Talk:The War of the Worlds (1938 radio drama)/Archive 2

Untitled
" Ronald Knox's satirical newscast of a riot overtaking London over the British Broadcasting Company in 1926 had a similar approach (and created much the same effect on its audience" followed two paragraphs down with

"A 2005 BBC report suggested that Welles may have been influenced by that 1926 broadcast by Ronald Knox on BBC Radio. Knox's hoax broadcast mixed breathless reporting of a revolution sweeping across London with dance music and sound effects of destruction. Knox's broadcast caused a minor panic among listeners, who did not know that the program was fictional."

Seeing as the second example has no citation is there any way someone could integrate it into the first passage and find a source for the sound effects/bbc report parts? I think this would make this segment more fluid to read. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.183.201.110 (talk) 14:20, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

further influences
How about mentioning of the Blair Witch Project under "5. Influences"? Anyone with me on this? Also, perhaps should a spoiler-warning be added? - user:musschrott, 24 Oct 2004

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.88.157.48 (talk) 12:53, 24 October 2004 (UTC)

Air Force
The Airforce was known as Army Airforce untill 1947. They just dropped the army part and said airforce. That was easier and quicker to say, like saying navy instead of United States Navy etc.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.91.36.254 (talk) 19:35, 15 June 2005 (UTC)


 * No, it was called the United States Army Air Corps because it was part of the Army. In 1947 it became a separate service. Tgpaul58 (talk) 14:06, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

War of the Worlds Still Profitable
The War of the World has been remade ever since the original radio broadcast. The recent War of the Worlds starring Tom Cruise was a blockbuster hit despite the "camp" of redoing an old concept. The recent remake of the original radio broadcast brought in an estimated US$234 million domestic; therefore, there is still impact from the War of the Worlds.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.194.211.162 (talk) 12:10, 30 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Dur, that would be the remake of the original novel by H G Wells. The radio show was a remake. 82.32.238.139 (talk) 00:18, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Disclaimers
Just how many times did they inform listeners that the broadcast was fictional? The lead section indicates 3, but other sections say "several".

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.51.130.254 (talk) 02:59, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Monument Picture Caption
"Monument erected, October, 1998, commemorating where the Martians "landed" in Van Nest Park, Grover's Mill, NJ. It is the only monument in the United States dedicated to an event which never took place."

The last sentence is either ambiguous or spurious. What constitutes a monument? Is there an official standard in the United States for monuments? If not, then the statement is false. A strong counterexample can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverside,_Iowa#Future_birthplace_of_Captain_Kirk. Stone plaques are dedicated to an event which has not occurred. Better editors can decide how to best represent the significance of the War of the Worlds monument. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.85.249.229 (talk) 06:11, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * In addition, James Loewen's book Lies Across America reports that there are several historical markers that commemorate events that never happened. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 06:25, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Plot Summary: Set in 1939?
The writer mentions that Welles' prologue indicates the story actually takes place in 1939. What he says on the air (and in Koch's script) is "in the 39th year of the 20th century came the great disillusionment." The 20th century began on New Year's Day 1901 (I remember the ongoing battle about when the 21st century actually started during the pre-Y2K panic). The 39th year of the 20th century would have been 1940. 45750born (talk) 04:07, 9 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I respectfully disagree with this conclusion, and (to a lesser extent) with the statement that the show takes place in 1939. If we accept that the 20th century began on New Year's Day 1901, then we are accepting that 1901 is the first year of the 20th century. By the same token, we accept that 1939, not 1940, is the 39th year. If, on the other hand, we use the popular convention that the 20th century began on New Year's Day 1900, then the 39th year would be 1938, the same year the show was broadcast. ChasFink (talk) 13:30, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Orson Welles states in the October 31 press conference (5:31–5:47), "The date of the broadcast is nineteen-thirty-nine." This was apparently one more reason it was thought that listeners would know it was a work of fiction. — WFinch (talk) 18:19, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Link to Archive.org webpage for streaming, "The War of the Worlds" broadcast recording
Hi,

The Wikipedia.org webpage for the Orson Welles directed radio broadcast of "The War of the Worlds" would not allow me to add a link to the "External Links" section.

The link I wish to add is to the streaming recording of Welles's "The War of the Worlds" broadcast on Archive.org. I believe this streaming version of the broadcast is probably what the majority of people visiting this Wikipedia webpage would be interested in listening to, as opposed to the downloadable mp3 files already listed under "External Links". In addition, this Archive.org webpage for "The War of the Worlds" is difficult to find when navigating the Archive.org website, as well as hard to find through a Google search.

This is the link:  http://www.archive.org/details/OrsonWellesMrBruns.

Please enter this link under "External Links" if you agree that this would be appropriate.

