Network Will Present "Invasion From Mars"

The Crimson Network will present Wednesday night at 9 o'clock, the famous radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' "War of the Worlds," the dramatic description of an invasion from Mars which caused alarm throughout the United States when Orson Welles presented it in October of 1938.

The play is written to sound like a spontaneous, on-the-spot broadcast and development of a real invasion by Martians of superior intelligence and formidable machines. So realistically was it presented by Orson Welles, that citizens actually called their police stations and offered to help save the country from the invading Martians. A psychological interpretation of the panic was written by Professor George W. Cantril of Princeton entitled "The Invasion From Mars," containing the original script, and may be obtained at Widener Library.

Beginning with an ordinary broadcasting procedure of a New York station, reports of explosions from the planet Mars break into the broadcast. An interview at a Princeton astronomical observatory is followed by a description of a scene nearby where the first Martian cylinder has landed and begins to spread destruction throughout New Jersey. From here the play depicts increasingly alarming incidents of destructive power of the Martians, and builds to a climax with an "eye-witness" destruction of New York City.