Hear Orson Welles’ Iconic War of the Worlds Broadcast (1938)

in History, Radio, Sci Fi, Theatre | October 30th, 2013

orson welles broadcast

Image by Carl Van Vecht­en, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

One night in Octo­ber of 1938, lis­ten­ers tuned into CBS radio to hear a piece of radio the­ater (lis­ten below) so fright­en­ing and, for its time, real­is­tic, that peo­ple across New Eng­land and east­ern Cana­da fled their homes to escape dan­ger. Or so the leg­end goes. With Orson Welles read­ing the part of an astro­naut and pro­fes­sor, the Mer­cury The­atre on the Air’s broad­cast of War of the Worlds hit a frayed nerve in the Amer­i­can pub­lic.

The show aired dur­ing the tense years lead­ing up to World War II, when fas­cism was on the rise in Europe. Many took the “news” of an alien inva­sion for truth.  It would have been easy to be fooled: the sto­ry, adapt­ed from H.G. Wells’ ear­ly sci-fi nov­el, was writ­ten as a sim­u­lat­ed news broad­cast. It opened with an intro­duc­tion from the nov­el and a note that the adap­ta­tion was set a year ahead (1939). For those who missed that dis­claimer, the remain­der of the show was unset­tling to say the least.

A reporter read a weath­er report. Then came dance music played by a fic­ti­tious band (“Ramon Raque­l­lo and his Orches­tra”) that was inter­rupt­ed by news of bizarre explo­sions on the sur­face of Mars. Soon Orson Welles made his appear­ance, inter­viewed as an expert who denied the pos­si­bil­i­ty of any life on the red plan­et. But then came the news of a cylin­dri­cal mete­orite land­ing in north­ern New Jer­sey. A crowd gath­ered and a “reporter” came on the scene to watch the cylin­der unscrew itself and reveal a rock­et­ship inside.

Chaos ensued, fol­lowed by a Mar­t­ian inva­sion of New York City, where peo­ple ran into the East Riv­er “like rats.”

Welles offered anoth­er dis­claimer at the end of the sto­ry (when the aliens suc­cumbed to Earth’s pathogens) to remind lis­ten­ers that the broad­cast was fic­tion.

Too lit­tle, too late? Or just great the­ater?

The next day, Welles held a bril­liant news con­fer­ence where he apol­o­gized for putting a fright into lis­ten­ers. (It’s anoth­er great piece of the­ater.) Mean­while the broad­cast estab­lished the Mer­cury The­atre on the Air—already an acclaimed stage pro­duc­tion company—as one of Amer­i­ca’s top-rat­ed radio pro­grams. Until then the show had lan­guished in rel­a­tive obscu­ri­ty. After send­ing thou­sands of peo­ple into a pan­ic, the show earned adver­tis­ing spon­sor­ship from Campbell’s Soup.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Fol­low her on Twit­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orson Welles Meets H.G. Wells in 1940: The Leg­ends Dis­cuss War of the Worlds, Cit­i­zen Kane, and WWII

Aldous Hux­ley Reads Dra­ma­tized Ver­sion of Brave New World

Free: Isaac Asimov’s Epic Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy Dra­ma­tized in Clas­sic Audio

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Free: Listen to 298 Episodes of the Vintage Crime Radio Series, Dragnet

in Radio | October 28th, 2013

dragnet radio

Before it was a film, and before it became a clas­sic tele­vi­sion series, Drag­net start­ed out as a long-run­ning radio show, air­ing from June 3, 1949, to Feb­ru­ary 26, 1957. One of the most influ­en­tial crime dra­ma shows from the 50s, Drag­net was the brain­child of Jack Webb, the actor, direc­tor and screen­writer who played the lead role of Sergeant Joe Fri­day. We best remem­ber Joe Fri­day implor­ing female infor­mants to pro­vide “Just the facts, ma’am.” But, in actu­al fact, he nev­er uttered pre­cise­ly those words. “All we want are the facts” is what he real­ly said. But I digress. Thanks to Archive.org you can now trav­el back to the 50s and lis­ten to 298 episodes of the show, which was known for its real­is­tic depic­tion of police work — the bore­dom, the drudgery, the dan­ger, the occa­sion­al acts of hero­ism, and every­thing in between.

