An account of Orson Welles' 1938 radio drama broadcast that inadvertently started a mass panic.An account of Orson Welles' 1938 radio drama broadcast that inadvertently started a mass panic.An account of Orson Welles' 1938 radio drama broadcast that inadvertently started a mass panic.
Edgar Bergen
- Self
- (archive sound)
- …
Brenda Isaacs Booth
- Bertha Boughton
- (as Brenda Isaacs-Booth)
Ray Collins
- Mr. Wilmuth
- (archive sound)
Buster Crabbe
- Flash Gordon
- (archive footage)
Kenny Delmar
- Captain Lansing
- (archive sound)
- …
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaAlexander Woollcott purportedly sent a telegram to Orson Welles the next day saying " This only goes to prove my beamish boy, that all the intelligent people were listening to the dummy, and all the dummies were listening to you. "
- GoofsIt is said that Americans, "almost simultaneously " switched on their radios at 8pm. The radios of the era were tube radios, and would have needed some time to warm up. If people wanted to listen to a particular program, their radios would have been powered up before the start of their preferred programming.
- ConnectionsFeatures Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (1938)
Featured review
It's Hard to Blame People Considering the World of the Time
I just had a chance to view this analytical presentation of the events surrounding that Halloween radio performance by the great Orson Welles, Welles was bewildered by the results though he loved every minute of it. What we need to realize is that it was announced at the beginning that this was fictional. Of course, the problem was that Germany was on the march and was being observed by the populace. People were glued to their radios and if they missed the beginning, the performance was so good by the players, that it isn't hard to see how they could fall for it. One thing I never thought about before was the fact that events happened so fast that any thoughtful person should have realized it couldn't have happened in just a few minutes. The events of the first twelve minutes involved events that should have taken a couple days (for instance, how did the military get there so fast?) Suffice it to say, this is a nicely crafted presentation. So many of these things have been done in the past. I believe this is the best of them all.
helpful•61
- Hitchcoc
- Jan 22, 2015
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