Dead Air The Night That Orson Welles Terrified America

Orson Welles may be best known for his film Citizen Kane, but a much earlier outing in his career led to the opportunity to make such an artistically ambitious undertaking. Hazelgrove charts Welles' rise from a hectic childhood to the anointed genius of stage, radio, and, eventually, film. But it was the night before Halloween in 1938 when Welles' bombastic radioplay rendition of H.G Wells' War of the Worlds, styled as a breaking-news report, caused an uproar. Arriving at a nexus point when Americans began not only to rely on the relatively new invention of radio for entertainment but also as a trusted news source, the radioplay brought many who were listening to the brink of madness, wholly believing that aliens had actually touched down in a New Jersey town. Suicides, car accidents, and general unrest swept the country, and, at show's end, Welles could only wonder if his career (and even freedom) was over too. Hazelgrove's feverishly focused retelling of the broadcast as well as the fallout makes for a propulsive read as a study of both a cultural moment of mass hysteria and the singular voice at its root.