The War of the Worlds Murder

The War of the Worlds Murder - By Max Allan Collins




PROLOGUE





A HALLOWE’EN SHADOW PLAY





SUDDENLY 1975 SEEMS LIKE A long time ago.

Not as long ago as 1938—when the bulk of this story takes place (and long before I was born)—but nonetheless distant, right out on the edges of my memory.

I graduated with an MFA from the Writers Workshop in Iowa City in 1972, right after selling my first mystery novel, and promptly took a job teaching Freshman English at the small-town community college where I’d been attending a few years before. I was just a kid, really, though I’d been married since 1968.

By ’75 I’d already sold half a dozen mystery novels. But only two of them had been published when I decided to attend my first Bouchercon, which was in Chicago, a city my wife Barb and I both felt comfortable in.

My childhood sweetheart and I had honeymooned for a week in Chicago, going to movies, dining in wonderful restaurants, checking out the sights, as well as the usual things newlyweds do...plus some they don’t, specifically risking my bride’s life during those turbulent times by having her help me chase down old used paperbacks I needed for my mystery collection, in some of the roughest parts of town. Toward the end of that week, Robert Kennedy was assassinated—we were RFK supporters and anti-Vietnam War—and the event...in the context of celebrating our marriage...brought home just how fragile happiness can be. On the other hand, we’re still together.

On this return visit to Chicago, Barb did not attend the convention: she shopped at Marshall Field’s and along Michigan Avenue, though in those days it was mostly window-shopping. I, for the first time, mingled with mystery fans and my fellow writers, awkwardly straddling the two factions. That it was the weekend before Hallowe’en seemed appropriate for such benignly criminal doings, and Chicago was its chilly windy city self, the Palmer House hotel in the El’s shadow (the Wabash-side entrance, anyway); I felt almost like a grown-up.

My generation of mystery writers was perhaps the first to emerge largely from “fandom”—we had not only read the fiction of our writer-heroes, we had written and published “fanzines” celebrating that fiction and those creators, much like the world of comics, where I was also a fan (but not yet a writer).

Had I not already attended two or three comic book conventions, I would have been much more intimidated at Bouchercon Six, with its bustling dealers’ room that seemed so large (though by today’s convention standards was minuscule) and its panel discussions bracketed by informal conversations (in hallways and bars and dealers’-room aisles) between strangers with mutual interests. Many of us were what is now called geeks and even then were known as nerds—lonely oddballs pleased to encounter their own kind.

Patterned after similar events that had grown up in science fiction, the Bouchercon—named after celebrated New York Times critic/mystery author Anthony Boucher—is the World Mystery Convention. Fans, authors, editors, literary agents, publicists and of course booksellers attend these fan-run gatherings, and as I write this in the early twenty-first century, the events—held in cities from London to New York, from Toronto to San Francisco—are attended by thousands, unlike the hundred or so who came to Chicago in 1975.

I was a barely published author—two paperback-original novels, Bait Money and Blood Money, had seen print—and certainly not a “name” fan, that is, a fan who’d published a fanzine. I’d contributed a few articles to such self-published publications, mostly defending and celebrating my favorite mystery writer, Mickey Spillane; but mine was definitely not a name that would resonate with the average attendee of Bouchercon Six.

I prowled the dealers’ room, wearing a name badge of course, and before long, a small miracle happened. A dark-haired, mustached kid stood grinning at me, his eyes large behind horn-rim glasses; he wore a light-blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and chinos, and seemed to be only mildly insane.

“You’re Max Collins!” he said.

I frowned. “That’s right...”

I checked the name badge of this guy: Robert J. Randisi. His home was identified as “Brooklyn,” a legendary city known only vaguely to Iowans such as myself.

“I can’t believe it!” this Randisi creature blurted.

Did I owe him money? I sometimes bought comic books and old paperbacks through the mail. Maybe he was a dealer I’d shorted on the purchase of Jim Thompson or Richard Stark paperbacks. He seemed harmless enough, if overenthusiastic—of medium size, solidly put together, but not a threat.

“You wrote the Nolan books!” he said, pointing a pleasantly accusing finger.

