Alien Invasion!
Sketch for 1906 edition of the novel
The War of the Worlds
On the night of October 30th, 1938, a young auteur named Orson Welles and his merry band of writers, actors, performers and sound technicians made radio history with their now-infamous broadcast of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. Released through their weekly radio program Mercury Theatre On The Air as a series of increasingly frantic news bulletins from the frontline of an alien invasion, the radio play caused quite the stir among listeners across the Northeast and later, thanks to the ever-spinning wheels of print media, around the world.
The event was a watershed moment in broadcast history, both serving as the catalyst for the revolutionary career of Orson Welles and as a cautionary tale to advertisers and media executives about the deceptive power of the humble radio play and the power of urban legend. Moreover, it thrust the sleepy village of Grover’s Mill, nestled in the heart of West Windsor township, into the national discussion.
On the night of October 30th, 1938, a young auteur named Orson Welles and his merry band of writers, actors, performers and sound technicians made radio history with their now-infamous broadcast of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. Released through their weekly radio program Mercury Theatre On The Air as a series of increasingly frantic news bulletins from the frontline of an alien invasion, the radio play caused quite the stir among listeners across the Northeast and later, thanks to the ever-spinning wheels of print media, around the world.
The event was a watershed moment in broadcast history, both serving as the catalyst for the revolutionary career of Orson Welles and as a cautionary tale to advertisers and media executives about the deceptive power of the humble radio play and the power of urban legend. Moreover, it thrust the sleepy village of Grover’s Mill, nestled in the heart of West Windsor township, into the national discussion.
Welles rehearshing Dracula with the Mercury Theater
Orson Welles and The Mercury Theater
Orson Welles had already made a name for himself in the theatrical scene by 1938, having come up through the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) as a young man working alongside the likes of John Houseman, Arthur Miller, and Elia Kazan. Welles had directed several high-profile productions for the FTP, including an adaptation of MacBeth starring an entirely African American cast - a progressive endeavour for it's time.
It was with John Houseman that he founded the Mercury Theatre in 1937 as an acting repertory that quickly found success on Broadway. After a highly successful run directing Caesar on Broadway, Welles’ company was invited to create a radio show by CBS Radio for their summer programming schedule. This program, The Mercury Radio on the Air, focused on adapting literary classics for the radio. Over the course of its twenty-two-episode run, it translated works such as Dracula (a production that became infamous due to a highly realistic and nauseating series of sound-effects made using a water-filled cabbage), The Count of Monte Cristo, Jane Eyre, and Around the World in Eighty Days into lavish radio plays, complete with orchestral compositions, a full cast of actors, and sound effects with the help of CBS’s in-house production team.
Mercury’s greatest achievement, however, was yet to come. As the production company rounded the bend on their second season, they added writer Howard Koch to their team and started on their most chaotic project to date: The War of the Worlds, a radio adaptation of the Martian alien invasion novel of the same name by the British writer H.G. Wells.
Orson Welles had already made a name for himself in the theatrical scene by 1938, having come up through the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) as a young man working alongside the likes of John Houseman, Arthur Miller, and Elia Kazan. Welles had directed several high-profile productions for the FTP, including an adaptation of MacBeth starring an entirely African American cast - a progressive endeavour for it's time.
It was with John Houseman that he founded the Mercury Theatre in 1937 as an acting repertory that quickly found success on Broadway. After a highly successful run directing Caesar on Broadway, Welles’ company was invited to create a radio show by CBS Radio for their summer programming schedule. This program, The Mercury Radio on the Air, focused on adapting literary classics for the radio. Over the course of its twenty-two-episode run, it translated works such as Dracula (a production that became infamous due to a highly realistic and nauseating series of sound-effects made using a water-filled cabbage), The Count of Monte Cristo, Jane Eyre, and Around the World in Eighty Days into lavish radio plays, complete with orchestral compositions, a full cast of actors, and sound effects with the help of CBS’s in-house production team.
Mercury’s greatest achievement, however, was yet to come. As the production company rounded the bend on their second season, they added writer Howard Koch to their team and started on their most chaotic project to date: The War of the Worlds, a radio adaptation of the Martian alien invasion novel of the same name by the British writer H.G. Wells.
