Word: broadcasts
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre panicked a nation in 1938 with a radio version of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. Of the estimated 32 million people who listened to the thirty minute broadcast, nearly a fifth were sufficiently frightened and gullible to take measures to ensure their survival. In the meantime, CBS and the FCC shared the horrors wrought by Orson's Hallowe'en prank...
Both psychologists and actors have praised the adaptation as a study in mass psychology and realistic theatre. A close reading of the script or a few minutes of the low quality LP record, however, will cast doubts on the dramatic worth of the broadcast. Corny lines, private jokes, impossible flashbacks, impossible occurrences, and hackneyed lines mar whatever dramatic value might underlie the plot. Yet the mediocrity and incredibility of the script makes the psychological aspects of the original version all the more interesting...
...some obscure reason, WHRB and Steve Aaron have combined resources and talent to make a tape recording of the broadcast, following the original script. The cast is a combination of WHRB announcers and HDC actors, the latter faring better...
...broadcast begins with a weather announcement, and then shifts to the George Shearing quartet in New York (Welles' used Brazil and Stardust). Then came the now immortal series of special bulletins telling of a strange explosions on Mars, then of odd masses crashing in New Jersey, and finally...
...Television, in fact, was the hit of the show. The Japanese had brought a small transmitting outfit and set up a receiver in Mao's office, in the exhibition hall and in some 20 oth er vantage spots around town. At one point, the TV network broadcast a film of Mao's visit to the exhibition. When Chair man Mao saw himself waving to people as he was leaving the hall, his round, bland face split like a sliced watermelon with a wide smile; he clapped his hands and cried, "Hao, hao" (Good, good...