Was the panic resulting from Orson Welles's 1938 'War of the Worlds' radio broadcast overblown?

[Jackmannii]

The radio ratings survey firm CE Hopper Company were, coincidentally, conducting a telephone poll that night of approximately five thousand households. They asked: "To what programme are you listening?” Only two per cent of people said they were listening to The War of the Worlds.

Out of the hundred listeners based on that phone poll, if 5% were credulous/loopy enough to take the show literally, that’s a promising start. Multiple that number by whatever the nationwide audience was, and you could easily have had enough loons running amok to justify at least part of the subsequent news coverage.

What remains true today is that the vast majority of people behave in a reasonably sane manner, which is a lot less interesting than the relative handful who go berserk.

[davidmich]

@Exapno_Mapcase

You need to read A. Brad Schwartz’s Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News.

He argues that the newspaper coverage in the days that followed was entirely overblown. A few incidents did occur but most people did not take to the streets or go into hiding or shoot guns.

Unfortunately, I haven’t had time to read this book, but I did do a fair amount of research into the subject a few years ago, including reading as many contemporary news articles as I could find plus a couple of later books.

Probably the single most important fact to consider is that the Mercury Theatre on the Air was a low-rated highbrow show that wasn’t even carried by all the CBS stations. Boston didn’t air it, making reports of panic there dubious in the extreme. It aired opposite the top ten Edgar Bergen show. You need to believe that large segments of the audience tuned away from Bergen during his first commercial to pick up the Welles show in progress. And then stopped listening before all the subsequent reminders that it was a drama and the huge time shifts at the end that made it obvious it wasn’t covering current news. It’s all unlikely.

People do unlikely things all the time, though. A professor, Hadley Cantril, in New Jersey, the epicenter of panic reports, did a pioneering set of interviews with listeners after the event. The Invasion from Mars: A study in the psychology of panic finds that many of them were spooked and some did leave their houses. That reprint edition is available cheaply and worth looking at, because there’s nothing else quite like it, although the protocols were primitive by current standards.

Newspapers probably hyped any and all anecdotal reports far out of proportion to reality. Nevertheless, Welles got pounded afterward and had to issue a public apology. Congress investigated CBS. Columnists wrote pseudo-profound analyses of what it all meant.

And when the show was redone by others, in other times, and countries, and languages, it was said to have produced similar panic from people who couldn’t have known about the original. One mob supposedly burned the radio station down when it learned of the hoax.

Did they? I can’t prove it. But a station in Buffalo redid the show many decades later and got a huge public uproar that appears to be real.

My guess is that a surprising number of listeners believed that an invasion of some sort was happening. The show triggered a huge response in an uneasy population in an era when live news coverage on radio was so rare that few even considered the possibility of a drama imitating reality. Newspapers then feasted on the few details, possibly because newspapers hated the radio media that was already seen as a threat to their monopoly over coverage and were happy to put radio in a bad light.

Thanks Exapno Mapcase, I will read A. Brad Schwartz’s Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News. Sounds interesting. I think this argument that newspapers were, as you say " happy to put radio in a bad light" seems a reasonable one. But to continue propagating the myth that there was mass hysteria across the country (when evidence seems to contradict that), as the media still does, doesn’t make sense. I can only reason that websites that do so, do it to increase traffic. Sensationalism sells.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@davidmich

Thanks Exapno Mapcase, I will read A. Brad Schwartz’s Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News. Sounds interesting. I think this argument that newspapers were, as you say " happy to put radio in a bad light" seems a reasonable one. But to continue propagating the myth that there was mass hysteria across the country (when evidence seems to contradict that), as the media still does, doesn’t make sense. I can only reason that websites that do so, do it to increase traffic. Sensationalism sells.

Most people today do so because people said it was true for 75 years. Who reads obscure debunking books? Unless you ask a knowledgeable audience, as you did, you would never know there was even a dissenting view.