Thank you,

Bill — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.149.44.10 (talk) 03:27, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

What is relevance of the Conspiracy section?
The whole section is very weak and worthy of being removed. "It has been suggested..." By whom? By the people who believe the Council on Foriegn Relations and the Rockefellers and the Federal Reserve are "suspicious" entities. It's like having a reference to Lyndon Larouche in the the WP entry for Queen Elizabeth: yes, Larouche believes Queen Elizabeth is a drug kingpin but you put that allegation in Larouche's WP entry not Queen Elizabeth. So, too, we should be putting the allegation that Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast is linked to the Rockefellers in the conspiracists' WP entry (whereever that might be) but not in the War of the World's WP entry.

I'm inclined therefore to remove the whole Conspiracy section.--Petzl (talk) 06:42, 10 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Done. Lagrange613 (talk) 00:08, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Show is set in 1938
The 39th year of the twentieth century is 1938. The twentieth century began on January 1st, 1900. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.57.225.213 (talk) 00:53, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Reverted; see Century. Lagrange613 01:00, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

I was incorrect about the start of the twentieth century, however, Welles also mentions during the introduction to the show that "the war scare was over"-a reference to the Munich agreement that had been reached only four weeks earlier. There was widespread fear that a world war would break out over Nazi Germany's claims to the then Czechoslovakian held Suedetenland region. Following Munich, Neville Chamberlain made his claim that peace had been secured "in our time", which is obviously what Welles was referring to in his introduction. It's very probable that Welles, whose radio productions were noted for their constant revisions almost up to the moment of their broadcast, made the same error I did. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.57.225.213 (talk) 02:15, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You may be right. If you can find a reliable source backing up your version, please add it to the article! Without a source, though, I think it's original research and therefore can't go in. Lagrange613 02:45, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Orson Welles states in the October 31 press conference (5:31–5:47), "The date of the broadcast is nineteen-thirty-nine." This was apparently one more reason it was thought that listeners would know it was a work of fiction. — WFinch (talk) 18:17, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Consistent possessive: Welles's
As a resource and reference, this is a link to the discussion about the need for a consistent possessive on the talk page of the article on Orson Welles. This article, and many others, uses the possessive "Welles's" consistently. — WFinch (talk) 00:48, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Some research has been done suggesting there was not as much panic as we think
In this podcast episode of Big Picture Science, they bring in professors and historians who present evidence that there was very little panic that night, and that not many people were even listening to the program. Whether you agree with them or not, their research is professionally done, and should be incorporated into this article. If you have time, take a listen to Big Picture Science's Skeptic Check: War of the Worlds and adjust this article accordingly. Enjoy! Kingturtle = (talk) 12:55, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
 * There is an excellent article on this at Slate with lots that we should incorporate into this article, which largely states the myth unsourced and as a matter of settled fact. Not only does it debunk this fairly extensively, it explains how this myth got started—basically, as the article admittedly indicates, newspapers seized on scattered reports of panic over a program that a small fraction of the audience was listening to to discredit radio, a rising rival for scarce advertising dollars during the Depression, and over the next few years it became like Woodstock: people began to say they had been listening that night even when (as in many cases) they actually hadn't been. Actually, we shouldn't just stop here; we should put it in the ever-popular List of common misconceptions as well. Along with this old chestnut I really should put to rest also, as well. Daniel Case (talk) 14:56, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

I see that Daniel Case has tagged this section as disputed. I see no reason to a dispute here, except maybe by some contributors who have never moved on from Cantril's book. In fact one would be hard-pressed to find a (serious) source supporting Cantril's vision of the events, whereas many authors have debunked it as said before. In a more general way, panic is now known to be a very rare event even in major catastrophes (L. Clarke, "Panic: myth or reality?", 2002), even though it remains a very widespread misconception, taken for granted by the general public and even among professionals (D.Schweingruber & R.T. Wohlstein, "The madding crowd goes to school: myths abouts crowds in introductory sociology textbooks", 2005]).Jlbruyelle (talk) 15:17, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

¶ It is now a common folklore that panic was intense and almost epidemic. But I feel that this has been hyped by stories cooked up very shortly after the broadcast by journalists and others eager to have something interesting to say -- especially if they wanted to make their own print medium appear more reliable, etc., than the new electric medium that was diverting audiences and advertising dollars. At that time, in 1938, most radio listeners were in areas with more than one radio broadcaster, so they could easily tune to another station and hear for themselves that there was no invasion happening. Welles's own on-air disclaimer came within about 25 minutes of the first mention of Martian war machines (space cylinders open at Minute 14 of the broadcast, CBS identification of Mercury Theater drama at Minute 38). Despite stories of people (women, mostly) ALMOST committing suicide because of the broadcast, there is no news item of anyone actually dying or even being admitted to a hospital because of it. Sussmanbern (talk) 18:58, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Did it warn people not to rely on only one source for news?
I wonder if The radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds was also a warning to people not to rely one source for news? There was more than one radio station in 1938, and if people changed the dial, they could hear that the invasion was not real. It's amazing that in the present, when people have more than one option for news, they frequently rely on one source, instead of getting their news from many differenent sources. 204.80.61.133 (talk) 14:30, 30 October 2013 (UTC)Bennett Turk

