Speaker 1: Your morning news, on the way to work and all day.
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Speaker 1: Fifty five krc D Talk Station eight oh five.
Speaker 3: Here at fifty five krc DE Talk Station, Brian Thomas. Welcoming,
Speaker 3: and I've been looking forward to this discussion all morning.
Speaker 1: It is a pleasure to have on.
Speaker 3: William Elliott hazel Grove, the national best selling author of
Speaker 3: ten novels fourteen narrative nonfiction titles. He was the Ernest
Speaker 3: Hemingway Writer in residence. This is a cool thing. He
Speaker 3: got to actually write in the attic of Ernest Hemingway's birthplace.
Speaker 3: He's written articles for like every major news outlet, USA Today,
Speaker 3: Smithsonian Magazine, and a whole bunch of other publications. He's
Speaker 3: been featured on NPR, New York Times, Los Angeles Times,
Speaker 3: Chicago Tribune. I could go on, but I want to
Speaker 3: talk about his new book Dead Air the Night orson
Speaker 3: Wells Terrified America. William hazel Grove, it is a pleasure
Speaker 3: heavy on the fifty five KRS morning show.
Speaker 2: Oh thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: I'm familiar with this story. I've seen the movie. I've
Speaker 3: seen the original movie, I saw the remake of it.
Speaker 3: I've also seen the sort of documentary movie about the
Speaker 3: chaos that ensued as a consequence of hgu Well's airing
Speaker 3: this on air radio play War of the Worlds with
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty eight. I guess, as you point out October thirtieth,
Speaker 3: Halloween Eve, But I want you to set the stage
Speaker 3: for my listeners for an understanding of how this was
Speaker 3: such a widespread radio show. It was a play on
Speaker 3: the air. They had actors doing different parts, sound effects,
Speaker 3: all that live in studio at CBS Studio in New York.
Speaker 1: What was the nature of radio back then?
Speaker 3: Because right now, of course, anybody can get any program
Speaker 3: anywhere in the world with the Internet. But I was
Speaker 3: wondering was this a syndicated thing that it went across
Speaker 3: to America? I mean, was the power feed from CBS
Speaker 3: New York City's radio studio so big like our local
Speaker 3: station LW that it went on over multiple states? How
Speaker 3: did this program get out?
Speaker 2: Oh? Well, yeah, great question. Actually they had one hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty six affiliates at the time, went across the country.
Speaker 2: So you know, that's the first misnomer about this War
Speaker 2: of the Worlds that people like, Oh, it's just restricted
Speaker 2: to the East, because that's is not true. It went
Speaker 2: right across the country and was picked up by all
Speaker 2: these stations. And you know again I when I wrote
Speaker 2: this book, I did it by newspapers. I used the
Speaker 2: research of all these new jobs, all these small towns.
Speaker 2: The panic just emanated out and so they were literally
Speaker 2: running for the hills in California, Missouri, you know, all
Speaker 2: the way down to the south, down in Mississippi. It
Speaker 2: was just you know, it traveled across the country. As
Speaker 2: you said, Radium was a new medium at this time
Speaker 2: that you know, everybody had a station because what happened
Speaker 2: was it's a dayton Land crisis with Hitler wanting to
Speaker 2: invade Czechoslovakia. It just occurred two weeks before. So there
Speaker 2: was these breaking news bulletins going off all the time,
Speaker 2: and and Wells used that in his show. He used
Speaker 2: breaking news bulletins. He made it as realistic as possible,
Speaker 2: and he listened to it today even today. But so
Speaker 2: I had someone son and listened to it. You think
Speaker 2: it's actual news. Yeah, you know, you know Martians Linkedy.
Speaker 3: Now in terms of H. Jewells at the time, I
Speaker 3: guess he was an unknown entity, imnorities what H Dwells
Speaker 3: and up accomplishment, but accomplishing. But at this time was
Speaker 3: was he a newbie kind of guy that nobody never
Speaker 3: heard of?
