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
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,