"The War of the Worlds" broadcast recreated

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October 24, 2009

By Kelly Kazek The News Courier Sat Oct 24, 2009, 05:49 PM CDT

Announcer: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the most terrifying thing I have ever witnessed … Wait a minute! Someone’s crawling out of the hollow top. Someone or … something. I can see peering out of that black hole two luminous disks … are they eyes? It might be a face. It might be …”

On Halloween eve, 1938, this is what thousands of listeners heard on their CBS radio stations.

Never mind that the stations had broadcast disclaimers, or that newspapers had advertised a dramatization of H.G. Wells’ novel that evening on Mercury Theater on the Air. Radio actor Orson Welles and the cast were so convincing, many listeners thought the Mars invasion was real.

“What time will it be the end of the world?” a caller asked a switchboard operator at The New York Times.

“They’re bombing New Jersey,” another man told Bronx Police Officer John Morrison. “… I could see the smoke from the bombs drifting over New York.”

According to waroftheworlds.org and several other Web sources, these calls were among thousands received by newspapers and police stations in several states the night “The War of the Worlds” radio broadcast stunned a nation.

Sixty-one years to the day since that famous broadcast, Athens State University’s Tom McDougle will direct a stage play of the broadcast.

With students making up the cast and McDougle directing, the play will be performed at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday at McCandless Hall. Tickets are $7 for adults and $5 for students and are available at ASU’s Sandridge Student Center, Room 217. For information, call (256) 216-3319.

“Everyone will be dressed in period costume and the set will be like the 1930s CBS radio station in New York,” McDougle said.

Students also created a PowerPoint presentation of period artwork, science fiction film clips and other images to screen onstage to add to the atmosphere, he said.

McDougle and ASU professor Al Elmore also lucked into stage sets to add to the realism of the play — actual equipment used in the CBS studio where “War” was broadcast in 1938.

The equipment — a large cabinet-style reel-to-reel tape player, a clock and timer clock, and a sign that flashes “Recording” —are owned by Noel Webster of Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Sheffield.

“I have the largest collection in the nation of historical audio and film equipment,” Webster said.

He said he got the CBS equipment from the studio himself. The reel-to-reel player, one of seven Webster has from CBS, was built specifically for the studio and is marked with the date, he said.

Muscle Shoals Sound is an active recording studio and not a museum but people can take tours, he said. Not all of his memorabilia is on display — it would require too much space, Webster said — but some is on view. Tours are $10. Call (256) 783-2641 for information.

The studio recently recorded a CD for The Black Keys, Webster said, and in the past has been the site of recordings by Cher, Aretha Franklin, The Rolling Stones, Boz Scaggs, Bob Seger, Percy Sledge, Simon and Garfunkle, Willie Nelson, Lynyrd Skynyrd and more.

Webster said when McDougle and Elmore told him about the play, he thought, “What a great idea. Athens is close enough that I’d like to donate this equipment to make your production a little more authentic.”

McDougle, who will portray Orson Welles in the play, said he hopes audiences feel they are experiencing a real radio broadcast.

To read the text of “The War of the Worlds” broadcast, visit www.waroftheworlds.org/Broadcast/tabid/54/Default.aspx.

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