Speaker 2: Oh you mean Orton? Yeah, Uh, he had some fame,
Speaker 2: he had been he had produced these two plays. Uh,
Speaker 2: he only had about a million listeners. But on this night,
Speaker 2: because his show was a sustaining program, he didn't have
Speaker 2: a sponsor, all right, sort of for it was for
Speaker 2: the good of the country, right. They had this thing then,
Speaker 2: and so the the you know, playing at the same
Speaker 2: time Waster Charlie McCarthy Hour, Edgar Berg and Charlie McCarthy,
Speaker 2: which had twelve million listeners. Okay, so what happens during
Speaker 2: during the Charlie McCarthy hour They go to Nelson Edia
Speaker 2: singer and guess what happens with What happens now everybody
Speaker 2: starts surfing the dial and they end up on War
Speaker 2: of the World in progress after the station you know, identification,
Speaker 2: and everybody's like, oh my god, you know, and growers
Speaker 2: and in New Jersey, our Martians have landed and you
Speaker 2: know they're using poison gas and heat raising killing everybody,
Speaker 2: and you know, so Well's got supercharged that night. Also
Speaker 2: radios in cars had just become a thing. You know,
Speaker 2: all these cars now had radios, and this was a
Speaker 2: very new phenomenon, you know, driving around with a car radio.
Speaker 2: So people in the cars for the first time, we're
Speaker 2: hearing this, and they started just driving like maniacs. The
Speaker 2: police didn't know what was going on. Everybody started beating,
Speaker 2: getting accidents and going through red lights and you know,
Speaker 2: not stopping for any So it was a kind of
Speaker 2: a perfect storm, you know, on this this October thirtieth,
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty eighth that this you know, broadcast took hold
Speaker 2: and was like a tsunonymi of terror across the country.
Speaker 3: Now before the terror started breaking out in the panic
Speaker 3: in the streets and blah blah blah, it's my understanding.
Speaker 1: Correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 3: Though, at some point Orson Wells was told that, dude,
Speaker 3: you've got to let the world know that this isn't
Speaker 3: real and that you are broadcasting a play. So he
Speaker 3: interrupted the show to and make that announcement. Is that
Speaker 3: part of my recollection?
Speaker 1: Correct?
Speaker 2: Actually what happened is Wells is doing the show. A
Speaker 2: guy named Davison Taylor, a CBS executive, starts getting all
Speaker 2: these calls saying where do we go? The Martians are abating,
Speaker 2: where can we do? And they realized, well, this is
Speaker 2: out of control. He then leaves the control room and
Speaker 2: tries to get in the studio. John Houseman, orson Wall's partner,
Speaker 2: holds the door shut. I won't let him in because
Speaker 2: they know what they're doing. Right. Then the police arrived
Speaker 2: and they come into the control room. Well sees them
Speaker 2: and they try to get in the studio and John
Speaker 2: Houston doesn't let them. Why because Wells wants to get
Speaker 2: to the eight thirty eight minute mark where who has
Speaker 2: to take a station break? So for thirty eight minutes
Speaker 2: after the initial intro, okay, there's no break. And by
Speaker 2: the way, War of the Worlds, the first half is
Speaker 2: where everything happens. The second half is a snooze, just
Speaker 2: Wells walking around saying is this terrible to the earthless concenriat?
Speaker 2: But the first half is all the fireworks. Oh wow.
Speaker 2: Well Orson knew exactly what he was doing. You know,
Speaker 2: he was he asked he you know, he's that kind
Speaker 2: of guy who would ask you to look through his
Speaker 2: telescope and say do you see these stars and then
Speaker 2: thump you on the head and safety as see him now,
Speaker 2: and he's that kind of you know.
Speaker 1: Now, did he okay?
Speaker 3: And so that's kind of the predicate. So he obviously
Speaker 3: was obstruction, and obstruction is in stopping it while it
Speaker 3: was going on real time.
Speaker 1: I get that part. But did he know? Do you
Speaker 1: think he knows?
Speaker 3: Or is there any reports that he knew in advance
Speaker 3: that it was going to cause this type of reaction.
