The War of the Worlds (radio drama) relatively few listeners. The one-hour program began with the theme music for the "Mercury Theatre on the Air" and an announcement that the evening's show was an adaption of "The War of the Worlds". This was followed by a prologue read by Orson Welles which was closely based on the opening of H.G. Wells' novel. The next half hour of the broadcast was presented as typical evening of radio programming which was interrupted by a series of news bulletins. The first few bulletins interrupt a program of dance music and describe a series of odd explosions observed on Mars. This
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