War of the Worlds 50th Anniversary poster
Composing a Legend
The decision to adapt Welles' Alien Invasion tale during the tense period of the late 1930s - concurrent to the Great Depression at home and the looming threat of the Third Reich echoing across the Atlantic - came from multiple sources. Chief among which was Orson Welles himself, who had heard Robert Knox’s 1926 radio segment Broadcast from the Barricades which used a realistic news bulletin-style delivery to portray a fictional riot in the streets of London. He stated in an interview: “I had conceived the idea of doing a radio broadcast in such a manner that a crisis would actually seem to be happening… and would be broadcast in such a dramatized form as to appear to be a real event taking place at that time, rather than a mere radio play.”
Welles proposed the idea to Houseman, Koch, and co-director Paul Stewart during a production meeting, and ideation quickly blossomed into action. The men drifted from story to story until they finally settled on H. G. Wells’ science fiction story about an alien invasion of the British Isles (despite Houseman’s firm belief that Orson had never even read the book).
Koch was assigned to adapt the story into a broadcast drama set in the United States. According to the Smithsonian, he “may have been the first member of the Mercury to read The War of the Worlds, and he took an immediate dislike to it, finding it terribly dull and dated.” Locations were changed and sites close to the New York City Metropolitan Area were chosen for maximum shock value. But as he worked on his adaptation, Koch grew increasingly jaded about its chances for success, as science fiction in the 1930s was seen as childrens'' fodder.
The decision to adapt Welles' Alien Invasion tale during the tense period of the late 1930s - concurrent to the Great Depression at home and the looming threat of the Third Reich echoing across the Atlantic - came from multiple sources. Chief among which was Orson Welles himself, who had heard Robert Knox’s 1926 radio segment Broadcast from the Barricades which used a realistic news bulletin-style delivery to portray a fictional riot in the streets of London. He stated in an interview: “I had conceived the idea of doing a radio broadcast in such a manner that a crisis would actually seem to be happening… and would be broadcast in such a dramatized form as to appear to be a real event taking place at that time, rather than a mere radio play.”
Welles proposed the idea to Houseman, Koch, and co-director Paul Stewart during a production meeting, and ideation quickly blossomed into action. The men drifted from story to story until they finally settled on H. G. Wells’ science fiction story about an alien invasion of the British Isles (despite Houseman’s firm belief that Orson had never even read the book).
Koch was assigned to adapt the story into a broadcast drama set in the United States. According to the Smithsonian, he “may have been the first member of the Mercury to read The War of the Worlds, and he took an immediate dislike to it, finding it terribly dull and dated.” Locations were changed and sites close to the New York City Metropolitan Area were chosen for maximum shock value. But as he worked on his adaptation, Koch grew increasingly jaded about its chances for success, as science fiction in the 1930s was seen as childrens'' fodder.
Welles, Houseman, and Koch reviewing the script
A frantic scene played out over the ensuing days, characterized by myriad phone calls between Houseman and Koch, both lamenting the impending failure of the broadcast. Houseman, in a last-minute bid to save face for the company, phoned Welles to suggest abandoning ship and working a more marketable story. But Welles, fresh off a 36-hour rehearsal run of Danton’s Death, Mercury Theatre’s other floundering theatrical project, refused to budge.
Over the next day and a half, Koch filled almost half a dozen legal pads with revisions and rewrites, driving himself to the brink of exhaustion to finish a first draft. This manuscript was hastily rehearsed by Stewart and a handful of actors, who recorded the session on acetate disks as a proof of concept and sent a copy to Welles for review.
From the perspectives of all involved, the recording was a complete disaster; a Frankenstein cobbled together from the live-bulletin style Welles and Co. wanted to perfect for the first half and the usual dramatic monologues Mercury normally made use of for the second. Welles, upon listening to the recordings, reaffirmed the belief of his colleagues Houseman and Stewart that the only way to save the production was to focus on the first half and make the faux news bulletins as convincing as possible. The writing team agreed and as the airing date grew perilously close, they got to work.