Speaker 2: I don't think he thought the explosion would be as
Speaker 2: big as it did. But Wells was determined. He had
Speaker 2: studied the Hindenburg recording of when Hennemburg crash. W L
Speaker 2: Chicago had on the spot reporter who freaked out, and
Speaker 2: so well studied that, and so in his the guy
Speaker 2: named Carl Reddick is on the spot reporter with the Martians.
Speaker 2: The Martians come out of their cylinder and they zap
Speaker 2: him and kill him on the air. And my book's
Speaker 2: called dead Air. And the reason for all that is
Speaker 2: because then Wells in the studio holds up his arms
Speaker 2: for everybody, everybody, musicians, the actors, everybody to not say
Speaker 2: a word. And as you know, dead air on the
Speaker 2: radio is just taboo. Well, for six seconds he holds
Speaker 2: that silence. After this reporter dies on the air, people
Speaker 2: freaked out. They thought, oh my god, we just heard
Speaker 2: this guy get exact.
Speaker 3: And he died, oh right, it'd be like right in
Speaker 3: the middle, like you mentioned the Heinburg all the humanity,
Speaker 3: the humanity, and then gone exactly.
Speaker 2: He made he made radio part of the play. He
Speaker 2: took he wrote the third wall. We're used to that now,
Speaker 2: you know. You see passa cards all of a sudden
Speaker 2: out in space, so turn and talk to the camera.
Speaker 2: That's what I was did with this. Suddenly radio was
Speaker 2: part of the drama.
Speaker 3: Well, in terms of the reaction, okay, we know this
Speaker 3: set up. Now, we know he knew at some point
Speaker 3: that people were going crazy thinking this was true. I
Speaker 3: note that the military actually also got involved. We had
Speaker 3: actual our armed forces reacted on some level to this,
Speaker 3: believing it to be true as well.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. What happened was they had to put out a
Speaker 2: release telling the armed forces, this isn't this isn't real,
Speaker 2: this doesn't happen. And because people kept saying I heard
Speaker 2: the president says, well, Orson had this actor imitate the
Speaker 2: Interior secretary, the Interior and he said, you know what,
Speaker 2: you know what to do this guy did a dead
Speaker 2: on an Fdr. Franken Dollan and Roosevelt with all the
Speaker 2: speech tags and you listen to this now and you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's Roosevelt. So people are like, I've heard the President
Speaker 2: say this. The Martians have incinerated our army since you know,
Speaker 2: it was time compression suddenly where you know, eight thousand
Speaker 2: men got killed. And then we're with a bomber pilot
Speaker 2: who's died by me in on the Martians. I mean
Speaker 2: it's almost a minute. So when people panic, they lost
Speaker 2: their sense of time because later people said, well, how
Speaker 2: can abody believe that all that could happen? But you know,
Speaker 2: people weren't thinking, and Welles was brilliant because here's the
Speaker 2: thing you want to know. This is a broadcast, and
Speaker 2: a broadcast it starts with dinner music at a hotel
Speaker 2: in New York. Then they cut from that to we've
Speaker 2: got breaking news, something's crashed at Grovers on New Jersey,
Speaker 2: and then back to the dinner music, then back to
Speaker 2: the you know, New Jersey, We've got breaking news. The
Speaker 2: Martians are out in the shooting people or the heat rate.
Speaker 2: So people once you bought into the music, you thought, okay,
Speaker 2: this is real, and then okay, this is real. So
Speaker 2: you know, you were in the tunnel and then it
Speaker 2: was off to the races.
Speaker 3: Oh my word, and it's and you know, my my brain,
Speaker 3: I logical, reasonable brain. Then again, I'm surrounded by like
Speaker 3: nine thousand different news resources. I never believe anything when
Speaker 3: I first read it. I want to go out in
Speaker 3: the world and look around to see if there's any
Speaker 3: credibility associated with whatever random person says something. But you
Speaker 3: mentioned the it's just the infancy of radio. Even car
Speaker 3: radios are new. What about the idea of just changing
Speaker 3: the station to see if anybody else is reporting about
Speaker 3: the world coming to an end and if you don't
Speaker 3: hear it elsewhere, doesn't that sort of reduce the credibility
Speaker 3: of what's going on in CBS at that moment?
