Channeling anti-fascism: Macleish, Welles and the disorienting power of the announcer

Abstract

The verse plays of activist-poet Archibald MacLeish, The Fall of the City and Air Raid, and the sensational Orson Welles broadcast of The War of the Worlds played on and accelerated war jitters among 1930s’ American radio audiences. MacLeish intended a political message, and although Welles did not, his broadcast carried the political freight of the time and exploited simmering anxieties concerning the rise of Fascism. MacLeish’s work garnered praise for his innovations in radio art, and he was acknowledged for his prescient and bold stance on Fascism, while Welles’ notorious broadcast launched his career and continues to be remembered as a landmark in audience manipulation. All three of these works depend on the announcer character and a broadcast-within-a-broadcast, devices innovated by MacLeish for their aural verisimilitude, tapping into audiences’ faith in radio commentators. That credibility only grew after the Munich Crisis, and MacLeish crafted Air Raid to simulate the new sound of spot reporters, infusing the play with realism. This article argues that Welles appropriated MacLeish’s innovation, using the reporters to create an experience so realistic that it destabilized many listeners and tapped into their war fears.

Notes

1. Orrin E. Dunlap, ‘Exploring in Drama’, New York Times, October 30, 1938.

2. Fortune, August, 1939. The study found that the radio was the most trusted news source (50%); newspapers were next, at only 17%.

3. There are several studies of Welles’ work in The War of the Worlds which call attention to his experience with The Fall of the City and certain connections to MacLeish’s Air Raid. These include the chapter on anti-Fascism in Welles’ oeuvre in Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (New York: Verso, 1996). See Robert J. Brown, Manipulating the Ether (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1998) for an analysis of The War of the Worlds as an example of aural deception. See also Neil Verma, Theater of the Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), which explores the esthetics of all three works. Less scholarly, but notable, is Paul Heyer, The Medium and the Magician (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), which shows how Welles’ lifelong preoccupation with magic was most effective on radio.

4. Archibald MacLeish, New York Times, April 4, 1937.

5. Samuel L. Rothafel and Raymond Francis Yates, Broadcasting, Its New Day (New York: The Century Company, 1925), 22.

6. Alfred Norton Goldsmith and Austin C. Lescarboura, This Thing Called Broadcasting; a Simple Tale of an Idea, a Mighty Industry, a Daily Habit and a Basic Influence on Our Civilization (New York: Henry Holt, 1930), 133.

7. MacLeish, New York Times.

8. Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Radio and the Printed Page (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1940), 145; Paul F. Lazarsfeld, The People Look At Radio (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1946), 82.

9. Lazarsfeld, Radio and the Printed Page, 227.

10. Archibald MacLeish, Archibald MacLeish, Reflections, ed. Bernard A. Drabeck and Helen E. Ellis (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1986), 107.

11. Archibald MacLeish, The Fall of the City, a Verse Play for Radio (New York: Farrar & Reinhart, 1937); The Fall of the City, Columbia Workshop, CBS broadcast, April 11, 1937.

12. The creative team included composer Bernard Hermann, who went on to write scores for Citizen Kane and many Hitchcock films including Psycho, Columbia Workshop founder Irving Reis, directors William N. Robson and Earle McGill, as well as actor Burgess Meredith.

13. Erik Barnouw, The Golden Web: A History of Broadcasting in the United States, Vol. II—1933 to 1953 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 67.

14. Robert West, The Rape of Radio (New York: Rodin Press, 1941).

15. Orrin E. Dunlap, ‘The Verse Play: “The Fall of the City” Reveals Possibilities for Theater of the Air’, New York Times, April 18, 1937.

16. Ibid.

17. There was no formal mechanism to collect listener letters or comments concerning individual shows during the 1930s. In addition, there is no access for scholars to the CBS archives to determine what, if anything, was retained regarding Columbia Workshop or its individual programs.

18. Letter from I.J. Alexander dated 7 April 1937. New York Times, April 18, 1937. (The Fall of the City first aired on April 11, 1937.)

19. New York Times, January 2, 1938.

20. H.V. Kaltenborn, I Broadcast the Crisis (New York: Random House, 1938), 9. Kaltenborn, alone went on air 85 times from 12–29 September. There were hundreds of other reports from CBS and other networks.

21. MacLeish, quoted in Dunlap, ‘Exploring in Drama.’

22. MacLeish, Reflections, 121.

23. Ibid., 119.

24. Dunlap, ‘Exploring in Drama’.

25. Testifying to the incestuous nature of radio in the 1930s, the field reporter in Air Raid is played by Ray Collins, a regular member of Welles’ Mercury Theater, who would shortly play supporting roles in The War of the Worlds.

26. Archibald MacLeish, Air Raid, a Verse Play for Radio (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1938); Air Raid, Columbia Workshop, CBS broadcast, October 27, 1938.

27. The Hartford Courant, December 18, 1938. Book review for Air Raid, referring to the broadcast.

28. Time, October 31, 1938.

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid.