Houseman, Stewart, and Koch feverishly revised the script, expanding the first half of the show and shrinking the second. Such uneven scripting meant that the broadcast break would end up occurring two-thirds of the way through the play, rather than halfway. This formatting decision would later set the stage for mass confusion, as avid radio listeners, used to hearing ads halfway through radio plays, would find the production continuing well past that.
Over the next day and a half, Koch filled almost half a dozen legal pads with revisions and rewrites, driving himself to the brink of exhaustion to finish a first draft. This manuscript was hastily rehearsed by Stewart and a handful of actors, who recorded the session on acetate disks as a proof of concept and sent a copy to Welles for review.
From the perspectives of all involved, the recording was a complete disaster; a Frankenstein cobbled together from the live-bulletin style Welles and Co. wanted to perfect for the first half and the usual dramatic monologues Mercury normally made use of for the second. Welles, upon listening to the recordings, reaffirmed the belief of his colleagues Houseman and Stewart that the only way to save the production was to focus on the first half and make the faux news bulletins as convincing as possible. The writing team agreed and as the airing date grew perilously close, they got to work.
Houseman, Stewart, and Koch feverishly revised the script, expanding the first half of the show and shrinking the second. Such uneven scripting meant that the broadcast break would end up occurring two-thirds of the way through the play, rather than halfway. This formatting decision would later set the stage for mass confusion, as avid radio listeners, used to hearing ads halfway through radio plays, would find the production continuing well past that.
Rehearsing the radio play
Further edits were made to heighten the believably of the production. Several of Houseman's revisions removed contextual hints and dramatic interludes between the pseudo-news bulletins, ratcheting up the emotional shock value of act one while drastically compressing the timeline of the invasion. He acknowledged that the time compression strained believability but stated in his memoirs that he wanted to improve the transition from “real time” to “fictional time” in order to draw the readers into the story. “"Our actual broadcasting time, from the first mention of the meteorites to the fall of New York City, was less than forty minutes"… "During that time, men travelled long distances, large bodies of troops were mobilized, cabinet meetings were held, savage battles fought on land and in the air. And millions of people accepted it—emotionally if not logically."
But even with all these edits, the broadcast would have been an abject failure if not for the work of CBS' sound effects team and, of course, the actors themselves. Actors suggested edits and character notes that would make their roles more believable and fleshed out. Fred Readick, who was cast as ground reporter Carl Phillips, listened to recordings of the Hindenburg Disaster to capture the panic and mounting terror in broadcaster Herbert Morrison’s voice as the zeppelin crash unfolded. This dynamic, coupled with a cast of extras screaming in the background of Phillips’s panicked descriptions of the Martian war machines unfurling from their pods and powering up their death rays , certiainly made for bone-chilling material.
Stewart, meanwhile, worked with CBS Sound Effects Chief Ora D. Nichols to put together an array of sound effects for the show. From gunshots and cannon fire to boat horns and plane engines, to the unsettling, downright otherworldly wails of the Martian death rays, a considerable amount of dramatic weight was woven into the broadcast. The producers also made extensive use of standard broadcast practices, including breaks for technical problems and piano solos during intermission, as methods of building tension in between the increasingly dire news bulletins.
Despite the producers' initial fears, the broadcast seemed a success to its producers, topped off by Welles’ dramatic oration and well-coordinated direction. What would have been a lackluster broadcast was tranformed into a night of fear, confusion, and extraterrestrials.
The broadcast is embedded below:
A plaque in Van Nest Park commemorates the broadcast
Martians Attack Grovers Mill!
We will not be transcribing the entire broadcast in detail, as it deserves to be experienced. The broadcast is 57 minutes of finely crafted radio drama; a thrilling listen on a dark, stormy autumn night.
This page will, however, cover a sliver of the opening scenes of Act One, as it is in this section that our sleepy village of Grovers Mill makes its debut in the world of fiction. Welles set it as ground zero of the alien invasion; the spot where the first of the Martian Tripods land, misidentified by the announcer as meteorites crashing into a field “just to the east of" the village.