Speaker 2: Well, you know this happens. People started serving back. But
Speaker 2: if you've ever been in a truly panic situation, you
Speaker 2: start doing strange things. Little things become very hard to do,
Speaker 2: like put in the key in your car and start
Speaker 2: in your car. Well, people didn't. They started to surf
Speaker 2: the down. Radio reception was iffy, especially in cars. Right,
Speaker 2: So there's a general with his wife in the Redwood
Speaker 2: Forest in California. They hear the broadcasts, They try and
Speaker 2: get an ounsation, They can't pick anything up. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: the Martians have knocked everybody out there. They run out
Speaker 2: of gas in the woods. They sit there and wait
Speaker 2: to get incinerated by the Martians. I mean, so this
Speaker 2: happened people, because I just got named Cantrell, who did
Speaker 2: a big report on this too, you know, immediately after
Speaker 2: it happened. He was a Yale professor and he interviewed
Speaker 2: all these people, and that was one of the questions.
Speaker 2: Well then you go on the down and said, yeah,
Speaker 2: we did, but we you know, we couldn't find anything
Speaker 2: else going on, or you know, some people said they
Speaker 2: did find other people reporting on also too. Terror was
Speaker 2: spread by the phone. People got on the phone said,
Speaker 2: you know, Aunt Martha, you know, the world's ending. The
Speaker 2: Martians have come. And then so they said the what's
Speaker 2: sports in Manhattan, which are half block long, just lit up,
Speaker 2: just totally lit up. So it was being disseminated to
Speaker 2: other people who never heard the broadcast. So it takes
Speaker 2: on that, you know, yeah, yeah, and everybody starts running,
Speaker 2: people running the theater saying, it's the end of the world.
Speaker 2: They're running the churches stands the end of the world.
Speaker 2: People are confessing to affairs to their lives. And you know,
Speaker 2: I got something to tell you. You know the broadcast.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, how you laugh about it now? But
Speaker 3: I can only imagine the panic and the terror. Well,
Speaker 3: was there any actual death? It seemed to recall the
Speaker 3: movie about the Panic. There was a scene where there
Speaker 3: was a father who was getting ready to shoot his
Speaker 3: children before the Martians were able to get them, sort
Speaker 3: of like to you know, stop the tragedy with a tragedy.
Speaker 3: Did anybody actually die as a consequence of this broadcast?
Speaker 2: Okay? It was a very famous story of a man
Speaker 2: coming him and his wife is sitting at the kitchen
Speaker 2: table with a vial of arsenic. You know, who's going
Speaker 2: to kill herself? And what are you doing? She said,
Speaker 2: I'd rather go this way than by the Martians. But
Speaker 2: as far as I answered that, two years after this,
Speaker 2: Arsenal els is on a barn tour. He goes into
Speaker 2: hotel cancus of another gentleman. A man attacks him a viciously.
Speaker 2: They pulled him off, and the man's screen time said
Speaker 2: I flow. I'd kill you if I ever saw you.
Speaker 2: They do an investigation and find out his wife did
Speaker 2: commit suicide on the night of the broadcast.
Speaker 3: Wow, well, I'll tell you what, William Hazel Grow. It
Speaker 3: has been a real pleasure talking with you about this
Speaker 3: amazing story here on the fifty five CARC Morning Show.
Speaker 3: Your book is linked on my blog page. My listener's
Speaker 3: going to go at fifty five cars dot com to
Speaker 3: get a copy of Dead Air The Night that orson
Speaker 3: Wells Terrified America. William, great job man. I just liked
Speaker 3: the thrilling conversation. And thanks for writing the book. It's
Speaker 3: going to be a real treat to read.
Speaker 2: Oh great, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: My pleasure man, My pleasure eight nineteen fifty five. Caresee
Speaker 3: the talk station power of media? I guess it still
Speaker 3: exists in some degree. Don't go away, coming up by
Speaker 3: heart mediaviation expert Jay rad Life about him in the hour,
Speaker 3: will be right back
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