What I learned from the War of the Worlds radio broadcast of 1938


No, of course I wasn't alive in 1938 when Orson Welles panicked the nation with his broadcast of "the War of the World" on CBS radio. But my mom was, and she would often mention it, and it became an early lesson in my life.

If you haven't ever heard what happened, to put it briefly, CBS radio broadcast the story of aliens from Mars attacking the earth, as read by voice actor Orson Wells. And yes, they stopped every once in a while to remind people that it was just fiction, but apparently that wasn't enough.

My mom, an intelligent and educated woman, always had a very short way with fools, and was always inclined to speak up about it. And from her I learned that it's easy to fool people, and it's easy to be fooled, and it's not very nice. And my "mama didn't raise no fool", and I was determined to grow up to be considerate to people who could be easily fooled, which is most people, especially nice and trusting people.

Whether Orson Welles knew that he would cause a panic, I guess we'll never know. Fictional radio programs had been popular since the invention of radio, and no one had ever panicked before, about the Lone Ranger, or whatever. Maybe he did, and maybe he didn't, but if it was intentional, it was the kind of mean spirit that I've grown to abhor.

Whipping up people to a frenzy with some type of broadcast has remained popular, and whether it's done by accident, or intentionally, for revenue, is a very bad thing. And if you are living in the 21st Century I don't have to tell you what can happen.

Making a very sharp distinction between reality and fantasy has always been important to me. I appreciate both, and there's a time and place for both. When those two things blur, it can cause havoc. Again, I really don't know if the young Orson Welles realized how confusing this would be to people, but I'd like to believe that the older and wiser Welles came to realize it, and would never do that sort of thing again.
If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. Your support makes it happen! Thank you!

Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more