31. New York Times, December 24, 1939; John Wheelright, ‘Towards the Recovery of Speech’, Poetry 534 (June 1939): 66.

32. Charles Poore, ‘Archibald MacLeish’s New Book Where the Papers Come Tomorrow,’ Books of the Times. New York Times, December 2, 1938. (Review of the published version of Air Raid. The title of the article refers to a line from the text.)

33. Hadley Cantril, The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1940), 94. Quote from an anxious listener.

34. One scholar, Harry M. Geduld, has examined the script development of Mercury Theater of the Air’s adaptation of The War of the Worlds. Geduld credibly argues that Welles was influenced by his work on The March of Time, which was the leading exponent of the dramatized news genre, presenting imaginary recreations of current events. Since Welles often played fill-in roles on this series, it may well have informed his approach to The War of the Worlds. However, skits on The March of Time were all clearly flanked by wrap-around transitions in newsreel style, stressing the episodic nature of the ‘reports’ and prominently conveying the Time magazine source material. That is, it was actually a news ‘highlights’ program. Less credibly, Geduld overstates Welles’ writing role on The Mercury Theater of the Air and The War of the Worlds, dismissing Howard Koch as the writer, and ignoring Houseman’s description of the process, as well as the evidence of Welles’ schedule. His argument is based on Welles’ later correspondence with Hadley Cantril over the publication of the Princeton Radio Project’s study which included the full script, a battle which Welles lost. Harry M. Geduld, ‘Welles or Welles?—A Matter of Adaptation’, in Perspectives on Orson Welles, ed. Morris Beja (New York: G.K. Hall, 1995), 260–72.

35. Alva Johnson and Fred Smith, ‘How to Raise a Child: the Disturbing Life to Date—of Orson Welles’, The Saturday Evening Post, February 3, 1940.

36. John Martin, ‘Native Cast Gives African “Opera”’, New York Times, May 9, 1934.

37. Koch’s published account is spare and gives few specifics of Welles’ involvement, probably owing to the conflict over writing credit. Consequently, only Houseman’s account provides the details of the crucial Thursday night meeting and Welles’ final directives regarding the script.

38. John Houseman, Unfinished Business: Memoirs: 1902–1988 (New York: Applause Theater Books, 1989), 192; Howard Koch, The Panic Broadcast: Portrait of an Event (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1970), 15–16.

39. Ibid., 192.

40. Geduld and Heyer claim that Welles heard Air Raid. Heyer cites Geduld in his bibliography, which points to the latter as the original claimant. However, Geduld cites no source.

41. Curiously, the show aired on 9 September, three days before the Munich Crisis escalated. Kaltenborn would be on the air so many times during the next eighteen days that he slept in the broadcast studio.

42. By 1938, Welles was well-schooled in announcer-craft. His uncredited stints on the dramatized news series The March of Time and Cavalcade of America regularly exposed him to the professionalized delivery of now-famed announcers like Westbrook Van Voorhis, Ted Husing and Harry von Zell.

43. See Neil Verma for a discussion of creating perspective and aural positioning on radio.

44. Cantril, 82. Fifty percent of those who heard The War of the Worlds tuned in late, an unusually large number.

45. ‘On the Record’, New York Herald Tribune, November 2, 1938.

46. ‘FCC to Scan Script of “War” Broadcast’, New York Times, November 1, 1938.

47. Cantril’s study has been criticized for the limits of its sample, which was concentrated in New Jersey. Nevertheless, the CBS study, which Cantril also references, was nationwide, showed similar results and is the single most detailed source of data about the event.

48. Cantril, 194.

49. Cantril’s book incorporates both the results of the CBS study and the Princeton Radio Project. Both studies attempt to quantify the total number of listeners and the percentage of those who were frightened by the broadcast. Forty-two percent tuned in late and 2/3 of those believed it was a real news broadcast. Of those who listened from the beginning, 20% still believed that the interruptions were real news flashes. Cantril’s study supported those findings, 78–9.

50. Ibid.

51. Ibid., 68–9.

52. Ibid., 54.

53. Ibid., 99–100.

54. Ibid., 209.

55. New York Times, ‘FCC to Scan Script.’

56. This is Orson Welles, Orson Welles with Peter Bogdanovich, Jonathan Rosenbaum, ed. (New York, 1993), 18–20.

57. Denning,The Cultural Front, 382.

58. New York Times, ‘Plan for a New Theater’, August 29, 1937. Quoting Orson Welles and John Houseman.

59. Ibid.

60. Michelle Speitz, ‘Aural Chiaroscuro: The Emergency Radio Broadcast in Orson Welles’s The War of the Worlds’, English Language Notes, 46, no. 1 (2008): 193.

61. Louis Mumford, The Culture of Cities (New York, 1938), 275.

62. ‘“Mars” Radio Case Closed’, The New York Times, December 6, 1938.