The Writer’s Almanac supplies some more background:
It has been estimated that of the 6 million people who heard the original broadcast, more than 1.5 million believed it to be true and more than a million others were genuinely terrified, and contemporary accounts tell of police stations swamped with calls. Within a month there were more than 12,000 newspaper articles on the broadcast and its impact, and as far away as Germany Adolf Hitler is said to have cited it as “evidence of the decadence and corrupt condition of democracy.” Many listeners sued the network for mental anguish, claims that were all denied save one for a pair of size nine black shoes, by a man from Massachusetts who complained he’d had to spend what he’d saved for new shoes to escape the invading Martians. Welles insisted that that claim be reimbursed.So give yourself a little pre-Halloween scare by listening to that dramatic, now 73-year-old broadcast. The Mercury Theatre on the Air Web site has it ready for free downloading here, along with other radio episodes.
Welles and the Mercury Theatre were censured, but the broadcast secured Welles an instant, notorious fame. In 1988, Grover’s Mills, New Jersey, celebrated its hour of fame by installing a Martian Landing Site monument near Grover’s Mill Pond, not far from the remains of a water tower shot to pieces by its frightened residents 50 years before.
READ MORE: “The Myth of the War of the Worlds Panic,” by Jefferson Pooley and Michael Socolow (Slate).
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