John Houseman abandoned in favor of Bram Stoker's "Dracula", with Welles playing the infamous vampire. During an all night session at Perkins' Restaurant, Welles and Houseman hashed out a script. "The Mercury Theatre on the Air" featured an impressive array of talents, including Agnes Moorehead, Bernard Herrmann, and George Coulouris. "The Mercury Theatre on the Air" subsequently became famous for its notorious 1938 radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds", which had put much of the country in a panic. By all accounts, Welles was shocked by the panic that ensued. According to Houseman, "he hadn't the faintest
Orson Welles about Welles—"Cartoonist, Actor, Poet and only 10"—in the February 19, 1926, issue of "The Capital Times". The article falsely states that he was descended from "Gideon Welles, who was a member of President Lincoln's cabinet". As presented by Charles Higham in a genealogical chart that introduces his 1985 biography of Welles, Orson Welles's father was Richard Head Welles (born Wells), son of Richard Jones Wells, son of Henry Hill Wells (who had an uncle named Gideon "Wells"), son of William Hill Wells, son of Richard Wells (1734–1801). Peter Noble's 1956 biography describes Welles as "a magnificent figure of a man,