in an _American Experience_ documentary, but on the basic cable schlock-“science” channels. Nothing was “faked” on the PBS series. It was a dramatization produced in a visual manner that gave the flavor of the 1930’s. Even Frontline uses reenactments for their documentaries and this was nothing as serious as their productions. I found it entertaining and nicely visualized right down to all the old radios shown. I don’t think you viewed this in the light it was meant to be seen. It was an entertaining look back at a masterfully produced radio show. ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2013, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-1938-the-panic-that-wasnt/672724/13 "2013-11-01T05:11:56Z")
W. Joseph Campbell, an author mentioned in the Gizmodo article, has a website with articles on the matter. [http://mediamythalert.wordpress.com/](http://mediamythalert.wordpress.com/) ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2013, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-1938-the-panic-that-wasnt/672724/14 "2013-11-01T18:33:54Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > I don’t think you viewed this in the light it was meant to be seen. It was an entertaining look back at a masterfully produced radio show. While I largely agree with this, I have to also agree that the “actor portrayal” parts were pretty damn hokey. But the biggest “DaFuq?” for me? The big draw that night was a _ventriloquist act_, **ON THE RADIO!** 😃 ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2013, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-1938-the-panic-that-wasnt/672724/15 "2013-11-01T18:37:57Z")
> [@Gatopescado](#): > > But the biggest “DaFuq?” for me? The big draw that night was a _ventriloquist act_, **ON THE RADIO!** 😃 that dummy sure was popular. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2013, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-1938-the-panic-that-wasnt/672724/16 "2013-11-01T19:15:37Z")
Wednesday evening, a local college did a live re-enactment with the dialogue altered to make a “local” story, and there was no way anyone could have thought it was “real”. It was fun to listen to, however. ---
**Author:** ![74westy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/74westy/32/3950_2.png) [@74westy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/74westy)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2013, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-1938-the-panic-that-wasnt/672724/17 "2013-11-01T21:11:27Z")
> [@Gatopescado](#): > > While I largely agree with this, I have to also agree that the “actor portrayal” parts were pretty damn hokey. > > But the biggest “DaFuq?” for me? The big draw that night was a _ventriloquist act_, **ON THE RADIO!** 😃 Kids nowadays! [Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Bergen#The_Chase_and_Sanborn_Hour) were very popular on radio. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2013, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-1938-the-panic-that-wasnt/672724/18 "2013-11-01T23:28:35Z")
> [@74westy](#): > > Kids nowadays! [Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Bergen#The_Chase_and_Sanborn_Hour) were very popular on radio. Indeed, Edgar Bergen WAS extremely popular at the time, and he happens to be PART of the evidence for the proposition that Orson Welles’ show didn’t cause any real panic. The “War of the Worlds” broadcast, you see, was airing OPPOSITE Edgar Bergen’s infinitely more popular show! So, even if Welles’ broadcast HAD been taken seriously by EVERYONE listening (which is unlikely), widespread panic was highly improbable because for every person listening to Welles’ show, there were 10 people listening to Edgar Bergen and 10 more not listening to the radio at all. I was in 5th grade in 1971, and my science teacher played us a record of that broadcast at Halloween. That night, I asked my grandmother if she remembered that broadcast and the terror it created. She scoffed and said sure, she’ d heard Welles that night, but it was obviously fictitious, and nobody she knew took it seriously. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2013, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-1938-the-panic-that-wasnt/672724/19 "2013-11-01T23:29:30Z")
> [@Gatopescado](#): > > While I largely agree with this, I have to also agree that the “actor portrayal” parts were pretty damn hokey. > > But the biggest “DaFuq?” for me? The big draw that night was a _ventriloquist act_, **ON THE RADIO!** 😃 I always wondered about that too. A bit before my time but it seemed like a joke unto itself. I DO remember a local TV station years ago accidentally triggering the emergency broadcast system. They stated there was an emergency but didn’t state what it was. My sister and I leaned forward with “WTH” looks on our face. The station corrected it quickly. ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2013, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-1938-the-panic-that-wasnt/672724/20 "2013-11-01T23:40:05Z")
Edgar Bergen was good on radio. if you saw him later on tv it was the same thing. he was popular enough to bring on lots of major guests, who via Charlie got to be the butt of jokes. the jokes were sophisticated double meaning humor. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-of-the-worlds-1938-the-panic-that-wasnt/672724.md?page=2)