This occurs immediately after reports of gas explosions on the surface of Mars are reported by scientists at the observatory at Princeton University. The character of Carl Phillips, an intrepid every-man reporter, arrives at the Wilson farmstead where the "meteors" landed, proceeding to interview farmers, state troopers and a physicist from Princeton University. *Add time codes for this part of the broadcast* Suddenly, without much fanfare or warning, unearthly tripods emerge from the glowing craters in the farmland and uncoil, looming over the insignificant humans around them.
Martian machines subsequently obliterate the countryside, the cacophony rising to a noisy crescendo of panic and fear amid a screaming crowd before the broadcast cuts to silence. After a few bewildered moments, the studio crew declares that there are “technical difficulties,” and cuts to a gentle piano tune.
The rest of the play presents an apocalyptic drama, from the failed attempts by the NJ State Militia to combat the machines to the fall of New York City, culminating in humanity’s ultimate victory with the help of the humble microbe.
At the end of the broadcast, Welles addresses his terrified listeners, assuring them that the whole endeavor was meant as a fun holiday offering for the upcoming Halloween festivities. But how did the residents of Grover’s Mill react to the news of their town being destroyed?
We will not be transcribing the entire broadcast in detail, as it deserves to be experienced. The broadcast is 57 minutes of finely crafted radio drama; a thrilling listen on a dark, stormy autumn night.
This page will, however, cover a sliver of the opening scenes of Act One, as it is in this section that our sleepy village of Grovers Mill makes its debut in the world of fiction. Welles set it as ground zero of the alien invasion; the spot where the first of the Martian Tripods land, misidentified by the announcer as meteorites crashing into a field “just to the east of" the village.
This occurs immediately after reports of gas explosions on the surface of Mars are reported by scientists at the observatory at Princeton University. The character of Carl Phillips, an intrepid every-man reporter, arrives at the Wilson farmstead where the "meteors" landed, proceeding to interview farmers, state troopers and a physicist from Princeton University. *Add time codes for this part of the broadcast* Suddenly, without much fanfare or warning, unearthly tripods emerge from the glowing craters in the farmland and uncoil, looming over the insignificant humans around them.
Martian machines subsequently obliterate the countryside, the cacophony rising to a noisy crescendo of panic and fear amid a screaming crowd before the broadcast cuts to silence. After a few bewildered moments, the studio crew declares that there are “technical difficulties,” and cuts to a gentle piano tune.
The rest of the play presents an apocalyptic drama, from the failed attempts by the NJ State Militia to combat the machines to the fall of New York City, culminating in humanity’s ultimate victory with the help of the humble microbe.
At the end of the broadcast, Welles addresses his terrified listeners, assuring them that the whole endeavor was meant as a fun holiday offering for the upcoming Halloween festivities. But how did the residents of Grover’s Mill react to the news of their town being destroyed?
A great read on the subject is pictured above; click on the image to go to its
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A Man, A Tower, A Myth
Well, not quit the way the legends depict it. Lore has it that the producers of the play were horrified to hear about millions of panicked audience members across the country fleeing their homes, rioting in the roads, and forming myriad militias. The reaction was allegedly apocalyptic in proportion, hysteria dominating the night.
Granted, this urban legend grows more believable the closer one get to Grover's Mill, as, according to Hadley Cantril of the Princeton Radio Project in his survey of CBS listeners conducted two years after the broadcast, those who lived in and around the village were generally “more frightened” by the broadcast then the rest of the nation. Indeed, town legend has it that as reputed mass hysteria swept the region, a shotgun-toting farmer blasted at the local water tower (now hidden behind 175 Cranbury Road), mistaking it for an alien invader!