Nolan was the thief anti-hero of my two published novels.

“Right,” I said, waiting for a shoe to drop.

“Those are great! I love those books!”

My eyes tightened. “Really?”

He reared back and laughed, once. “Why? Don’t you believe me?”

“Well...it’s just that I never met anybody before who’s read my books...at least, that I wasn’t related to.”

“Well, I’m a fan. Big fan.”

This was a first for me; and a moment I’ll never forget.

“Muscatine, Iowa,” he said, reading my name badge further. “Is that ‘Port City’?”

Port City was the fictionalized version of my hometown that I used in the books.

“Sort of,” I admitted.

“Where is it?”

“On the Mississippi—between Iowa City and the Quad Cities.”

“Like in your books!”

“Like in my books.”

We shook hands and fell in alongside each other, walking and talking.

“What do you think of this place?” Randisi gestured around a dealers’ room rife with rare books and vintage paperbacks.

“It’s heaven,” I said. “Also, hell.... I can’t afford any of this stuff.”

“I know the feeling.... Y’know, there are some big writers here. The Guest of Honor wrote the book that Steve McQueen movie came from—with the car chase? But the really cool thing is...Walter Gibson is here.”

“Really? The guy who created the Shadow?”

“ ‘Maxwell Grant’ himself—pretty spry for an old boy, too.”

“How old is he?”

“Late seventies, I think. Still writing. Still doing magic tricks. He knew Houdini and Blackstone and all those guys, y’know.”

Robert J. Randisi and I continued to walk and talk, and so began a friendship that endures to this day. In ensuing years, Bob would found the Private Eye Writers of America, and become a bestselling writer of Western fiction, as well as authoring many fine mystery and suspense novels.

That evening, we wound up having dinner together—meeting up with Barb—at the now-defunct George Diamond’s Steak House, where the fillets were the size of a football and the salads were half a head of crisp cold lettuce slathered in three dressings that mixed so well I’m salivating now. My lovely blonde wife lived up to Bob’s high expectations of the standards of a “successful” hard-boiled mystery writer.

And I was impressed to learn he’d sold a story to Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine; I’d never been able to crack the short story market (ironically, the first short story I would publish was sold to Bob, editing a PWA anthology, about ten years later).

After dinner, Barb headed to our room at the Palmer House to “play with” the things she’d bought, while Bob and I retired to a corner of the hotel bar. We talked for several hours about our respective dreams—many of them now realized—and he paid me the huge compliment of asking me to describe, in some detail, the three Nolan novels that were as yet unpublished, and at the time languishing in a publisher’s inventory, fated not to see print till the early ’80s.

Bob, it turned out, was a civilian employee of the Brooklyn P.D., taking what are now 911 calls, and I was further complimented that a guy who worked in a world where he encountered real crime and criminals could be impressed by my imaginary ones. I told him I thought his writing future was bright—he was damn near a cop, and that was useful in lots of ways, from background info to PR possibilities.

A handsome, sharply dressed young black guy swung by the table—Percy Spurlock Parker, a mystery writer who was also just starting out—and informed us about a cocktail party in a hotel suite, where the con’s Guest of Honor...who I’ll call Lawrence R. Trout...was holding court.

I was not particularly a fan of the Guest of Honor. Under his real name, he remains held in high esteem by a lot of writers and fans, particularly those in the New York area who have long been active with the Mystery Writers of America; a major mystery award in his honor is given by the MWA. Among his crowd, Trout must have been a nice enough guy, and no writer has a long career without talent and ability. But at the time I found his work dull and unremarkable. (Truth be told, I still do.)

Still, he was a pro, and I’d met precious few of those—a real-life successful mystery writer. He’d even had a Steve McQueen movie made out of one of his novels—what would that be like, I wondered, having a major movie star bring one of your characters to life! So I eagerly followed Bob and Percy onto an elevator and up to a small suite, where lots of mystery writers and fans were crowded in.

