Orson Welles The War of the Worlds Vinyl LP Nostalgia Lane NLR 1029. Collectible

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Orson Welles The War of the Worlds Vinyl LP Nostalgia Lane NLR 1029. Collectable.

Condition is Ex+ for the record itself, sleeve, and label. Plays beautifully.

Packed carefully and shipped with USPS Media Mail.

From the back cover:

It was Sunday, October 30, 1938, and, in what had become the great American family pastime, millions of Americans had gathered around their radios to share an evening's entertainment. On CBS, the young Orson Welles and his Mercury players stepped before the microphones to broadcast Howard Koch's adaptation of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds.

What followed became the single most famous broadcast in the history of radio. The dramatization of a Martian invasion in the little New Jersey town of Grovers Mill was so terrifyingly realistic that the audience reaction was a phenomenon in itself.

In New York, switchboards at both CBS and NBC were swamped. All of the city's major newspapers were deluged with inquiries. Police lines were jammed. Terrified callers reported seeing the rampaging Martian war machines. In many neighborhoods, residents took to the streets with wet towels wrapped around their heads for protection against the Martian rays. Others loaded their cars and drove in a direction "away" from the Martian menace.

Thousands of people tried frantically to reach loved ones. In the Southwestern United States, telephone lines were overloaded for thirty minutes with calls from the East. And in New Jersey, the state where the "invaders" first struck, the telephone company later confirmed that every central office in the state was flooded with calls for more than an hour.

Farmers near Grovers Mill, eager for an encounter with enemy Martians, patrolled the countryside with rifles. Reports of fires ignited by the deadly Martian rays kept local fire departments scrambling throughout the night. In Newark, hundreds of doctors and nurses called hospitals to volunteer their services in treatment of the injured.

The panic, although the strongest in the Northeast, was felt in all parts of the country. In the unfortunate town of Concrete, Washington, a local power failure caused a blackout just at that point in the broadcast when the Martians were said to have taken control of the country's power system.

Throughout the small towns of the Rockies, people ran to the hills to hide-and hid so thoroughly that local sheriffs had to send out search parties for them.

In the South, people sought refuge and consolation in their local churches. Nationwide, the Associated Press received inquiries about meteors from California, Utah, Texas, and Missouri.

In perhaps the evening's closest brush with real tragedy, a Pennsylvania woman was saved from suicide by the timely return home of her husband.

Incredible disturbing. fascinating was the aftermath of a Halloween eve's innocent entertainment. Political commentators warned that it demonstrated the likelihood of widespread panic during a real invasion.

Editors and lawmakers insisted that tighter controls be placed on radio. Academicians tried to explain how listeners could have failed to note the announcement made four times during the broadcast that the program was a dramatization and termed the whole episode a case study in mass hysteria. Angry and embarrassed listeners filed lawsuits totaling in the millions of dollars against CBS and the Mercury Theatre.

Now over forty years after its broadcast, NOSTALGIA LANE presents in its entirety, complete and unedited, the all-time radio classic-The War of the Worlds.

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