The War of the Worlds, 1938 and 1953

(Don’t forget to scroll down to the bottom of the page and turn off the music so you can hear the video.)

“The War of the Worlds” (1953) is fondly recalled by many sci-fi fans as a classic. The special effects of the day are intriguing, and especially interesting is a look at the famed Northrup Flying Wing, which did not survive the imaginative era in which it was designed and manufactured. Imagination is the root of science fiction, unfettered, freewheeling imagination. For this reason, the movie “The War of the Worlds” for me, pales in comparison to the radio version.

With the Halloween season in full force (despite the Christmas items the stores are already foisting on us), some movie buffs have favorite scary movies they like to watch on Halloween. My tradition is to pull out Orson Welles’ “Mercury Theater” radio recording of his very special version of “The War of the Worlds.”

Probably most of us know by now the story had its origins in the H.G. Wells novel published in the 1890s. The famous radio broadcast of October 30, 1938 is often called the “Martian Hoax” broadcast that caused a panic, but it was never a hoax. It was excellent drama, using the new medium of radio at its most imaginative.

I’ve written more extensively about this broadcast here, but the upshot is, the Orson Welles version took the novel and turned it into first-person experience (at least the first half of the show. The second half returns to traditional narrative storytelling). It was drama as intimate as good stagecraft, but the unique properties of radio gave it a reality it would not have had on film or on stage.

From the start, there were the standard announcements inviting listeners to stay tuned for “The War of Worlds”, and several normal commercial breaks. The panic came from people who didn’t listen to the “Mercury Theater” on CBS. They were listening to the "Chase and Sanborn Hour" with Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy over on NBC. When the first commercial came on, they channel surfed over to CBS. By then, the “The War of Worlds” program had already started, with screaming announcers describing what sounded like the end of the world.

One can’t entirely blame Mr. Welles for the channel surfers’ assumptions, nor can the channel surfers be ridiculed for their panic. These were the good old days of the Munich Pact Crisis when madmen were carving up Europe and we had constant bulletins about it on the radio. These were the good old days when one of the worse hurricanes that ever hit the US, hit where it wasn’t supposed to…New England, and killed nearly 700 people who had not the faintest clue it was coming. (More on the Hurricane of 1938 on my New England Travels blog: part 1, part 2, and part 3). Let’s just say, it had been a bad five or six weeks. And then October 30th, and Orson Welles goes, “Boo!”

Below, here is a newsreel featuring Orson Welles “day after” apology.



The movie “The War of the Worlds” was made in a different era, a bit more sophisticated (as the film points out, we had developed the atom bomb in the meantime), but this film still reeks of a warm innocence.

Instead of Grover’s Mill, New Jersey, as in the radio version, the beleaguered community is in California. Except for cameos by the Orson Welles’ script characters of Professor Pearson and reporter Carl Phillips, all the others are new characters.

Gene Barry plays a scientist on vacation near the town where the Martians land. Ann Robinson is a young teacher who at first hero-worships him because of his reputation in his field, and then spends the rest of the movie either in his arms being comforted or just plain running away from the Martians. They bond quickly.

We are shown a lot of good-natured yokel types who investigate the site of what they think is a meteor, and then some of them are evaporated by heat rays from the Martians. The yokels cheerfully hollered, “Welcome to California” moments before, wanting to make peace. These may be square-dancing type folk, but they’ve been around. They know that Martians visit occasionally, “Happens every 18 or 20 years, they say.” Best to stay on their good side.

Before long, the military gets involved trying to stop the invasion. Gene Barry spends a good deal of time at first looking bored and slightly amused by everything, until he’s running for his life. Ann Robinson’s uncle, the Pastor, played by Lewis Martin approaches the Martian capsule reciting the 23rd Psalm (King James Version), but they blast him anyway.

Interestingly, he explains his desire to get closer to them because he considers them “nearer the Creator” because they are a more highly advanced species. One wonders if this sounded at all blasphemous to the more conservative audiences then, but it’s a remarkable take on aliens from outer space.

We get rocket launchers and bazookas, tanks, and that spectacular Flying Wing, but the creatures are immune to shellfire. They are not, however, immune to germs, and so we all know how it ends for our Martian guests.

Just as Orson Welles’ version was set in his time and reflected it by use of the radio, just as author H.G. Wells’ original story reflected London of the 1890s, so too, this film gives us a glimpse of the early 1950s, our innocence and our sophistication, our atom bomb and our Martian eye that is “an electric eye like a television camera.”

Paul Frees, whose voice you may remember from zillions of cartoons, is a radio reporter on the spot for the dropping of the atom bomb on the Martians. He speaks into a reel-to-reel tape recorder strapped to his hip. If you think that’s corny, take a look at the spectators hiding behind clumps of dirt to avoid the bomb blast and radioactive fallout.

We are in the Cold War, and we snuggle up to the A-bomb to protect us from the strangers. Better the devil you know.