Cigarette and cigar smoke hung thick, but it wasn’t really a noir-ish atmosphere (particularly since nobody was using the noir term yet in these circles); it reminded me of the bars my rock band played in (I’d turned down a booking to attend the con) and, while not a smoker myself, I was used to such a smokehouse stench. A few women were among this group, but it was predominantly male. In future years, that ratio would reverse, but the mood (and for that matter reality) of that suite on that evening was strictly Boys’ Club.

Booze was flowing fairly freely, its blow softened by chips and pretzels. I’m no teetotaler, but I’ve never particularly been a drinker either, so I stayed with Coca-Cola. I engaged in several conversations with people who no doubt would become my friends in future years, though I frankly don’t recall any of them specifically, with the notable exception of Chris Steinbrunner.

Chris was one of the sweetest, kindest, most articulate and knowledgeable men in the world of mystery. Heavyset, his clothes (suit and tie) an unmade bed, his comb-over dark hair disheveled, his eyes constantly on the move behind heavy-rimmed glasses, moonfaced Chris was as focused mentally as his appearance was a blur.

“I know you,” Chris said, taking in my name tag, gesturing with mixed drink in hand. “You’re the Mickey Spillane defender!”

“Guilty as charged,” I said with a grin.

One of the oddest things about my career, for that matter about my life, is that I have become the premiere defender of one of the world’s best-selling writers. Heavily exposed to the wave of private-eye TV shows in the late ’50s and early ’60s, as a junior high kid I inhaled private-eye novels, starting with twenty-five- and thirty-five-cent paperbacks featuring the wild likes of Richard S. Prather’s Shell Scott and G.G. Fickling’s Honey West, then discovering Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane, and loving all three, particularly Spillane, whose fever-dream sex-and-violence writing style set my adolescent brain on fire.

Imagine my surprise, growing older, when I learned that many mystery writers and even some snooty fans considered the incredibly popular Spillane to be beneath contempt—they adored Hammett and Chandler (as did I), but Spillane was a boorish, right-wing lout. I happened to be a boorish, left-wing lout, but I took offense nonetheless, and my contributions to fanzines were spirited defenses of Spillane, with scholarship about his comic-book work and his “lost” stories that had appeared in pulpy men’s adventure magazines.

At another Bouchercon, in Milwaukee in 1981, I would be the con’s contact man with Spillane, the Guest of Honor, and the creator of Mike Hammer and I would become great friends. He is my son Nathan’s godfather, has been my collaborator on numerous projects, and the subject of an Edgar-nominated critical biography I cowrote with fellow Spillane buff Jim Traylor, as well as a documentary film I made a few years ago, which was screened to much acclaim in Italy, England and (for the Mystery Writers of America) in New York.

Back in ’75, however, most mystery writers—major and minor—were saying disparaging things about Mickey. Not only had he never been nominated for the MWA’s prestigious Edgar Allan Poe Award, he was the only published author ever refused membership in the organization...a shameful occurrence.

So in that smoky suite, Chris Steinbrunner—who with mystery-world maven Otto Penzler had written one of the first and best books on the history of mystery—looked me in my young eyes and said, “God bless you, my son.”

“Really? What did I do?”

“Merely defended a great writer.”

I worked up my most boyish smile—and they were pretty boyish back then. “You and Otto Penzler defended him, too. I got tears in my eyes reading the nice things you said about Mickey.”

Though I hadn’t yet met Mickey, I already loved the man; he was my literary father.

“He’s the most influential mystery writer alive,” Chris said. “No contest.”

Randisi, who was at my side, said, “I’ve always loved Spillane. I pretty much love all private-eye books. But Spillane, he’s one of the biggies.”

“He’s the biggie,” I said.

Still intimidated by my incredible two-published-novels career, Randisi merely nodded, respecting my every word (this would soon change).

“You must let me introduce you to Walter Gibson,” Chris said, his round head swivelling to take in the landscape of the crowded room. Then his eyes returned to mine. “Are you a ‘Shadow’ fan?”

“When I was a little kid,” I said, “I used to listen to him on the radio.”

“Oh, but the pulp novels were far superior to the broadcast version! And Walter turned out hundreds of those. Typing till his fingers bled.”

