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Title: Orson Welles

Description: Orson Welles (George Orson Welles; 1915-1985), American actor, director, producer and writer, shown on October 30, 1938, a photo taken only after an hour following his sensational Mercury Theater radio broadcast of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, which was broadcast as a drama, although presented as if it were a newscast of on-going events (announcements throughout the broadcast made it clear that this was a dramatization, but many listeners ignored these statements) - having actors enacting reporters, who described how Martians had landed in New Jersey, and were destroying everything in their path with devastating weapons; newspapers were swamped with calls from panic-stricken people (875 calls to the New York Times alone, which reportedly rushed some of its newshounds to New Jersey to get eyewitness accounts and maybe even interview the visiting Martians); thousands ran from their homes in a desperate search for safe havens, many of these terrorized listeners racing to churches to make peace with their Maker after believing that the Earth was coming to an end; in Newark, New Jersey, fifteen persons were treated for shock at local hospitals, with similar reactions throughout the country where the broadcast was heard; Welles later apologized on air, but the unintentional damage had been done (many accused Welles of being a dangerous radio prankster, who had capriciously positioned the program as a legitimate news broadcast in order to spread panic and alarm, which was not really the case); this sensational event nevertheless catapulted Welles into the national spotlight and led to his association with the Hollywood movie studio, RKO, where he, in the following year, began to develop one of the greatest films ever produced, Citizen Kane (1941); actors; broadcasts; extraterrestrials; Martians; other world invasions;

Keywords: programs, radio broadcasts, radio programs, UFOs