The War of the Worlds (radio drama) soon dismissed. The FCC also received letters from the public that advised against taking reprisals. Singer Eddie Cantor urged the commission not to overreact, as "censorship would retard radio immeasurably." The FCC not only chose not to punish Welles or CBS but also barred complaints about "The War of the Worlds" from being brought up during license renewals. "Janet Jackson's 2004 'wardrobe malfunction' remains far more significant in the history of broadcast regulation than Orson Welles' trickery," wrote media historians Jefferson Pooley and Michael Socolow. H. G. Wells and Orson Welles met for the first and only time in late
The Spanish Earth the subject, the apolitical 1937 film, "The Last Train from Madrid". A later film, "Blockade" (1938), was also sympathetic to the Republicans. Orson Welles, who starred in Archibald MacLeish's verse play, "Panic" (1935), and had recently performed the role of narrator in his CBS Radio verse play, "The Fall of the City", recorded the narration for "The Spanish Earth" in May 1937. An additional English-language release is narrated by Ernest Hemingway. A French-language version is narrated by Jean Renoir. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt invited Hemingway and Ivens to show the film at the White House in advance