Primary source material from city managers office in Trenton, NJ confirming 2000 calls in 2 hours
Although some have expressed skepticism that there actually was a great deal of panic over the War of the Worlds radio broadcast, primary source material recently released by the U.S, National Archives, and created by the city manager of Trenton NJ. the day after the broadcast, confirm that the Trenton police dept. received about "two thousand calls in about two hours" and that "the state police were equally as handicapped."

you can read more about the incident via the primary source documents below.

http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2003/fall/war-of-worlds.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.233.140.27 (talk) 01:10, 1 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Those aren't the primary source documents at all. It's really a secondary source, NARA's in-house magazine, from ten years ago. And the writer only quotes Trenton's city manager as saying that the city's police communications were "crippled" ... no numbers or further explanation. It's certainly got material that should be in the article, particularly in terms of what people wrote to the FCC, but you've written a check it can't cash. Daniel Case (talk) 03:05, 1 November 2013 (UTC)


 * In addition to Daniel Case's reply, one can point out (and it has been pointed out by several authors) that calling the police is not a panic behaviour, on the contrary it reveals a rational reaction of checking the reality of the attack. The fact that many people had a rational behaviour at the same time does not make it a panic in any definition of the term.Jlbruyelle (talk) 14:40, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Link to the original radio script
I suggest to add a link to the radio script. It is found at Wellesnet. Otto (talk) 09:20, 3 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Is the transcript in the public domain? If not, is it licensed from the owner under by U.S. copyright law to be published there? If the answer to both is no, we can't link to it. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 03:49, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

way too long
Trimmed. Collect (talk) 14:37, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for deleting that very long (and completely unsourced) section titled "References in fiction", and all of the unsourced entries in the "Re-airings and adaptations" section. Beyond that, quite a bit of sourced content was also removed. Tightening it or discussing its removal here first would have been preferable. — WFinch (talk) 17:15, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Unless the material is of clear utility for readers, it does not belong. Readers tend not to read long articles - especially in this day of mobile views.   I considered even more substantial trimming, reducing the number of lengthy quotes, etc.  Cheers. Collect (talk) 19:17, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Collins choking on the roof?
I was a bit surprised to read that one of the actors was "choking" on the roof top. Section "Public reaction" contains this sentence:  "He had been ordered to interrupt "The War of the Worlds" broadcast immediately with an announcement of the program's fictional content, but by that time actor Ray Collins was choking on the roof of Broadcasting Building and the break was less than a minute away."

Normally, this word is used for exceptional and life threatening events. However, it is not mentioned in any other part of the article. Thus, I assume that it is either a typo ("smoking"?), an unusual usage of the word (is it slang for smoking), or a remainder of some part of the story that was removed - or maybe it is just me, a non-native speaker's wrong impression of the word's meaning. However, I checked the translation of this word in reliable dictionaries and only found life-threatening meanings of it. Does anyone know the details and can change it or add some information on this? I do not have access to the cited source and cannot check myself. Netzwerkerin (talk) 21:01, 28 December 2016 (UTC)


 * That line correct, and it's referring to events within the story. Ray Collins portrayed a radio reporter, and about 20 minutes into the show, his character was up on a roof giving a terrifying first-hand description of the Martian's unstoppable attack on New York City. After a couple of minutes, the poison smoke being used by the Martians finally reached his position and he choked and fell silent, leaving a few seconds of harrowing dead air (pardon the pun). Right after that, War of the Worlds finally reached its first planned commercial break. So by the time the network demanded that Welles announce that the show was just fiction, it was too late, because he was about to do so anyway. Zeng8r (talk) 02:34, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I'd clean up that paragraph, but I still don't know what it's trying to say. It's not clear from the text why Collin's character's choking is directly relevant to whether it's too late, since we aren't all familiar with the sequence of the plot. Should we omit the choking and instead say something like: "He had been ordered to interrupt "The War of the Worlds" broadcast immediately with an announcement of the program's fictional content, but by that time the (middle?) break was less than a minute away anyways, so Taylor allowed the broadcast to continue; the (act?) closed as planned with the program's (second?) scheduled statement that "The War of the Worlds" is a dramatization." Rolf H Nelson (talk) 15:47, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