[Derleth]

@jaycat

How good of a ventriloquist do you have to be on the radio?

The fact this is utterly unacknowledged is one of life’s little running gags.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@Derleth

The fact this is utterly unacknowledged is one of life’s little running gags.

Don’t forget that Bergen was already famous as a ventriloquist from vaudeville and that every radio show had a live audience. He never merely opened his mouth and spoke in a funny voice. He performed as a top-notch vent on radio, and when he toured during the off months, and when he made films, and any time he was in public. Nothing changed just because he was on radio. If it were that easy to fake ventriloquism, then why weren’t there scores of radio vents? And there weren’t. Just Bergen. A superstar.

[aldiboronti]

@Exapno_Mapcase

Don’t forget that Bergen was already famous as a ventriloquist from vaudeville and that every radio show had a live audience. He never merely opened his mouth and spoke in a funny voice. He performed as a top-notch vent on radio, and when he toured during the off months, and when he made films, and any time he was in public. Nothing changed just because he was on radio. If it were that easy to fake ventriloquism, then why weren’t there scores of radio vents? And there weren’t. Just Bergen. A superstar.

When he started doing his TV show it became apparent to all just how bad he was as a ventriloquist. He barely made any effort to conceal his lip movements most of the time. But here’s the thing, it didn’t affect his popularity at all. People weren’t tuning in to see a clever ventriloquist but to be entertained by the patter.

[drad_dog]

I imagine the experience was like hearing a trusted official voice announcing an emergency. I don’t think the idea of disbelief would even occur to most people.

There was no Mad magazine, and very little irony in public life. It was the first time the media had been hacked. We are pretty blase about stuff like that now, but I think it’s hard to judge it from this distance.

[TriPolar]

While ventriloquism is a skill that not everyone can develop, and takes times and effort to reach a minimal level of, there are still far too many people who have managed to perform the basic mechanics of the art. The few practitioners who do succeed have more than uncommon coordination skills and vocal control, they have an act that entertains. Edgar Bergen’s radio ventriloquism act was a bit of a joke, but a small part of his comedic repertoire. Nobody believed that George Seaton, Earle Graser, and Brace Beemer playing the Lone Ranger on the radio were wearing masks and cowboy hats, riding horses and firing guns as they related the tales of the western hero, anymore than we believe we see actual medical, court, and police dramas on the television.

And the significance of all this? None but the brief lost world of sound only mass entertainment in the days of radio. A world of it’s own when it was the highest technology of the time.

And to note, Bergen was not only a lousy ventriloquist, according to his daughter actress Candice Bergen he was a pretty lousy father as well, treating her as another one of his dummies, and not his favorite either.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@TriPolar

And to note, Bergen was not only a lousy ventriloquist, according to his daughter actress Candice Bergen he was a pretty lousy father as well, treating her as another one of his dummies, and not his favorite either.

You could probably say “lousy father” about 90% of all star performers on radio, and that includes Orson Welles. So what? Why is this in any way relevant?

[TriPolar]

@Exapno_Mapcase

You could probably say “lousy father” about 90% of all star performers on radio, and that includes Orson Welles. So what? Why is this in any way relevant?

Not really relevant, just show biz trivia.

[jsc1953]

@TriPolar

While ventriloquism is a skill that not everyone can develop, and takes times and effort to reach a minimal level of, there are still far too many people who have managed to perform the basic mechanics of the art. The few practitioners who do succeed have more than uncommon coordination skills and vocal control, they have an act that entertains…

To hijack slightly on this point: the winner of this year’s America’s Got Talent competition was a young (10?) female ventriloquist; who not only was good at ventriloquy, but was a better singer with her mouth closed than most of the traditional singers in the competition. She is amazing.

[jtur88]

Even today, millions believe the crap they see on the Discovery Channel, despite every sentence beginning with “Some believe” or “It could be that” or “Recent discoveries suggest”. Nobody hears those disclaimers, and goes to work the next day talking about Megalodons.