Episode notes
Martians in Grover's Mill: Orson Welles, Fake Panic, and the Disclaimer in the Footer
Episode 14 of The Office 360 Unfiltered. A new yarn. Funny on purpose.
October 30, 1938. Jack-o’-lanterns. Mercury Theatre on the Air, CBS. A 23-year-old named Orson Welles adapts H.G. Wells. They do not start like a play with a bow tie. They start like a dance band. Then: we interrupt this program. Explosions on Mars. A reporter in a field. Grover’s Mill, New Jersey. Heat rays. People who tuned in late missed “this is a drama” and got the cabbage-field invasion.
Then the papers — losing supper to radio — put on civic concern and sold mass hysteria. Modern research says the panic was smaller than the headlines. The Martians were fake. A lot of the stampede was extra sauce.
Welles’s sign-off still kills: if your doorbell rings and nobody’s there, that was no Martian. It’s Halloween.
The Office 360 landing: if grandma tunes in late, can she still hit the book, the service, the donate in three taps? Don’t bury the real thing under an autoplay violin.
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