“Forgotten Hollywood”- Halloween’s Finest Hour of Chills…
Manny P. here…
The Workshop Theatre is proud to be Calgary’s longest running community theatre (since 1969). They are pleased to announce The War of the Worlds, which opens on October 29th. It’s the 75th anniversary of the Mercury Theatre broadcast.
Shortly after 8p on Halloween Eve, 1938, the voice of a panicked radio announcer broke in with a news bulletin reporting strange explosions taking place on Mars; followed minutes later by a report Martians had landed in the tiny hamlet of Grovers Mill, New Jersey. Although most listeners understood the program was a radio drama, the next day’s headlines reported that thousands of others plunged into panic, convinced America was under a deadly Martian attack. It was an episode from the drama anthology series – Mercury Theatre on the Air. Aired over the CBS radio network, and directed and narrated by Orson Welles, it was adaptated from H.G. Wells’s novel, War of the Worlds (1898).
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) investigated the radio show, but found no laws were broken. Networks agreed to be more cautious in their future programming. The actor feared the controversy generated by The War of the Worlds would ruin his career. However, the publicity helped land him a contract with a Hollywood studio. By 1941, Welles directed, produced, wrote, and starred in the iconic Citizen Kane. In 2003, the Mercury Theatre broadcast of The War of the Worlds was added to the National Recording Registry of Library of Congress. ORSON WELLES
The War of the Worlds is brought to life at the Pumphouse Theatres (10/29 – 11/02) in the Joyce Doolittle Theatre at 2140 Pumphouse Ave. SW. Shows start at 7:30 pm.
Western Canada… Prepare to be frightened… ay!
Until next time> “never forget”
This entry was posted on Monday, October 21st, 2013 at 1:30 am and is filed under Blog by Manny Pacheco. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
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