Yesterday in La Crosse
We interrupt Sunday night radio to bring you Martians…in 1938
It happened the night before Halloween, 1938. “The Mercury Theatre on the Air” on CBS Radio broadcast a new version of “The War of the Worlds,” starring 23-year-old Orson Welles, 7 p.m. La Crosse time. Welles used fake news bulletins to make it sound like Martians were landing in New Jersey, and one actor playing a reporter who eyewitnessed the Martian attack on humans had listened to the broadcast of the Hindenburg explosion to help him sound realistically frightened.
One La Crosse church was reported in a near panic about the “invasion.” The phone company brought in an extra operator to handle calls. La Crosse’s only radio station, WKBH, was airing Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy at the same time, which was a much more popular program than “Mercury Theatre.” La Crosse Mayor C.A. Boerner thought the whole thing was terrible, even after Welles ended the broadcast by claiming the show was his version of a Halloween prank.
In 2003, WIZM AIRED a live recreation of the Welles program, performed from the stage of the La Crosse Community Theatre. But the original show took place in 1938, yesterday in La Crosse.
Frank
October 31, 2017 at 8:38 am
I heard this about War of the Worlds earlier today and it was confusing because at then end you say , ‘But the original show took place in 1938, yesterday in La Crosse’.
I did a double take on that, because it sounded like the show emanated from La Crosse somewhere, but maybe I’m not used to the style of these historical snippets, this really didn’t occur here , but just happened on this date . Ok, reading this I don’t think you meant it that way, so historical confusion cleared up tonight, I was about to tell everyone that the show emanated from here, wow, that would have been coool!