But was this actually true? Did bullets pepper the local infrastructure? Did bands of armed militiamen patrol the quiet streets of Grover’s Mill? Well, the truth is not quite so dramatic. Bob Sanders, who was six years old and living in Grovers Mill at the time of the broadcast, recounted a more mundane reaction to the broadcast in Gannett NJ - a curiosity and a traffic jam: “Fathers put their families in a car and took off for parts unknown… “Other people came to see what they (the Martians) looked like.” This is corroborated by Eddie Kemp, a mechanic and erstwhile owner of the iconic Red Barn of the Grover’s Mill Supply Co. who spoke to United Press International in 1982: “I drove on home, like a damn fool… 'I knew there was a whole bunch of cars. I thought there was an accident or a fire or something -- I didn't pay any attention to it. I went on home and went to bed. 'There was a lot of people who felt pretty foolish because a lot of them took off. They got so far away before they found out it was just a story.”
Moreover, the New York Daily News presented an additional article written by George A. Dixon and published on November 1st, 1938, entitled “A Martian Raid Can’t Wake Up Grover’s Mill.” Dixon spoke to two locals, James Andersen and Wyatt Fenity, both tenants on the Wilson farm. Andersen divulged that when his wife shook him awake and told him what was happening on the radio, “[he] just looked out the window and saw everything was about the same and went back to sleep.” Fenity, meanwhile, was not even listening to the broadcast, instead turning in early that night and commenting the next morning that the “Old Mill...was still standing.”
So where did tales of the national hysteria come from? A large amount of blame lies with newspapers. Threatened by their audible competitors, many journalists published articles exaggerating what was, in effect, a nonexistent panic. In fact, of a group of 5,000 regular radio listeners interviewed by the C. E. Hooper ratings service soon after revealed that only 2 percent of them were listening to "a radio play," "the Orson Welles program," or something similar suggesting a CBS production. But that didn't stop newspapers publishing reprimands of the broadcast, with editorials such as The New York Times' "Terror of Radio" chastising the alleged irresponsibility of the producers for conjuring up a night of terror.
Well, not quit the way the legends depict it. Lore has it that the producers of the play were horrified to hear about millions of panicked audience members across the country fleeing their homes, rioting in the roads, and forming myriad militias. The reaction was allegedly apocalyptic in proportion, hysteria dominating the night.
Granted, this urban legend grows more believable the closer one get to Grover's Mill, as, according to Hadley Cantril of the Princeton Radio Project in his survey of CBS listeners conducted two years after the broadcast, those who lived in and around the village were generally “more frightened” by the broadcast then the rest of the nation. Indeed, town legend has it that as reputed mass hysteria swept the region, a shotgun-toting farmer blasted at the local water tower (now hidden behind 175 Cranbury Road), mistaking it for an alien invader!
But was this actually true? Did bullets pepper the local infrastructure? Did bands of armed militiamen patrol the quiet streets of Grover’s Mill? Well, the truth is not quite so dramatic. Bob Sanders, who was six years old and living in Grovers Mill at the time of the broadcast, recounted a more mundane reaction to the broadcast in Gannett NJ - a curiosity and a traffic jam: “Fathers put their families in a car and took off for parts unknown… “Other people came to see what they (the Martians) looked like.” This is corroborated by Eddie Kemp, a mechanic and erstwhile owner of the iconic Red Barn of the Grover’s Mill Supply Co. who spoke to United Press International in 1982: “I drove on home, like a damn fool… 'I knew there was a whole bunch of cars. I thought there was an accident or a fire or something -- I didn't pay any attention to it. I went on home and went to bed. 'There was a lot of people who felt pretty foolish because a lot of them took off. They got so far away before they found out it was just a story.”
Moreover, the New York Daily News presented an additional article written by George A. Dixon and published on November 1st, 1938, entitled “A Martian Raid Can’t Wake Up Grover’s Mill.” Dixon spoke to two locals, James Andersen and Wyatt Fenity, both tenants on the Wilson farm. Andersen divulged that when his wife shook him awake and told him what was happening on the radio, “[he] just looked out the window and saw everything was about the same and went back to sleep.” Fenity, meanwhile, was not even listening to the broadcast, instead turning in early that night and commenting the next morning that the “Old Mill...was still standing.”