It is also the era where the first UFO sightings were reported. 

One of the fun things about this film is the cars. There are, of course, traffic jams on the new freeways, and all through this movie we get a good look at many cars from the era. It’s a classic car buff’s dream.

Also look for cameos by Ned Glass as a looter, and Alvy Moore as a yokel, who we last saw in a larger role in “5 Against the House” (1955) here.

Especially good are the scenes of Gene Barry stumbling through empty city streets, littered with trash and debris, while the battle rages just outside of town. His isolation may give us more discomfort than the death rays, because isolation is real.

It is a very imaginative film, as good science fiction must be, but when you compare the radio version and the film version of this story, you see that the film must bring to life the imagination of the writers and director, and artistic director, and cinematographer. Your imagination doesn’t come into it. And that’s the thing about good science fiction. It needs you to make it real.

Turn out the lights and listen to the CBS Mercury Theater production of “The War of the Worlds.” It’s October 30, 1938. Let your mind, and your imagination, run wild.



And if you see a hideous Martian somewhere in the dark, just cough on him. Spread those germs.

(If the above radio link doesn't work, download the program free to your computer from Internet Archive.

Ruth Roman, Betsy Drake, and the SS Andrea Doria

Newspaper article from “The Boston Daily Globe” July 26, 1956, page 1.

In July 1956, the ocean liner SS Andrea Doria sank on the last night of its transatlantic voyage from Italy to New York City when another ocean liner, the MS Stockholm, collided with her.

It seems a watershed moment, almost as if morosely heralding the end of the leisurely elegance of ship travel (the first jet was to cross the Atlantic two years later), and the beginning of instant news as still photographers from  Life  magazine and others, newsreel cameramen, and reporters scrambled to the site to watch the vessel sink. Topping any newspaper “extras”, the film was developed and shown on television, a first.

Along with scores of immigrants making that journey, were the well-to-do and well-traveled, and two who made that fateful trip represented Hollywood. They were actresses Ruth Roman, (last seen here in our discussion of “Invitation” - 1951) and Betsy Drake. Their experiences on the last voyage of the Andrea Doria, along with the harrowing tales of many others, are told in Richard Goldstein’s fine book “Desperate Hours - The Epic Rescue of the Andrea Doria” (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., NY, 2003), from which much of the following information is taken.

Betsy Drake, and husband Cary Grant, had traveled on the Andrea Doria before, and other stars, as captured in the documentary “Secrets of the Dead - The Sinking of the Andrea Doria” (PBS 2006), include Kim Novak, Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, Spencer Tracy, Joan Crawford, and Tyrone Power.

Hollywood has given us a glimpse of the ship, inadvertently, in the final moments of “On the Waterfront” (1954) when Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint are standing atop his apartment building. The ocean liner moving down the Hudson is the Andrea Doria, two years before the tragedy.

Her last voyage was to be a nine-day journey from Genoa, Italy to New York City in this era where travel was leisurely. Ocean liners had individual designs and décor (unlike planes which were stamped out pretty much one like another). Meals were extraordinary, and passengers dressed for dinner.

There were three classes on the Andrea Doria, 1st class, cabin class, and tourist class, each with its own gym, library, bar, dancing, movies, and swimming pools. The sumptuous ship was itself like an art museum with paintings and sculptures in airy solons with modern furniture, making it a most glamorous ship.

Ruth Roman, whose film “The Bottom of the Bottle” was released a few months previously, traveled with her three-year old son, Richard, called Dickie, as well as a traveling companion, Janet Stewart, and her son’s nanny.

Betsy Drake joined the voyage at Gibraltar, where she left her husband Cary Grant making a movie in Spain and pursuing Sophia Loren, much to his wife’s distress.

The trip enjoyed clear weather, and a peaceful crossing until its final night, when it entered the notoriously fog-bound waters south of Nantucket off New England. There were the usual last night farewell festivities, with champagne and streamers, and a roast beef dinner, and “Arrivederci Roma” played by Dino Massa and Orchestra.

Many cut the evening short to head back to their cabins and get some sleep before the early morning docking in New York. Betsy Drake did, never being much for socializing, and preferring to climb into her bunk in her cabin to read.

Ruth Roman and companion Janet Stewart enjoyed a last drink in the Belvedere Observation Lounge, while her son slept in the cabin a lower deck with his nanny minding him.

Some people watched the movie “Foxfire” (1955) with Jeff Chandler and Jane Russell.

A little after 11 o’clock that night, the MS Stockholm, leaving New York for Sweden, accidentally rammed the Andrea Doria. To some passengers it seemed like a dull thud, to others a great jolt, depending on where they were on ship, and then the screeching sound of ripping metal. Ultimately, 46 people on this ship, and 5 on the Stockholm, died.

