Starting at 8 pm on October 30, 1938, 23-year old executive producer Orson Welles began an hour long radio drama "War of the Worlds" by H.G. Welles (no relation). Despite numerous warnings during the airing that the show was only a dramatization, hundreds of panicked people bought into the play's premise that Martians had landed at Grovers Mill, NJ (a section of West Windsor, NJ) and were taking over the Earth. Grovers Mill is 21 miles from Old Queens and 5 miles from Nassau Hall.
At Rutgers, one panicked student phoned his dad in Pennslvania and rambled on about the "devastation" going on. His dad had only once piece of advice for him, "...son, change to scotch." But at Princeton, the Princetonian student newspaper actually sent out two student reporters to allegedly gather interviews with the Martian invaders!
All of this took place the week leading up to the Rutgers Stadium Dedication Game with Princeton that Saturday. But there actually was an intruder in the sky that Thursday. Two Rutgers students in a private plane "dive-bombed" the Princeton campus dropping 3,000 yellow leaflets to come to Saturday game and return the leaflets for, "..One badly damaged football team – color orange and black… Two greatly dejected coaches – color deep blue... Three thousand disappointed followers – color assorted….”
"Orson Welles: This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen, out of character to assure you that The War of The Worlds has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be. The Mercury Theatre’s own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying Boo! Starting now, we couldn’t soap all your windows and steal all your garden gates by tomorrow night. . . so we did the best next thing. We annihilated the world before your very ears, and utterly destroyed the C. B. S. You will be relieved, I hope, to learn that we didn’t mean it, and that both institutions are still open for business. So goodbye everybody, and remember the terrible lesson you learned tonight. That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch, and if your doorbell rings and nobody’s there, that was no Martian. . .it’s Hallowe’en."
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At Rutgers, one panicked student phoned his dad in Pennslvania and rambled on about the "devastation" going on. His dad had only once piece of advice for him, "...son, change to scotch." But at Princeton, the Princetonian student newspaper actually sent out two student reporters to allegedly gather interviews with the Martian invaders!
All of this took place the week leading up to the Rutgers Stadium Dedication Game with Princeton that Saturday. But there actually was an intruder in the sky that Thursday. Two Rutgers students in a private plane "dive-bombed" the Princeton campus dropping 3,000 yellow leaflets to come to Saturday game and return the leaflets for, "..One badly damaged football team – color orange and black… Two greatly dejected coaches – color deep blue... Three thousand disappointed followers – color assorted….”
"Orson Welles: This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen, out of character to assure you that The War of The Worlds has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be. The Mercury Theatre’s own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying Boo! Starting now, we couldn’t soap all your windows and steal all your garden gates by tomorrow night. . . so we did the best next thing. We annihilated the world before your very ears, and utterly destroyed the C. B. S. You will be relieved, I hope, to learn that we didn’t mean it, and that both institutions are still open for business. So goodbye everybody, and remember the terrible lesson you learned tonight. That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch, and if your doorbell rings and nobody’s there, that was no Martian. . .it’s Hallowe’en."
The Infamous "War of the Worlds" Radio Broadcast Was a Magnificent Fluke
Orson Welles and his colleagues scrambled to pull together the show; they ended up writing pop culture history
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