The War of the Worlds Murder - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,61
the cylinder....”
Howard Koch had slipped out perhaps ten minutes ago. Readick could hardly blame the writer—the poor guy was bone tired, and had been worked like a dog by Welles and Jack Houseman. Let the guy rest up—tomorrow would be the start of another week of radio “war.”
Still, this was going well, very well indeed.
Yes, once again, Orson had worked his magic....
From Trenton Police Headquarters report, October 30, 1938: “Between 8:20 P.M. & 10 P.M. received numerous phone calls as a result of WABC broadcast this evening re: Mars attacking this country. Calls included papers, police depts including NYC and private persons. No record kept of same due to working teletype and all three extensions ringing at the same time. At least 50 calls were answered. Persons inquiring as to meteors, number of persons killed, gas attack, military being called out and fires. All were advised nothing unusual had occurred and that rumors were due to a radio dramatization of a play.
“We have received a request from the state militia at Trenton to place at their disposal our entire broadcasting facilities. In view of the gravity of the situation, and believing that radio has a responsibility to serve in the public interest at all times, we are turning over our facilities to the state militia at Trenton.”
In a residential section of Trenton, a Mrs. Thomas went to answer a banging at her door to find her neighbor friend from across the way with her car packed with belongings and her seven children.
“For God’s sake, Gladys, come on!” the neighbor shouted. “We have to get out of here!”
Elsewhere in Trenton, thirteen-year-old Henry Sears, doing his homework, heard the news flashes about the invasion and went downstairs into the tavern owned by his parents. He and a dozen patrons of the bar listened to the broadcast with growing fear and, finally, a well-lubricated contingent proclaimed they were getting their guns and going to Grovers Mill, to find the Martians.
Indeed, as panic spread to pockets of the country, Trenton and its environs were the hardest hit, many residents believing the arrival of the interplanetary invaders imminent. Gas masks from the Great War were dug out of mothballs, while some wrapped their heads with wet towels, to fight the inevitable poison gas. The highways were jammed as cars streamed toward New York or Philadelphia, in hopes of staying one step ahead of the Martian forces.
The Mienerts of Manasquan Park, New Jersey—barrelling down the highway, kids, dog and canary making the trip with them—took a break for fuel and nature at a gas station; the pause also provided an opportunity to get the latest news (their car radio was on the fritz). Other motorists, who hadn’t heard the broadcast, reacted as if the Mienerts were mad people; so did the gas station attendant and cashier.
A desperate Mr. Mienert, hoping for an update, called his cousin in Freehold, New Jersey, praying to get an answer, as the cousin’s farm was directly in the destructive path of the invaders.
But his cousin, right there on the front lines, answered cheerfully.
Confused, Mr. Mienert asked, “Are the Martians there?”
“No,” said his cousin, “but the Tuttles are, and we’re about to sit down to dinner.”
The Mienerts went back home.
“This is Captain Lansing of the Signal Corps, attached to the state militia, now engaged in military operations in the vicinity of Grovers Mill. Situation arising from the reported presence of certain individuals of unidentified nature is now under complete control. The cylindrical object which lies in a pit directly below our position is surrounded on all sides by eight battalions of infantry. Without heavy field pieces, but adequately armed with rifles and machine guns. All cause for alarm, if such cause ever existed, is now entirely unjustified.”
In Manhattan on East 116th Street, a restaurant hosted the wedding reception of Rocco and Connie Cassamassina. No one was listening to the radio in this happily preoccupied private dining room; in fact, almost everyone was dancing to the five-piece band, spiffy in maroon-and-gray tuxes, playing romantic tunes of the day.
The bride and groom were not dancing right now, because Rocco—a singing waiter from Brooklyn—was sitting in with the band, doing a romantic version of “I Married an Angel” just for Connie.
The last verse was wrapping up when some agitated late-comers wandered in and one of them—stone sober, it would later be recalled—snatched the mike away from Rocco and said, “We’re under attack! We’re being invaded!”
The five-piece group stopped playing, in one-at-a-time train-wreck fashion, and the