How long was the original broadcast?
It aired at 8pm, and there was a total of sixty minutes of content, but how long was the actual broadcast? That is, what time did it end? How long were the musical interludes? How long was the moment of radio silence after the first attack? Etc etc? Did it end at 9pm or were the interludes and delays used to drag it out much longer? I think the article would be improved by including these things? In fact, it's why I came to this article--but didn't find the answers I was looking for. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:403:C201:1CCC:A444:5772:CAD4:1944 (talk) 22:12, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Proposed change
The article doesn't state until almost halfway down that "Some listeners heard only a portion of the broadcast, and in the tension and anxiety prior to World War II, mistook it for a genuine news broadcast. Thousands of those people rushed to share the false reports with others, or called CBS, newspapers, or the police to ask if the broadcast was real." For those unfamiliar with the story, it would make more sense to put this paragraph at the top of the "Public Reaction" section, otherwise it's not clear why "the building was suddenly full of people and dark-blue uniforms."

It would also help to allude to the public reaction in the introduction. It does say that many may have "[missed] the clear introduction that the show was a drama," but it doesn't indicate that some actually mistook the broadcast for actual news. Sadiemonster (talk) 13:29, 25 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Go ahead and give it a shot, imo. You'll find lots of Wikipedia articles that could use minor or major reorganization due to the fact that many editors are working on the same text, mostly with piecemeal revisions. Zeng8r (talk) 17:48, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Move / title change
Did I miss a discussion about renaming this article? Per WP:MOVE, unless a title is clearly flawed, article moves should always be discussed before they happen. I, for one, don't agree with this change. Yes, it was an episode on the Mercury Theatre program, but most Wiki-readers probably would not know that, so describing it as a "radio show" makes it easier to find. In any case, more editors should chime in and consensus reached before the article settles in too comfortably at this title, imo. Zeng8r (talk) 20:29, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Though I disagree that the previous title was not clearly flawed, I'm usually rather good at accessing if a move is controversial or not, and I suppose I missed the controversy in this one. Either way, the previous title represented the subject as a series or show rather than an episode, which it apparently is. In effect, I tried looking for a guideline like Naming conventions (radio), but didn't find any such guideline. So, I renamed this article per Naming conventions (television) (specifically Naming conventions (television)) in what I believed was an uncontroversial manner since it was the most related guideline. In a nutshell, I don't have any opposition to moving the article's title elsewhere, as long as the title represents the subject as an episode rather than a show or series. (And is there a naming convention guideline for radio media that I was just unable to find?) Steel1943  (talk) 21:06, 29 November 2017 (UTC)


 * I don't think there's any relevant old time radio naming guideline, and even if there is, this is a special case. This is probably the most (in)famous radio program in US history, so it's likely that many of the casual Wiki-readers looking for information will just know it as a "radio show". They may not realize that it was a single episode of a weekly show, so the parenthetical "Mercury Theatre on the Air" won't mean anything to them or could be confusing. I think it's best to keep the title simple by using a short description that everyone will understand rather than worrying about being so precise about the series name. Readers can be educated about all that after they find the article. Just to be consistent with the article about a later radio version of this story, maybe renaming them as (1938 radio show) and (1968 radio show) would be best. --Zeng8r (talk) 01:07, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and reverted my move per WP:BRD. However, I'm not sure I agree with the logic presented above for naming these articles since at least the subject of this article seems to be an "episode" as opposed to a "show". If someone else desires to start a discussion, I'll probably participate, but I'm not motivated to start a discussion myself at this time. Steel1943  (talk) 02:05, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I would think that "common name", or more to the point "common sense name" applies here. It's best known as a radio drama, not for being part of the Mercury Theatre.  I'd be opposed to a change.  Chaheel Riens (talk) 08:00, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
 * And as likely the most famous common-name "stand-alone" radio drama, even though it was broadcast as an episode of a radio show, I would suggest that the title and other mentions should be italicized. Its common-name fame would possibly give it that status, so I'm putting that topic here for discussion as well. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:43, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I have now reverted all of my edits in this page, including italicizing the subject. Unless this page is put up for a formal move discussion, my participation on this talk page has concluded for now. Steel1943  (talk) 15:08, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I've restored the quotation marks around the title when it refers to the radio broadcast. That's the correct style since it is an episode. The quotation marks reinforce the program's relationship to the Mercury Theatre series, and they really help to keep a clear distinction between the episode and the novel, which is correctly italicized. (I'd like to see the article title in plain text rather than italics, as well, but I'm presently at a loss about how to do that.) — WFinch (talk) 20:45, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

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