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
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,