The Night America Trembled The Night America Trembled "The Night America Trembled" is a top-rated television dramatization of the public reaction to the 1938 radio broadcast of "The War of the Worlds" that aired September 9, 1957, as an episode of the CBS series "Studio One". Hosted by Edward R. Murrow, the live documentary play was written by Nelson S. Bond and uses excerpts of the radio script copywrighted by Howard E. Koch. The film centers on the panic created when "The Mercury Theater on the Air" presented a radio adaptation of an 1897 H. G. Wells science fiction novel, "The War of the
Around the World with Orson Welles with the first broadcast scheduled for September 1955. However, Welles's other commitments interfered with his ability to meet deadlines, and much of the series was left incomplete. Welles spent much of 1955 working on writing, directing and acting in his London stage production "Moby Dick—Rehearsed", and after that flopped on the West End, he switched to shooting an (aborted) film adaptation of the play, first in London, and then in Rome - filming "Moby Dick—Rehearsed" in Rome was under the pretext of working on the "Around the World with Orson Welles" TV series. Although Associated-Rediffusion retained a number of rights,