Orson Welles with an entirely African American cast, and the political musical "The Cradle Will Rock". In 1937 he and John Houseman founded the Mercury Theatre, an independent repertory theatre company that presented a series of productions on Broadway through 1941. Welles found national and international fame as the director and narrator of a 1938 radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel "The War of the Worlds" performed for his radio anthology series "The Mercury Theatre on the Air". It reportedly caused widespread panic when listeners thought that an invasion by extraterrestrial beings was actually occurring. Although some contemporary sources say these
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