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
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,