Note: There were 314 episodes in total. And Archive.org does not house the very first episode called “Rob­bery,” which first aired on June 3, 1949. That’s avail­able here.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The War of the Worlds: Orson Welles’ 1938 Radio Dra­ma That Pet­ri­fied a Nation

Ray­mond Chan­dler & Ian Flem­ing in Con­ver­sa­tion (1958)

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Free Noir Films

Free Alfred Hitch­cock Films

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Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon Turned Into a Radio Play

in Music, Radio | August 28th, 2013

We told you all about it last Fri­day. The BBC planned to air a radio play writ­ten by Sir Tom Stop­pard based on The Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floy­d’s clas­sic album released 40 years ago. The play aired Mon­day night, and if you missed it, you have a few scant days to stream the pro­duc­tion for free online. Don’t dil­ly-dal­ly. You can start lis­ten­ing to Dark­side now and be sure not to miss the trip­py ani­mat­ed visu­als that accom­pa­ny the audio. It’s also avail­able on Spo­ti­fy for free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Brave New World for Free: Dra­ma­tized Ver­sion Read by Aldous Hux­ley

Isaac Asimov’s Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sic, The Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy, Dra­ma­tized for Radio (1973)

A Radio Play Based on Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. Com­ing Mon­day. Watch the Trail­er

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New Archive Makes Available 800,000 Pages Documenting the History of Film, Television & Radio

in Archives, Film, History, Internet Archive, Media, Radio, Television | August 27th, 2013

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Click images for larg­er ver­sions

Film buffs and schol­ars have a new cache at their fin­ger­tips. The Media His­to­ry Dig­i­tal Library has made hun­dreds of thou­sands of pages of film and broad­cast­ing his­to­ry avail­able in a search­able dig­i­tal archive they’ve called Lantern, an open access, inter­ac­tive library.

With help from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin, Madi­son Depart­ment of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Arts, MHDL made their entire col­lec­tion of Busi­ness Screen, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, Pho­to­play and Vari­ety—among oth­er magazines—available for text search­es for the first time.

In 2011 a group of film schol­ars devel­oped MHDL, an updat­ed resource for his­to­ri­ans used to read­ing through micro­film archives of cin­e­ma and broad­cast jour­nals. At the time, their archive was a gold­mine, pulling togeth­er the boun­ty of print­ed mate­r­i­al chron­i­cling the film indus­try. Now they’ve made it bet­ter, with more refined search, fil­ter­ing and sort­ing tools. Plus you can down­load images and texts.

It may have been a rite of pas­sage for film stu­dents to sequester them­selves in a dark library car­rel and scroll through micro­fiche reels of Mov­ing Pic­ture World, an influ­en­tial trade jour­nal until 1927, but Lantern brings ven­er­a­ble movie mag­a­zines dat­ing up to the ear­ly ’70s into the light of day where any­one can access the images and arti­cles of major trade and fan mag­a­zines, free of charge.

An ear­ly on-set chat rag, Film Fun, a mag­a­zine about “the hap­py side of the movies,” brought read­ers “inti­mate gos­sip of the pro­fes­sion told by the actors and actress­es ‘between the reels.’” The images are gor­geous.

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In the twen­ties a new ama­teur movie mak­ing indus­try thrived, with equip­ment and even tour pack­ages avail­able for buffs who want­ed to tour exot­ic locales like Cuba with cam­eras and learn to shoot and pre­serve 16 mm motion pic­tures. A boom in DIY film mag­a­zines like Ama­teur Movie Mak­ers tar­get­ed the ear­ly adopters.

amateurmoviemake12amat_0048

And lest we think that pulp celebri­ty mags like Peo­ple and Us are low­er brow than those of yes­ter­year, we should think again. I’m not sure about you, but I’m not sure four-times-mar­ried Bette Davis makes the best love advice colum­nist. But appar­ent­ly Pho­to­play mag­a­zine did.

photoplay122phot_0588

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Three Great Films Star­ring Char­lie Chap­lin, the True Icon of Silent Com­e­dy

How Brew­ster Kahle and the Inter­net Archive Will Pre­serve the Infi­nite Infor­ma­tion on the Web

Kate Rix writes about edu­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media. Vis­it her web­site and fol­low her on Twit­ter.

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A Radio Play Based on Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. Coming Monday. Watch the Trailer.

in Music, Radio | August 24th, 2013

This year, Pink Floy­d’s mas­ter­ful prog rock album The Dark Side of the Moon turns 40. Yes, 40. Explor­ing themes rang­ing from con­flict and greed, to men­tal ill­ness and the pass­ing of time, The Dark Side of the Moon has “every­thing you’d ever want … : Grand, trans­port­ing melodies, synapse-rip­ping synth exper­i­ments and sound col­lages, intri­cate musi­cian­ship, state-of-the-art stu­dio sound and John Lennon-meets-Thom Yorke lyrics like ‘The lunatic is on the grass/Remembering games and daisy chains and laughs/Got to keep the loonies on the path.’ ” Or, so that’s how Rolling Stone mag­a­zine sums up the album that it now ranks 43rd on its list of “The 500 Great­est Albums of All Time.”

