Orson Welles broadcasts The War of the Worlds

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 30 October 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The night before Halloween in 1938, 23-year-old Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre on the Air performed a radio adaptation of HG Wells’s The War of the Worlds.

It would become one of the most notorious radio broadcasts in history. In their own words, from the BBC's archive, Orson Welles, producer John Houseman and writer Howard Koch describe how it was "a very boring show" until they had the idea to update the science fiction story, using reportage and the name of a real location in New Jersey in the United States, as the scene for where aliens from Mars would invade.

Up to six million people tuned in, most of whom had no idea that what they were listening to was fictional. It prompted mass panic. Orson Welles delights in recalling "Suddenly everyone started driving at 125 miles per hour," saying, "I'm going to the hills". Produced and presented by Josephine McDermott.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.

(Photo: Orson Welles rehearsing The War of the Worlds. Credit: Bettmann/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:07.3	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron.
0:10.5	Evil genius.
0:11.6	He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it.
0:15.5	That's like hiding at your own funeral.
0:17.1	Yeah, a big, great gig.
0:18.6	I'm Russell Kane.
0:19.6	Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius.
0:24.1	Becoming that rich, I'd say that at some level of genius.
0:26.4	It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?
0:29.4	It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.
0:34.9	Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.
0:42.5	Thank you. and it's out of ice cream. Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds. I'm Josephine McDermott from the BBC World Service.
0:46.5	At Witness History, we hear from the people who were there.
0:50.5	Episodes are just nine minutes long,
0:52.4	so make sure you subscribe, share, and turn on your notifications so you never miss a thing.
0:58.3	Now we're going to 1938 and one of the most famous radio dramas in history with the help of the BBC's archive.
1:09.3	It's 8pm on the 30th of October 1938, the night before Halloween.
1:15.8	Actors are standing gathered around microphones in a radio studio in New York City in the United
1:20.9	States, scripts in hand. A 23-year-old Orson Wells in a shirt and tie begins telling a story.
1:28.6	We know now that in the early years of the 20th century, this world was being watched closely by
1:35.8	intelligences greater than man's, yet as mortal as his own.
	...

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