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85 years ago, Orson Welles told the United States The War of the Worlds had really begun
Eighty-five years ago this week, families across the United States settled down around their radios for what they thought would be a regular evening.
Just an hour later emergency lines were clogged with calls — from people trying to find out whether aliens had really invaded a small town in New Jersey.
In the days that followed, Orson Welles's War of the Worlds broadcast would go down in pop culture history.
Orson Welles, then a year-old director and writer, created the broadcast as a Halloween episode of The Mercury Theatre on the Air, a weekly radio theatre show he wrote and hosted.
Radio plays at the time were drama performances relying on actors, music and sound effects.
They hit peak popularity in the s because so many households relied on the radio for news and entertainment. Think of them as a precursor to TV shows, or even the original podcast or audiobook.
Welles would later go on to write, produce, direct and star in his first feature film, 's Citizen Kane, a movie consistently ranked as one of the greatest ever made.
'Radio listeners in panic, taking war drama as fact'
Martian war machines and terrified screams — it didn't take long fo
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'I had no idea I'd become a national event': Orson Welles on the mass hysteria of The War of the Worlds