30 October 1938
The Mercury Theatre panics America
The famous thing about that Sunday night is mostly wrong: the panic was smaller than the newspapers, who had their own reasons, wanted it to be. The interesting thing is the craft. Welles and Howard Koch built the first half hour as an ordinary evening of dance music repeatedly broken into by bulletins — a form every listener had learned by heart six weeks earlier during the Munich crisis, when the networks really did keep cutting in from Europe. We have put the whole 1938 season here so you can hear the company find that voice: Dracula in July, Julius Caesar in September, Around the World in 80 Days the Sunday before.
20 recordings · 1 broadcasters
Who carried it
11 July
1938
Archive recordings
55 min
The Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast 1938-07-11 on CBS. The season that produced The War of the Worlds, week by week.
18 July
1938
Archive recordings
1h 3m
The Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast 1938-07-18 on CBS. The season that produced The War of the Worlds, week by week.
25 July
1938
Archive recordings
59 min
The Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast 1938-07-25 on CBS. The season that produced The War of the Worlds, week by week.
1 August
1938
Archive recordings
1h 2m
The Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast 1938-08-01 on CBS. The season that produced The War of the Worlds, week by week.
8 August
1938
Archive recordings
58 min
The Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast 1938-08-08 on CBS. The season that produced The War of the Worlds, week by week.
15 August
1938
Archive recordings
59 min
The Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast 1938-08-15 on CBS. The season that produced The War of the Worlds, week by week.
22 August
1938
Archive recordings
1h 0m
The Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast 1938-08-22 on CBS. The season that produced The War of the Worlds, week by week.
29 August
1938
Archive recordings
58 min
The Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast 1938-08-29 on CBS. The season that produced The War of the Worlds, week by week.
5 September
1938
Archive recordings
57 min
The Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast 1938-09-05 on CBS. The season that produced The War of the Worlds, week by week.
11 September
1938
Archive recordings
1h 6m
The Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast 1938-09-11 on CBS. The season that produced The War of the Worlds, week by week.
25 September
1938
Archive recordings
56 min
The Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast 1938-09-25 on CBS. The season that produced The War of the Worlds, week by week.
9 October
1938
Archive recordings
58 min
The Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast 1938-10-09 on CBS. The season that produced The War of the Worlds, week by week.
16 October
1938
Archive recordings
1h 0m
The Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast 1938-10-16 on CBS. The season that produced The War of the Worlds, week by week.
23 October
1938
Archive recordings
57 min
The Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast 1938-10-23 on CBS. The season that produced The War of the Worlds, week by week.
30 October
1938
Archive recordings
59 min
The Mercury Theatre on the Air, 30 October 1938: Orson Welles's Halloween adaptation of H. G. Wells, broadcast without commercial interruption on CBS.
30 October
1938
Archive recordings
51 min
The Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast 1938-10-30 on CBS. The season that produced The War of the Worlds, week by week.
6 November
1938
Archive recordings
58 min
The Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast 1938-11-06 on CBS. The season that produced The War of the Worlds, week by week.
6 November
1938
Archive recordings
58 min
The Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast 1938-11-06 on CBS. The season that produced The War of the Worlds, week by week.
13 November
1938
Archive recordings
1h 0m
The Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast 1938-11-13 on CBS. The season that produced The War of the Worlds, week by week.
20 November
1938
Archive recordings
1h 1m
The Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast 1938-11-20 on CBS. The season that produced The War of the Worlds, week by week.