Next Mon­day, BBC Radio 2 will hon­or Pink Floy­d’s mag­num opus with a new radio dra­ma from leg­endary play­wright Sir Tom Stop­pard. Appar­ent­ly Stop­pard (who co-wrote the screen­plays for Brazil and Shake­speare in Love) first con­sid­ered writ­ing a play based on the album back in 1973. Now, some 40 years lat­er, he has “trans­formed the Pink Floyd clas­sic into a psy­che­del­ic mash-up of Kant­ian phi­los­o­phy, epic rock and John Prescott sound­bites,” writes The Inde­pen­dent. To get you ready for Dark­side, as the play will be called, Aard­man Ani­ma­tions has cre­at­ed a three-minute trail­er that evokes themes from the album and play. Says the direc­tor Dar­ren Dubic­ki:

I spent time absorb­ing the rich detail from the Pink Floyd album, their art and the dra­ma script. What was fun­da­men­tal­ly impor­tant to us was that we retained a con­sis­tent visu­al tone that echoed the imagery cre­at­ed over the years for the band. The insane­ly sur­re­al and pow­er­ful art­work cre­at­ed by Storm Thorg­er­son and Hipg­no­sis has always had a strong dis­tor­tion on real­i­ty. Their sense of space and twist­ed con­text make for some uncom­fort­ably beau­ti­ful art. This tone has been con­sis­tent for decades and we want­ed to hon­our this with our con­tem­po­rary dig­i­tal, and ana­logue, slant on the style.

You can watch the trail­er above, and find some won­der­ful Pink Floyd mate­r­i­al in the sec­tion below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

Watch Pink Floyd Plays Live in the Ruins of Pom­peii (1972)

Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters Per­forms The Wall at the Berlin Wall (1990)

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The Relativity Series Features 24 Free Plays About Great Scientists and Scientific Endeavors

in Radio, Science | July 4th, 2013

RelativitySeries

I grew up lis­ten­ing to radio plays, keep­ing in high rota­tion vin­tage broad­casts of shows like Sus­pense, Amos ‘n Andy, and Drag­net. These stoked in me a fas­ci­na­tion with the medi­um of radio, and they also taught me a thing or two about life in ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca — most­ly lessons, by way of the com­mer­cials, about its var­i­ous con­sumer prod­ucts (usu­al­ly soaps). With the mod­ern inter­net, kids today can not only lis­ten to their fill of old-time radio pro­grams essen­tial­ly with­out effort — no boot­leg cas­sette tapes for them, like I had to use — but eas­i­ly find new­er, more inno­v­a­tive, and I dare­say more inter­est­ing audio pro­duc­tions as well. Case in point: the Los Ange­les The­atre Works’ Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Series, offer­ing sci­ence-themed plays you can lis­ten to free online, fea­tur­ing per­for­mances by well-known actors like Alfred Moli­na, Jason Rit­ter, and Ed Asner.

But don’t mis­take any of the Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Series’ 24 cur­rent­ly avail­able pro­duc­tions as straight­for­ward­ly “edu­ca­tion­al.” Know­ing that no lis­ten­er, man, woman, or child, wants a sim­ple physics or biol­o­gy les­son tart­ed up with a thin scrim of dra­ma, the pro­duc­ers have instead record­ed new ver­sions of full-fledged works for the stage that hap­pen to have sci­en­tif­ic themes or involve events and play­ers from the his­to­ry of sci­ence. How it delight­ed me to find, for instance, Tom Stop­pard’s Arca­dia in the Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Series. Stop­pard, per­haps the most intel­lec­tu­al­ly omniv­o­rous writer alive, became a fas­ci­na­tion of mine around the same time I delved into old-time radio, and Arca­dia remains the finest play deal­ing with chaos the­o­ry to take place on an Eng­lish coun­try estate in two cen­turies at once. Oth­er pro­duc­tions deal with the lives of sci­en­tists like Alan Tur­ing and Richard Feyn­man as well as events like the Scopes Mon­key Tri­al and the devel­op­ment of the atom­ic bomb. Above, you can lis­ten to a unique per­for­mance where mem­bers of the Star Trek cast recre­ate Orson Welles’ dra­mat­ic 1938 “War of the Worlds” broad­cast.