So where did tales of the national hysteria come from? A large amount of blame lies with newspapers. Threatened by their audible competitors, many journalists published articles exaggerating what was, in effect, a nonexistent panic. In fact, of a group of 5,000 regular radio listeners interviewed by the C. E. Hooper ratings service soon after revealed that only 2 percent of them were listening to "a radio play," "the Orson Welles program," or something similar suggesting a CBS production. But that didn't stop newspapers publishing reprimands of the broadcast, with editorials such as The New York Times' "Terror of Radio" chastising the alleged irresponsibility of the producers for conjuring up a night of terror.
But what of the water tower? For that, we turn to the character of William Dock, the shotgun-toting farmer who sparked a local legend.
Dock, pictured here sporting a double-barreled shotgun and a stern look to scare away any would-be alien invaders, was 76 at the time of the broadcast. The limelight provided by the myriad newspaper reporters and photographers who flocked to Grovers Mill the day after the broadcast proved to be quite the source of entertainment for the local, who happily posed for pictures and answered questions. This photograph may have served as the origin for one of the more well-known local legends: that William Dock, hunting for some aliens, mistook the local water tower for an extraterrestrial and blew a hole on the construct.
But Dixon, whose NYDN article made striking use of the picture of Dock with his shotgun, provides a more direct account of the farmer's evening. “William Dock, 76-year-old neighboring farmer, said he grabbed his shotgun when he heard the first “news” flash and went out looking for invaders. But he didn’t see anybody he thought needed shooting.”
However, others assert that it was the owner of the house that shot his own water tower! Former Mayor of West Windsor, Jack Flood, summed it up as thus:
"The water tower was shot by the owner of the house after listening to "The War of the Worlds" broadcast. According to his personal account to a reporter in 1988, he said "I grabbed my shotgun, fired at the spaceship behind my house, left the doors and windows open, and fled. I felt like a damn fool when I found out that I had shot my own water tower!" The reporter climbed the water tower and verified that their were shot gun holes still there."
There’s no shortage of "jokelore" surrounding the invasion. Howard Koch visited West Windsor in the early 1970s to gather research for his related book, The Panic Broadcast. During his canvas of the area, he turned up a humorous account of a fleeing family recounted by the then Fire Chief of neighboring Cranbury:
“The chief told one tale about a local man who was in such a hurry to flee the Martian invaders that he drove his car out of the garage without opening the garage door, shouting at his protesting wife, “We won’t be needing it anymore!” The chief was also quoted as the source for Koch’s accounts of people shooting the water tower, though Koch cautioned that the man had an “imagination stimulated by [their] interest.”
Dock, pictured here sporting a double-barreled shotgun and a stern look to scare away any would-be alien invaders, was 76 at the time of the broadcast. The limelight provided by the myriad newspaper reporters and photographers who flocked to Grovers Mill the day after the broadcast proved to be quite the source of entertainment for the local, who happily posed for pictures and answered questions. This photograph may have served as the origin for one of the more well-known local legends: that William Dock, hunting for some aliens, mistook the local water tower for an extraterrestrial and blew a hole on the construct.
But Dixon, whose NYDN article made striking use of the picture of Dock with his shotgun, provides a more direct account of the farmer's evening. “William Dock, 76-year-old neighboring farmer, said he grabbed his shotgun when he heard the first “news” flash and went out looking for invaders. But he didn’t see anybody he thought needed shooting.”
However, others assert that it was the owner of the house that shot his own water tower! Former Mayor of West Windsor, Jack Flood, summed it up as thus:
"The water tower was shot by the owner of the house after listening to "The War of the Worlds" broadcast. According to his personal account to a reporter in 1988, he said "I grabbed my shotgun, fired at the spaceship behind my house, left the doors and windows open, and fled. I felt like a damn fool when I found out that I had shot my own water tower!" The reporter climbed the water tower and verified that their were shot gun holes still there."
There’s no shortage of "jokelore" surrounding the invasion. Howard Koch visited West Windsor in the early 1970s to gather research for his related book, The Panic Broadcast. During his canvas of the area, he turned up a humorous account of a fleeing family recounted by the then Fire Chief of neighboring Cranbury:
“The chief told one tale about a local man who was in such a hurry to flee the Martian invaders that he drove his car out of the garage without opening the garage door, shouting at his protesting wife, “We won’t be needing it anymore!” The chief was also quoted as the source for Koch’s accounts of people shooting the water tower, though Koch cautioned that the man had an “imagination stimulated by [their] interest.”
