Hilary Booth... of course!

Halloween is usually very quiet in my building. The ages seem to skew very young with most residents my age or younger. Most of the children are in the toddler stage. So when I heard the knock on my door last night, I somewhat panicked. I did have some Dove chocolate if all else failed. Instead it was a nice new young couple who'd moved down the hall from me. They'd seen me in building and just wanted to say hello. They had a young child in her mother's hands dressed as a monkey. They didn't ask for treats, though, they gave me them! They made me cookies. I'm all confused now.

I stumbled upon a fascinating article related to old-time radio in the the Fall issue of the National Archives' magazine Prologue, entitled "Jitterbugs" and "Crack-pots": Letters to the FCC about the "War of the Worlds" Broadcast about Orson Welles' infamous "Panic Broadcast" in October 1938.

The magazine article includes actual telegrams and letters held at the Archives. The fairly new FCC received over 600 such missives from listeners with opinions on the broadcast. They also sent over 1000 letters to Columbia Broadcasting and the Mercury Theatre cast. The interesting thing I hadn't realized was how many of those responses were positive, overwhelmingly so. If anything, they were worried that the panic and fuss would hurt future radio programming, stifling potential creativity.

The documents included:

• A telegram from Eddie Cantor urging the FCC not to "garrote radio with excessive censorship".



• A long letter from a South Dakota man who stated "I suppose by this time you have received many letters from numerous cranks and crack-pots who quickly became jitterbugs during the program. I was one of the thousands who heard this window and did not jump out of the window, did not attempt suicide..."



• A twelve year old boy in Rockford, Illinois announced that he enjoyed the program very much, but "I heard about half of it but my mother and sister got frightened and I had to turn it off." Poor kid!

I've always been fascinated with the original Mercury Theatre broadcast, a classic in both radio drama and mob psychology. Reading the letters, I still wonder at why some people reacted with fear and concern and others simply saw it for what it was. Even if they came in mid-way, as many claimed, why didn't they just pick up a newspaper and read the radio listings? Were they so keyed up with potential of war breaking out at any moment? (Are we any different now? I flinch a little these days when I see a "Breaking News" up on the television, like the Martians are about to land at any moment.)

I started an awful story a long time ago with a New Jersey family without their television for one night. They caught a rebroadcast of the original show and fearing the worst. They fleed to their parents who calmly told them about "good old days" of radio. Oddly this was when my OTR listening was limited to the Shadow and Green Hornet.

"So goodbye everybody, and remember the terrible lesson you learned tonight. That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch, and if your doorbell rings and nobody's there, that was no Martian...it's Hallowe'en."