H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds (Hines film) the Martian invasion. The film bases its approach on the 1938 Orson Welles CBS radio Halloween broadcast of "War of the Worlds", by presenting itself as a true account of actual events. Director Timothy Hines said, in reference to this technique, "When Orson Welles broadcast "War of the Worlds" on the radio in the late 1930s, he presented it in such a way as to not clearly identify that it was a work of fiction. He did it for the drama. And many people mistook the fictional news broadcast as a real news broadcast. People believed they were hearing an
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