“I read that ‘Shadow’ paperback he wrote a few years ago,” I said. “A lotta fun.”

“You need to tell him that...”

But Gibson was holed up in a corner of the room doing card tricks for a clutch of wide-eyed fans, children of ages ranging from twenty to fifty. Gibson himself was a tall, somewhat heavyset gentleman in a dark suit with a crisp tie; his hair was starkly white and fairly long, though neatly combed—his wire-rim glasses and beaming smile reminded me of the science-fiction author, Ray Bradbury.

I don’t believe I’ve ever used the word avuncular in a book before, but it applied to him, perfectly: he was your favorite uncle. Right now he was getting as big a kick out of doing his card tricks as his little audience was watching them.

“Let’s not bother him,” I said. “Maybe later?”

“If you wait till Walter’s not busy talking to somebody, it’ll be a very long wait—he loves people, loves to make conversation.”

“I can see that. Seems like a real sweetheart.”

“And when you do talk to him, get him going about the old days. I’ve never seen anybody with a memory like his—he can pull up something that happened to him in childhood with photographic detail, and make it as colorful as a Shadow yarn.”

“I promise to find the right moment, Chris.”

“Well, then,” Chris said, taking me by the arm, “in the meantime, you should meet the Guest of Honor.”

Lawrence R. Trout was in his early sixties, tall with salt-and-pepper hair, dressed in a professorly manner, and a little drunk. He seemed affable enough, if full of himself. Hard to hold him to account for that: he was the Guest of Honor, after all.

Chris introduced me, and said, “Max has published two novels. He’s from Iowa.”

There was some (relatively) good-natured disparagement from Trout about my Tall Corn roots (he was from Connecticut), and then Chris made the mistake.

The big mistake.

“Max is quite the Mickey Spillane fan,” Chris said, cheerful as Santa’s top elf. “He’s written some very nice articles supporting Spillane.”

Trout snorted distastefully over his cocktail. “Spillane? He’s a damn hack. Everybody knows it.”

“Actually,” I said, “it’s my dream that one day Mickey will receive a Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. I hope to do everything I can to make that happen.”

Trout, I later learned, was very active with the MWA.

“Over my dead body,” Trout said. “He’s the only published writer we ever rejected from the membership! He churns out pulp dreck—ridiculous trash.”

“Hammett and Chandler were pulp writers, too,” I said tersely.

“Spillane was even worse than a pulp hack—he was a comic-book writer, you know.”

“So what?”

He eyed me over the drink with orbs that suited his name. “What, are you going to defend comic books now?”

“Chester Gould created the most famous American detective,” I said.

Chris put in, “Dick Tracy. Wonderful stuff.”

Trout put a condescending hand on my shoulder. “Let me put the period on this sentence.... I have no respect for any writer who poses on his book covers with guns.”

Mickey, a former WWII fighter pilot and very much a blue-collar writer, had sometimes posed as his famous detective, Mike Hammer, for publicity shots, with Hammer’s trademark .45 in his fist.

“Ian Fleming did the same thing,” I said.

“Please!” the Guest of Honor said, removing his hand from my shoulder before I had to. “He was a hack, too.”

I felt the red climbing into my face; and I could hear the quiver in my voice as I said: “Let me tell you something, Mr. Trout—everybody in this room, including yourself, has a career because of Mickey Spillane. It was his enormous success in the early ’50s that made crime fiction, and paperbacks, explode. You don’t have to like his work to show a little gratitude and have some common respect for the man who gave all of us...yourself included...a career.”

Quite a few people were listening now. The moment could not have been more awkward. An upstart, barely published brat from Iowa had verbally assaulted their honored guest. On the other hand, a few heads were nodding. Here and there. Less than vindication, but nice.

“Mickey Spillane will never receive a Grand Master Award from the MWA,” Trout said. “He...poses...with...guns...on...his...dust jackets.”

Then the Guest of Honor moved unsteadily away for another drink.

But when he’d passed across my vision, Trout revealed someone else...

...Walter Gibson.

The creator of the Shadow was smiling at me as if he’d just spotted his long-lost nephew.

