WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - William Hazelgrove: Dead Air

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

In Dead Air: The Night that Orson Welles Terrified America, Willliam Elliot Hazelgrove illustrates for the first time how Orson Welles’ broadcast caused massive panic in the United States, convincing listeners across the nation that the end of the World had arrived and even leading military and government officials to become involved. He joins WRFH to discuss.From 12/12/24.

This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Christian Papillon. With me today is Mr. William Elliott-Haselgrove. Mr. Hazelgrove is the author of over 20 books, including 160 Minutes, The Race to Save the RMS Titanic, and Madam President, the Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson. His newest book is titled Dead Air, The Night That Orson Wells Terrified America. Thank you for joining me today, Mr. Hazel Grove. Oh, thanks for having. You can call me William. Thank you. So I'm just wondering, so for those who haven't read the book without giving away too much, what's the basic idea of the book?

It's 1938 on Halloween. Martians basically landed in New Jersey. Obviously, this wasn't true, but Orson Wells, who was a 23-year-old broadcaster, was on a show called Mercury Theater on the Air. and he was broadcasting actually a 17th program, H.G. Wells War of the World, and he turned into sort of breaking news format. And so when this broadcast went out on this Halloween Eve, people actually believed that Martians had landed with heat ray guns and poisonous gas and were exterminating the human race. They landed in Grover's Moly, New Jersey, and were more. working the way west across the United States.

And so Wells was broadcasting from CBS, which had 120-6 affiliates. So this went out over the country and set off nationwide panic from coast to coast. You know, people running into churches and screaming the world's going to end. People running out of restaurants while paying their checks. People contemplating suicide, committing suicide, people having heart attacks. It really just created this massive, massive wave of terror that really moves across the whole country. So what caused you to have an interest in the subject? I was familiar with Orson Welles, and I was very familiar with his broadcast.

But then another book came out in 2015 that said it really wasn't that big a deal, that it was mostly restricted to the East Coast. And to me, they just didn't sound correct. So what I did was I went back on a research, and I found through newspapers that this, in fact, had been a coast-to-coast phenomena that, you know, people really did panic. And the panic went all the way up to the U.S. government. And it was really, you know, sort of this per searm of this terror. And what reason I call it dead air is because Orson Welles did something very, very clever. He had a reporter die on the air incinerated by a heat rate gun.

And then, you know, for six seconds, he held silence on the air, which been broadcast is just taboo. But for six seconds, he had dead air. And this was this very, very terrifying people because they really believed they just heard this reporter die on the air. Wow. What was the research process like for your book? Oh, newspapers. Lots of newspapers, thousands of newspapers. And through that, that's how I found all the anecdotes all across the country that had these little stories.

This is what made me realize that this really was a coast-to-coast terror event, that it wasn't just restricted to these coast. and that's really what I depended on because a lot of the secondary sources, books, so followed the straight line of, oh, this was pretty much something that was believed by some people on the East Coast, but most people didn't believe it.

But in fact, Wells only had about a million listeners, but Charlie McCarthy, the Edgar Bergenauer, which was on at the same time, had 12 million. And when they went to a singer, Nelson Eddy, people started twisting the dom, much like we do today, right? Watching something you don't like, you go find something else.

And that's what they did, and they landed on War of the World, in progress. So they believed then that this was the actual news event. I said, in your book, you mentioned the growth of broadcast journalism. When did it really start to become big? You know, at the time news was produced, In other words, they didn't want a reporter on the scene.

There's a show called March of Time that was the most popular news show. And all the news was produced. In other words, they would recreate, say, the Hindenberg crashing or something like that with sound effects and actors. So that was what broadcast journalism was. It was basically something that was created in the studio to replicate a news event after War of the World. The FCC said no more of that. Because that's basically what Wells was doing. He was creating an event.

They said, actually, reporters now had to be either on the scene or reporting a real news event. You could not recreate news anymore. So that way broadcast journalism changed forever. With broadcast journalism growing as popular as it was, do you think that's the reason why people took the War of the World story so seriously that they assumed? it to be true? Well, they assumed it was true because of breaking news bulletins. At the time, World War II was just on the horizon. Adolf Hitler had been threatening to invade Czechoslovakia. And so people were on edge because all in early October they kept hearing these news accounts, of Hitler about to invade, World War II was eminent. And, you know, literally people would,

you know, these breaking those bulletin were breaking their bulletin, on their program. And that's what Wells used in his. He started out with dinner music and a hotel in New York, and then cut to, you know, breaking news, Martians landed and Grover's Millen, New Jersey, and then suddenly there's a reporter there. And this all really occurred just within 38 minutes. There's a station identification beginning, and then at the 38-minute mark, there's another one. But most people didn't hear that. They heard just the breaking news bulletins.