Betsy Drake’s cabin on the Boat Deck shook, and she immediately put her stylish suit back on, grabbed a life vest, and headed for the upper deck. Her jewels, and a semi-autobiographic novel on which she’d been working, went down with the ship.

Ruth Roman ran from the lounge to get to her son, and ripped her form-fitting dress up the back so she could move better on the stairs that were already at a treacherous angle due to the listing of the ship on its side. She took son, and nanny, and life vests, and ditched her high heels to manage the climb to the upper deck.

Distress signals went out. First on the scene were a commercial freighter, Naval ships, and another grand ocean liner, the Ile de France.

The Ile de France had left New York City that morning and was heading to England, but turned around at the Morse Code distress call. 

The Doria was taking on water and ominously threatening to roll over. There were plenty of lifeboats on the Andrea Doria, a lesson well-learned from the Titanic disaster, but an unexpected problem arose. Because of the lurch of the ship onto its side, half the lifeboats could not be launched, and were useless.

Fortunately the Stockholm, though it had sustained severe damage to its bow, was in no danger of sinking. Several of its lifeboats were sent to fetch passengers from the Andrea Doria.

Ruth Roman found a deflated balloon left over from the party. She blew it up and amused her little boy with it, plunking him in a barricade of life vests and blankets on the deck, telling him they were having a picnic. Around them, scenes of chaos, courtesy, panic, selfishness, and selflessness.

The ship creaked, and slipped some more. About 2 a.m., Miss Roman and her gang slid down from the higher end of the deck to the lower side where they hoped to catch a rope to a lifeboat below. A young cadet sailor from the Andrea Doria took her son and strapped himself to Dickie, and climbed down a rope ladder to a waiting lifeboat.

The boat pulled away before Ruth Roman could climb in. The boy disappeared in the fog with a group of strangers. She, and nanny, and companion, waited for another opportunity to escape.

By 2 a.m., three hours after the collision, there were still around 1,000 people left on board the Andrea Doria awaiting rescue, the two Hollywood stars among them. No more division into classes; it was egalitarianism at its most miserable. Betsy Drake clung to the high side of the ship, took off her shoes for traction, and waited.

About that time the Ile de France approached. With sensitivity mixed with perhaps a certain Gallic élan, the captain ordered all the festive lights on the ship turned on so that the Doria survivors would see that help was coming. Among its strings of lights, there was the name lit up between its two funnels in great block letters: ILE DE FRANCE suddenly piercing the black gloom. More than reassuring, it seemed like something miraculous, a finale scene out of a movie.

Ruth Roman was taken in a lifeboat to the Ile de France. Her little boy was not here, and she could not find out to which ship among the seven rescue ships he had been taken.

Betsy Drake was also taken to the Ile de France. She had previously sailed on this ship under happier circumstances. (She had met Cary Grant when they sailed together on the RMS Queen Mary.) So many survivors were trying to send cables from the ship to loved ones, that she was unable to send one to Cary Grant.

Newspaper article from “The Boston Daily Globe” July 26, 1956, page 1.

Many of the passengers on the Ile de France donated clothing to the Doria survivors. A tennis professional named Eddie Hand gave Ruth Roman a pair of trousers, a white polo shirt, and woolen socks. A Life photographer who happened to be traveling with his family, brought her to rest in his cabin.

The Ile de France managed to scoop up 753 of the Andrea Doria’s passengers. When she entered New York Harbor, other boats blew whistles in tribute, and cheers rose up from the crowds gathering at the piers. Just after 5 p.m. on the 26th, she docked at Pier 88 off West 48th Street.

Betsy Drake, met at the pier by a friend, was still wearing her suit but also a pair of white sweat socks a sailor had given her. Many of the survivors had no shoes. Many of the immigrants had nothing left but the donated clothes on their backs.

Ruth Roman finally learned that her son had been taken to the MS Stockholm, which initially had trouble leaving the scene of the collision because its anchor chains had become tangled. It was still at sea when she arrived at the pier with the other Ile de France passengers.

Late the next morning, on the 27th, Miss Roman finally reunited with her son, as the Stockholm entered the Harbor. Now that the media had come of age, or at least catching on to its exploitive possibilities in the reporting of instant news, the moment she picked her child up and hustled through a mob of reporters and cameramen was captured with all its excitement and cruel lack of privacy.

Article from "The New York Times", July 26, 1956, p. 1

For both Hollywood stars, their connection to the sinking of the SS Andrea Doria would become a footnote of trivia, though Betsy Drake was reportedly traumatized by the incident for months. She ultimately left acting, and her husband, for a career in psychotherapy, particularly in the treatment of children and adolescents.

The most remarkable aspect of the sinking of the Andrea Doria is that so many were saved due to an impromptu, but terrifically successful rescue operation. For more on the event, stop by at my New England Travels blog tomorrow.

For Mr. Goldstein’s excellent book, including an excerpt describing the arrival on scene of the Ile de France, have a look here at his website.