He approached me with the grace of the trained stage performer he was. His blue eyes holding eye contact with me, he said to Steinbrunner, “Chris, why don’t you introduce me to this young man?”

But Gibson’s hand was already outstretched.

I shook it; the grasp was firm. “Mr. Gibson,” I said, “it’s an honor. I’m a big fan.”

That might have been overstating it: I was not a collector of the valuable old pulp magazines, but I’d read some of the reprints, as well as that recent Shadow paperback I’d mentioned to Chris.

And this was the man who created one of the most famous characters in popular fiction: the Shadow, the sometimes-invisible crimefighter who clouded men’s minds, and knew what evil lurked in their hearts.

Chris made the introductions, and then Gibson said, “I admire you for standing up to that pompous fool.”

“Really? Are you a Spillane fan?”

He shrugged. “Not particularly. He’s done very well updating the Black Mask pulp technique—Carroll John Daly originated that kind of thing with Race Williams, of course. And there’s some of the Shadow in Mike Hammer, too, don’t you think?”

“Well, yes.”

“The old idea of an avenging figure is just as good today as it ever was—the best mysteries always center around one character. Look at Sherlock Holmes, and Dracula.”

“But if you’re not a Spillane fan—”

He patted my shoulder. “You were absolutely right to defend a writer you admire. Writers shouldn’t go around bad-mouthing other writers. And I don’t much like hearing disrespect to pulp writers, either. That was my world, you know.”

I nodded; sipped my Coke. “How much work did you do for the radio Shadow show?”

“Not much—conceptual stuff in the beginning. Sort of helped map it out.” He shrugged. “I like my stuff better.”

Spoken like a true writer!

Gibson’s face creased with amusement. “But you don’t look old enough to’ve heard the Shadow on the radio.”

“It was still on in the mid-fifties,” I said. “I was five or six...I’d listen to it, and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, and Dragnet. In bed at night.” I gave a mock shiver. “The Shadow was the first good guy who ever scared my little behind.”

Gibson gave a grudging nod. “Well, that sinister laugh was a good touch. I’ll give ’em that. But you are too young for the pulps.”

“I read your Shadow paperback. Really liked it. And the reprints. A lot of fun.”

“Good—that’s what they were meant to be.... That Shadow laugh, you know, it wasn’t Orson Welles.”

“Really?”

“Everybody thinks it was, and Orson always claimed it as his...but it was a fella called Readick, Frank Readick. He was the first Shadow, when the character was just a spooky narrator, not active in the stories. They used Readick’s opening till the end, I think. But Orson got the credit—typically.”

“Did you know Orson Welles?”

The Citizen Kane wunderkind had famously played the Shadow on the radio in the ’30s, barely out of his teens.

“Oh, I knew him all right,” Gibson said.

Chris’s owlish countenance brightened. “Really? You never mentioned you met Welles.”

Gibson’s shrug was as grand as it was casual. “I don’t believe you ever asked, Chris.”

“You have me there, Walter. But I knew you didn’t have much to do with the radio version, so I never thought to ask.”

Gibson smiled in a way that said he had nothing more to add to this subject.

The conversation turned to Gibson’s enduring penchant for magic, and how he could still do a mean card trick. He showed us a couple, and they were suitably mystifying—cards appearing in one of Gibson’s pockets, the apparent mind reading of a card I’d selected. Finally, Chris—who’d seen this magic many times—wandered off and got involved in another conversation; and by now Bob Randisi had disappeared somewhere.

Suddenly it was the Shadow creator and the kid from Iowa, alone in the crowded suite.

“I’ve always loved Orson Welles,” I said, returning gingerly to the topic. “What were the circumstances of you knowing him, if you weren’t very involved with the radio program?”

“Well...” Gibson, who was nursing a beer, glanced about the smoky room, as if to make sure no one was around; of course, thirty or thirty-five people were around....

“If I’m overstepping...”

Gibson studied me; something about him seemed at once ancient and childlike. “It is a hell of a story.”

“And you’re a hell of a storyteller, Mr. Gibson.”

