On the evening of October 30, 1938, radio listeners across the United
States heard a startling report of a meteor strike in the New Jersey
countryside. With sirens blaring in the background, announcers in the
field described mysterious creatures, terrifying war machines, and thick
clouds of poison gas moving toward New York City. As the invading force
approached Manhattan, some listeners sat transfixed, while others ran to
alert neighbors or to call the police. Some even fled their homes. But
the hair-raising broadcast was not a real news bulletin-it was Orson
Welles's adaptation of the H. G. Wells classic The War of the Worlds.
In Broadcast Hysteria, A. Brad Schwartz boldly retells the story of
Welles's famed radio play and its impact. Did it really spawn a wave of
mass hysteria, as The New York Times reported? Schwartz is the first
to examine the hundreds of letters sent to Orson Welles himself in the
days after the broadcast, and his findings challenge the conventional
wisdom. Few listeners believed an actual attack was under way. But even
so, Schwartz shows that Welles's broadcast became a major scandal,
prompting a different kind of mass panic as Americans debated the
bewitching power of the radio and the country's vulnerability in a time
of crisis. When the debate was over, American broadcasting had changed
for good, but not for the better.
As Schwartz tells this story, we observe how an atmosphere of natural
disaster and impending war permitted broadcasters to create shared live
national experiences for the first time. We follow Orson Welles's rise
to fame and watch his manic energy and artistic genius at work in the
play's hurried yet innovative production. And we trace the present-day
popularity of fake news back to its source in Welles's show and its many
imitators. Schwartz's original research, gifted storytelling, and
thoughtful analysis make Broadcast Hysteria a groundbreaking new look
at a crucial but little-understood episode in American history.
