Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater on the Air - "The War of the Worlds" (Old Time Radio, 1938)

Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater on the Air presents “The War of the Worlds,” originally broadcast October 30, 1938. The series’ seventeenth weekly program adapts H. G. Wells’s 1898 novel for CBS Radio, with a script by Howard E. Koch and direction by Orson Welles.

Framed as a seemingly ordinary evening of weather reports, dance music, and breaking bulletins, the drama follows astronomer Professor Richard Pierson and reporter Carl Phillips as unsettling news arrives from New Jersey. Orson Welles stars as Pierson and narrator, with Frank Readick as Phillips, in the celebrated simulated-news production later added to the National Recording Registry.

Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater on the Air presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short closing announcement, and gently cleaned/mastered audio for a more consistent listening experience.

Chapters:
00:00 Victor Sterling Introduction
00:46 Original Broadcast
52:11 Closing

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