He let out a single laugh. “And don’t think I wouldn’t get a kick out of sharing it with somebody. It’s just...well, a lot of the people are still alive.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand...”

“People could still get in trouble—at the very least, be embarrassed, badly so.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “Suppose we went down to the bar, and found a quiet corner...”

“I know just the corner.”

“Would you promise not to tell anyone? At least, not until the players have...shuffled off this mortal coil? As Orson might put it.”

“I won’t betray your confidence, Mr. Gibson.”

“When a magician shares a magic trick with a student, he must do so in full confidence that the student will guard the secret of that trick.”

“You’re killin’ me, Mr. Gibson.... I have to hear this story....”

He grinned his uncle’s grin. “You deserve a reward, young man. For sticking up for your hero. For sticking up for pulp writers everywhere.... Let’s go down and have a few more beers. Who knows how good this story might get?”

The two of us eased out of the suite, unseen shadows slipping into the night—or at least, the hallway.

Soon we had settled into our corner of the little bar off the lobby, and I’d bought a pitcher of beer, though over the next hour and a half, we barely dented it. The tale Walter Gibson told provided all the intoxication either of us needed.

His eyes narrowed in thought in the pleasant, jowly face. “It was just about...let me do the computation...thirty-seven years ago. Almost exactly thirty-seven years ago. I was older than you, but not by much.”

“Thirty-seven years...what, 1938 then? Was Welles still doing the Shadow?”

“He’d just quit. The show was on Sunday afternoons, done live, and young Orson had a new program...The Mercury Theatre on the Air....”

“Wait a minute...this weekend—Hallowe’en’s just days away.”

“Yes it is.”

“Isn’t Hallowe’en when...?”

“Yes it was.”

I was sitting forward. “ ‘The War of the Worlds’...most famous radio show of all time. And you were there?”

“Yes,” Gibson said, eyes twinkling. “I was.” He was staring at me with mischievious delight over his folded hands, those fingers that had pounded out so many pulp yarns, one of them wearing an impressive gold ring that I realized was a replica of the Shadow’s famous fire opal. “And I’ve never told a soul about it...not even any of my wives.”

A chill of excitement went up my spine; I hadn’t felt anything like it since my bedroom was dark and I was six and the Shadow was laughing his deep, sinister laugh....

“But you’re going to tell me, aren’t you, Mr. Gibson?”

“Call me Walter.... And yes, I am. I am indeed going to tell you. I’m going to tell you about the murder that happened thirty-seven years ago, right in the CBS studios—the day, the night, that Orson Welles sent America into a panic. A murder that even the Martians didn’t know about....”

And he began to speak, in a mellow voice that was not as commanding as that of Orson Welles, but commanding enough, stage magician that Walter Gibson had been, and still was. His was a voice in the near darkness, and I sat enthralled by it, much as so many in the mid-twentieth century had crowded around their radio consoles in their own homes in Depression-era America.


Now another thirty years have passed.

And I’ve never told anybody the story. Not my wife. Not even Bob Randisi.

Walter Gibson is gone; so is Chris Steinbrunner, and Lawrence R. Trout, too. A few years ago I was Guest of Honor at a Bouchercon, and I’m pleased to report that no one treated me as badly as I treated the esteemed Mr. Trout. Mickey Spillane, at 87, is still with us; and a few years back, I was among a handful of mystery writers who saw to it that Mike Hammer’s creator did indeed receive a Grand Master Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

But just about everyone who was at CBS the day and night of “The War of the Worlds” broadcast is long since gone—among them, Howard Koch, the scriptwriter, and Welles’s partner and future nemesis, John Houseman. Paul Stewart (so memorable a bad guy in the film of Spillane’s Kiss Me, Deadly) has left the earthly studio, as has the musical genius Bernard Herrmann, who lives on in such film scores as Vertigo, North by Northwest and Taxi Driver.

Welles himself, of course, has also departed, though leaving behind a handful of classic films and a certain unforgettable, history-making radio broadcast.

No one can be hurt now, or even embarrassed, by my revealing what really occurred at CBS, on the eve of Hallowe’en in 1938.