And so that's why they thought, oh, there really are Martians. They really are killing people, and they really are coming toward New York and the rest of the country. This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Christian Papu. With me today is William Elliott Hazel Grove talking about his book, Dead Air, The Night that Orson Wells Terrified America. I can't really hear you. Were there any other broadcasts of this type that had a similar effect, or was it just this one?

There was a broadcast earlier that was called Panic, and it was actually a radio play. And it was sort of the same setup where they had on-the-spot reporters, and a reporter died on the air. But it didn't have the breaking news bulletin format, and people didn't believe it was real. It was clearly a radio play. but because it had a reporter who died on the air and, you know, was sort of a real time. Wells took that as an idea. And also, too, when the Hindenburg crashed, there was a reporter from Chicago, from WLS who was there. And he really made a recording on the spot where he basically freaked out, seeing it.

And so Wells used that, too, that sort of reporter. order and distress. And so he made radio part of the drama. You know, he sort of broke the third wall and suddenly radio was a character as well. How was Orson Wells chosen to give the broadcast? It was his show. So he was, it was market theater on the air. So he was the director, producer, many times the writer, and the star. He had a golden voice that was amazing for radio. He was the voice of the shadow before that many, many radio shows. So CBS was given him his shop, and it was his 17th show, and he had chosen H.C. Wells' novel What the Worlds to do?

So he was always the main character who was basically carrying the show. Did he also broadcast the play you mentioned, Um, Panic? No. No, that was... Was that before... Was that before the world? of the world's broadcast, though? Yes.

So... I had not been so much so it was not his. So with all of that, why do you think a lot of people still saw that?

I know that there was no... A lot of people missed the station identification section, but if there was already a precedent, was it that Orson Wells did such a good job of making it seem real?

Well, it was a, yeah, it was a brilliant radio play. Orson had an art destroy, he had sound man, he had actors, he was very, very convincing the roles he played. And again, it was a breaking news bulletin format that convinced people that this was an actual news event. And cutting away from, you know, the dance music back and forth,

this made people believe that, you know, this was, they were listening to dance music, and then the Martians of Land. it. And then they go back to dance music. And then the Martians were killing people. So it was sort of a back and forth that gave it this reality that people believe, oh, this is really happening. And also, too,

remember, there was no way to check against this. Really, there's no other media source. Radio was it. People trusted it because they heard a Franklin Delano Ledge about on the radio many times. So they really trusted radio. And also, Orson had an actor basically

imitate President Roosevelt, too, saying the Martins had landed, and, you know, the army had been called out, and so people believed all this. They very much believed it was happening. How heavily adapted was the book for the radio? I know they changed some locations, but did it go beyond that? They really couldn't use his format too much, so they used actual locations. and a guy named Howard Koch wrote the script, and he really came with the idea of having him land at Grover's Mill, New Jersey, and then using the actual location. So the problem was it was a 19th century book, basically, written then,

and, you know, came out in the early 20th century. So it was sort of hard to convert in a way to a modern radio audience, but they did it, and they did it by, you know, using, parts of it, the premise of it, but basically turning into an American drama that only resemble probably the original novel in the basic plot line of Martians landed, they popped out of cylinders with heat ray guns and poison gas, started killing everybody. After that, it's all Or so well. He put together the sequence, you know, they cut away to the Army, the cut away to the Air Force, the cutaway of the present. That's all, none of that was in the book, of course.

So really, they just sort of used his premise. The rest was all or so long. What do you think were the lasting effects of the broadcast in terms of broadcast journalism, radio? I think that, well, as I said, what happened was they basically said no more breaking news bulletin formats in news, in terms around, not news, but then, you know, recreated news. You could not, you certainly couldn't put on production with that type of format, but also news had to be real. It had to be reported on as happening. You couldn't go into the studio and recreate it after this.

So that was a big change. Also, too, Orson Well sort of woke people up to the fact that not everything coming across the radio was true. And a woman named Dorothy Thompson wrote a big editorial afterwards. Basically, Wells was finished in show business, but she said, oh, you know, he did everybody a favor. He showed how ignorant the American public is. And Adolf Hitler could, you know, take advantage of this.

And basically everything turned around then for Wells. He, you know, was viewed as a very clever genius who had come up with his idea. Hollywood came knocking and paid him to go make two movies there, and then he made Citizen-K., which there's regard as one of the greatest movies ever made. So for him, he really came out on top. And radio changed. Radio definitely changed after that because, you know,

you could no longer manufacture this news. It had to be news. It had to be factual. And in that strange way, by creating this hoax, Wells changed the reality of broadcast journalism. Did Wells do any more broadcasts after War of the Worlds? Yeah, he had some shows afterward. Campbell Soup came in and sponsored him.

That was also because of War of the World. He didn't have a sponsor. He was called a sustaining show. So now he had a sponsor, and they came in and did some shows. But Wells basically was done with radio. He was off to Los Angeles and how. Hollywood and he became a director of the movie film. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Thanks for having me. Our guest has been Mr. William Elliott Hazelgrove, and I'm Christian Papillon, Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM.