Orson Welles "First Person Singular", with the formula that Welles would play the lead in each show. Some months later the show was called "The Mercury Theatre on the Air". The weekly hour-long show presented radio plays based on classic literary works, with original music composed and conducted by Bernard Herrmann. The Mercury Theatre's radio adaptation of "The War of the Worlds" by H. G. Wells October 30, 1938, brought Welles instant fame. The combination of the news bulletin form of the performance with the between-breaks dial spinning habits of listeners was later reported to have created widespread confusion among listeners who
Orson Welles of eight half-hour episodes for the Italian television network RAI. Similar to the "Around the World with Orson Welles" series, they presented travelogues of Spain and included Welles's wife, Paola, and their daughter, Beatrice. Though Welles was fluent in Italian, the network was not interested in him providing Italian narration because of his accent, and the series sat unreleased until 1964, by which time the network had added Italian narration of its own. Ultimately, versions of the episodes were released with the original musical score Welles had approved, but without the narration. In 1962, Welles directed his adaptation of "The