You can access all 24 plays in the Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Series here.

via Metafliter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orson Welles Vin­tage Radio: The War of the Worlds That Pet­ri­fied a Nation

Wern­er Her­zog and Cor­mac McCarthy Talk Sci­ence and Cul­ture

Ira Glass on the Art and Craft of Telling Great Radio Sto­ries

Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk Radio Show Pod­cast Tack­les the His­to­ry of Video Games

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Louis Armstrong’s 1964 Interview with a Pair of Intrepid Kid Reporters

in Animation, Music, Radio | June 26th, 2013

In the sum­mer of 1964, two young boys from the North Shore sub­urbs of Chica­go took a tape recorder and set out to inter­view jazz leg­end Louis Arm­strong for their high school radio sta­tion. Arm­strong was play­ing a con­cert at the Ravinia Fes­ti­val in High­land Park, not far from the boys’ school in Win­net­ka. He agreed to an inter­view, and as a group of pro­fes­sion­al reporters from the city’s major news out­lets wait­ed impa­tient­ly out­side his dress­ing room door, Arm­strong spent 20 min­utes answer­ing ques­tions for a lit­tle 10-watt FM radio sta­tion.

The sto­ry is told above, in the lat­est install­ment of PBS’s ongo­ing ani­ma­tion project with Blank on Blank, a group that brings unheard inter­views back to life. Michael Ais­ner, who was 15 when he met Arm­strong, and his friend James R. Stein, who was 14, recount their adven­ture and play a few high­lights from the inter­view. Arm­strong explains how he got the nick­name “Satch­mo” and talks a lit­tle about his Dick­en­sian child­hood and how he learned to play the coro­net in the Home for Col­ored Waifs in New Orleans. He talks about the need for prac­tic­ing hard every day, and about the tal­ent that was his tick­et out of the slums. “You’ve got to be good,” Arm­strong says, “or bad as the dev­il.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Louis Arm­strong and His All Stars Live in Bel­gium, 1959

Watch the Ear­li­est Known Footage of Louis Arm­strong Per­form­ing Live in Con­cert (Copen­hagen, 1933)

Muham­mad Ali Plans to Fight on Mars in Lost 1966 Inter­view with Child Reporter

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Bertrand Russell: The First Media Academic?: A Retrospective of His Influential Radio Appearances

in Philosophy, Radio | June 14th, 2013

Bertrand Rus­sell was one of the most impor­tant logi­cians and math­e­mat­i­cal philoso­phers of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry. He was also a tire­less cam­paign­er for peace and social progress. Born into an aris­to­crat­ic British fam­i­ly, Rus­sell believed that the social and polit­i­cal ills of the world could be less­ened if peo­ple of all social class­es had a bet­ter grasp of knowl­edge and crit­i­cal rea­son­ing. To this end, he devot­ed a great deal of his time to writ­ing pop­u­lar books on moral and intel­lec­tu­al mat­ters. He was also a reg­u­lar pres­ence on BBC radio dur­ing the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

Most of Rus­sel­l’s sur­viv­ing radio pro­grams have been locked away in the archives for all these years. But in Jan­u­ary of 2012, pro­duc­ers at BBC Radio 4 assem­bled some inter­est­ing excerpts from the philoso­pher’s many radio appear­ances for a ret­ro­spec­tive. Bertrand Rus­sell: The First Media Aca­d­e­m­ic? (above, in its entire­ty) is a fas­ci­nat­ing overview of Rus­sel­l’s life as a pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al. Host­ed by come­di­an and writer Robin Ince, the pro­gram includes com­men­tary from two of Britain’s cur­rent crop of media aca­d­e­mics: physi­cist and for­mer pop musi­cian Bri­an Cox and math­e­mati­cian Mar­cus du Sautoy, who cur­rent­ly holds Richard Dawkin­s’s old seat as the Simonyi Pro­fes­sor for the Pub­lic Under­stand­ing of Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford. There are excerpts from vin­tage inter­views with peo­ple who knew Rus­sell, includ­ing his son Con­rad and his sec­ond wife, Dora Black Rus­sell. But the best con­tri­bu­tions are from the philoso­pher him­self. Even the most devot­ed fan of Rus­sell will find some­thing new and inter­est­ing to lis­ten to in this excel­lent assem­blage of rare audio clips.

Note: You can down­load a fine­ly-pol­ished record­ing of Bertrand Rus­sell: The First Media Aca­d­e­m­ic? from Audible.com. And you could always get it for free by tak­ing advan­tage of Audi­ble’s 30-day Free Tri­al. Find details on that here. When­ev­er a read­er signs up for a free tri­al with Audi­ble, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bertrand Rus­sell in Bol­ly­wood: The Old Philosopher’s Improb­a­ble Appear­ance in a Hin­di Film, 1967

Lis­ten to ‘Why I Am Not a Chris­t­ian,’ Bertrand Russell’s Pow­er­ful Cri­tique of Reli­gion (1927)

Bertrand Russell’s Ten Com­mand­ments for Liv­ing in a Healthy Democ­ra­cy

Bertrand Rus­sell on His Stu­dent Lud­wig Wittgen­stein: Man of Genius or Mere­ly an Eccen­tric?

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