I have added to the account Walter shared with me in that Palmer House bar in Chicago in 1975 a good deal of research into the other events of October 30, 1938—the ones that occurred outside the CBS studios. So the picture I will paint, in the theater of your mind, will flesh out somewhat the story the Shadow’s creator shared with me.

And I must admit that nothing in my research confirmed what Walter said, in our dark corner of the hotel bar at Bouchercon Six; but nothing contradicted it, either....

I leave it to you to decide, and remain obediently yours,


Max Allan Collins

October 31, 2004

Muscatine, Iowa





THURSDAY





OCTOBER 27, 1938





BY 1938, THAT EXPERIMENTAL NOVELTY known as radio had become mass communication, informing and entertaining listeners from (as announcers of the era so loved to point out) coast to coast.

In 1920 the first public broadcast told the United States that President Harding had been elected; now President Roosevelt was using the medium for “fireside chats”...and when November rolled around, FDR (and all American politicians) would listen with rapt attention to election returns, courtesy of this most immediate of mediums.

The first radio entertainment emanated from a garage in Pittsburgh—station KDKA—serving thousands; now ventriloquist Edgar Bergen with his dummy Charlie McCarthy brought laughter to over thirty million every Sunday night on their Chase and Sanborn Hour. The drawing power of the young medium could hardly be denied, even if the popularity of a ventriloquist act unseen by its audience did raise certain questions about the willingness of these listeners to buy just about anything, and not just what the sponsors were selling....

If the diversions radio provided were less sophisticated than those of a concert hall, the Broadway theater or even your neighborhood moviehouse, Amos ’n’ Andy, Major Bowes and Fibber McGee and Molly didn’t cost a dime, and were accessible at the flip of a switch and the turn of a dial. After all, just about everybody had a radio—ten million were sold per year, most homes having at least one, with car radios and portable sets making broadcasting a mobile member of the family. Radio was seriously undermining newspapers as the nation’s preferred news source (ironically, many stations were owned by those same papers), even while providing—in a country still reeling from the Depression—a cheap alternative to movies.

Popular music over the air also helped fight those Depression blues, with remote broadcasts from ballrooms and nightclubs in major cities bringing big bands and that new fad, swing, into living rooms. And of course if a news story broke, an announcer could always interrupt to keep Americans “coast to coast” instantaneously informed.

Which meant the average person felt more a part of things these days—even in the smallest American hamlet a listener could witness the marriage of the Duke of Windsor to Mrs. Simpson, and attend the Braddock-Louis heavyweight fight; or get firsthand reports on the great flood of the Mississippi Valley, and have the dirigible Hindenburg explode before their very ears.

It was a world where listeners were quite used to hearing from the president and comedian W.C. Fields within the same half hour—a world that happened to be on the brink of war, a populace waiting by the radio console for news of a first attack....

In the meantime, between this steady diet of comedy, music and news, a hardy handful of creators attempted to bring quality drama to the networks. Arch Oboler, with his pioneering, Twilight Zone–like Lights Out used innovative sound effects to project his movies of the mind, while radio’s “poet laureate” Norman Corwin trusted well-chosen words to grant his fantasies and satires literary qualities rare in a medium that already seemed crass.

At age twenty-two, Orson Welles—acclaimed and controversial as the boy genius of Broadway, a radio veteran thanks to a rich deep voice beyond his years—brought his skills and his talented associates to a project called First-Person Singular, soon to be renamed The Mercury Theatre on the Air. He was the star, narrator, writer, producer and director—at least according to the press releases—and a more ambitious slate of radio adaptations would be difficult to imagine: the first season (1937) began with an outstanding version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and was followed in short order by Treasure Island, A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, Around the World in 80 Days and Julius Caesar, among others.

But the 1938 season found the celebrated, acclaimed new series up against the most popular radio show in the nation—Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy’s aforementioned Chase & Sanborn Hour, which pulled in about 35 percent of the radio audience. After seven broadcasts in its new Sunday-night slot against America’s most popular puppet, The Mercury Theatre on the Air was drawing less than four percent.

Something would have to be done.