80 Years Later
Though a great deal has changed in the 80 years since that fateful October night, the memory of the broadcast still lives on in the fabric of West Windsor. In Van Nest Park, the alleged site of the fabled alien landing, one can find a bronze plaque dedicated to the ordeal. The bas relief, commissioned in 1988 by citizens of West Windsor, weaves an abstract tapestry of the night’s events, featuring a fearsome depiction of the Martian tripods, a family cowering in fear around a radio, and Orson Welles dramatically orating at his podium. The plaque was inaugurated durinf a three day ceremony jam-packed with events, including a formal dinner, art and planetarium shows, the burial of a time capsule, a bike race and a parade. The affair was coordinated by Douglas Forrester, erstwhile mayor of West Windsor and chairman of the War of the Worlds 50th Anniversary Commemorative Committee.
Forrester even managed to snag Howard Koch himself as a guest speaker! Then 86 and retired in New York, the writer paid a visit to the small hamlet that he inadvertently put on the map and was welcomed with open arms.
Moreover, Grovers Mill Coffee House, founded in 2005 by Franc Gambatese and Mickey DeFranco, has assembled a wide variety of artwork and paraphernalia devoted to that fateful October night. The Coffee House was featured in NJ Magazine in their article covering the 80th Anniversary of the broadcast, for which they hosted a weekend long celebration that included a séance with Orson Welles and a live re-enactment.
A 12-foot-tall statue called "Scoutship," depicting an alien construct and created by Eric Schultz was installed outside of the West Windsor Arts Council building on Alexander road in 2018 - in time for the 80th anniversary celebration. The WWAC has embarked on an ambitious project to commemorate the broadcast and foster West Windsor’s burgeoning arts scene. Their undertaking, The mARTian Project, still needs artists sponsors, and sites in which to place sculptures. This effort is representative of how one of West Windsor's most infamous, yet misinterpreted stories still lingers on in the collective memory of the township.
Though a great deal has changed in the 80 years since that fateful October night, the memory of the broadcast still lives on in the fabric of West Windsor. In Van Nest Park, the alleged site of the fabled alien landing, one can find a bronze plaque dedicated to the ordeal. The bas relief, commissioned in 1988 by citizens of West Windsor, weaves an abstract tapestry of the night’s events, featuring a fearsome depiction of the Martian tripods, a family cowering in fear around a radio, and Orson Welles dramatically orating at his podium. The plaque was inaugurated durinf a three day ceremony jam-packed with events, including a formal dinner, art and planetarium shows, the burial of a time capsule, a bike race and a parade. The affair was coordinated by Douglas Forrester, erstwhile mayor of West Windsor and chairman of the War of the Worlds 50th Anniversary Commemorative Committee.
Forrester even managed to snag Howard Koch himself as a guest speaker! Then 86 and retired in New York, the writer paid a visit to the small hamlet that he inadvertently put on the map and was welcomed with open arms.
Moreover, Grovers Mill Coffee House, founded in 2005 by Franc Gambatese and Mickey DeFranco, has assembled a wide variety of artwork and paraphernalia devoted to that fateful October night. The Coffee House was featured in NJ Magazine in their article covering the 80th Anniversary of the broadcast, for which they hosted a weekend long celebration that included a séance with Orson Welles and a live re-enactment.
A 12-foot-tall statue called "Scoutship," depicting an alien construct and created by Eric Schultz was installed outside of the West Windsor Arts Council building on Alexander road in 2018 - in time for the 80th anniversary celebration. The WWAC has embarked on an ambitious project to commemorate the broadcast and foster West Windsor’s burgeoning arts scene. Their undertaking, The mARTian Project, still needs artists sponsors, and sites in which to place sculptures. This effort is representative of how one of West Windsor's most infamous, yet misinterpreted stories still lingers on in the collective memory of the township.
"Scoutship" by Eric Schultz at the West Windsor Arts Council