The War of the Worlds (radio drama) The War of the Worlds (radio drama) "The War of the Worlds" is an episode of the American radio drama anthology series "The Mercury Theatre on the Air" directed and narrated by actor and future filmmaker Orson Welles as an adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel "The War of the Worlds" (1898). It was performed and broadcast live as a Halloween episode at 8 p.m. on Sunday, October 30, 1938 over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. The episode became famous for causing panic among its listening audience, but the scale of that panic is disputed, as the program had
The Mercury Theatre on the Air October 30, 1938 and is one of the most famous broadcasts in the history of radio due to the panic which it accidentally caused, after which the Campbell Soup Company signed on as sponsor. "The Mercury Theatre on the Air" made its last broadcast December 4, 1938, and "The Campbell Playhouse" began December 9, 1938. After the theatrical successes of the Mercury Theatre, CBS Radio invited Orson Welles to create a summer show for 13 weeks. The series began July 11, 1938, initially titled "First Person Singular", with the formula that Welles would play the lead in each show. Some