- GROVERS MILL, N.J. (AP) - Sixty years ago, when Orson Welles used
this small hamlet as the basis of his radio adaptation of War of the Worlds,
people fled in fear - then stewed in anger when they discovered the "Martian
attack" was a hoax.
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- "They felt that they were duped,"
said Lynn Thornton, the township's director of senior services.
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- "They're very sensitive about it.
They don't want to be thought of as stupid because they fell for this.
There's a sensitivity that has existed ever since then," she said.
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- Most residents have not only gotten over
it, but they have come to embrace their strange place in radio history.
Now, as the original broadcast nears its 60th anniversary, Grovers Mill
is trying to cash in on its notoriety with posters, blankets and bumper
stickers.
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- "We're having fun to call attention
to some things we think are very important, such as media responsibility,
social psychology and civil defense," said Doug Forrester, a former
mayor of West Windsor Township, which includes Grovers Mill.
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- There will be a $175-per-plate dinner
at a ritzy Princeton hotel Saturday night featuring indoor pyrotechnics,
simulated Martian landing craft, alien doormen and delegations of Martians
evaluating attendees. The "Martians" will decide whether Earthlings
have some redeeming qualities or deserve the death ray.
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- "Assuming the Martians don't incinerate
all of us, there should be some good reviews," Forrester said.
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- What seems lighthearted now was serious
business on Oct. 30, 1938. Welles tried to punch up the ratings for his
Mercury Theatre radio show by broadcasting an adaptation of the H.G. Wells
classic about a Martian invasion of Earth. They supposedly landed in Grovers
Mill.
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- Despite a disclaimer at the start of
the show and several others during its hour-long duration, an estimated
one million of the 12 million people who tuned in nationwide believed the
panicked reports from fictional reporters.
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- Mabel "Lolly" Dey was a 16-year-old
high school junior playing the piano for her church hymn sing-along in
Plainsboro - a mile from Grovers Mill - when a breathless young man burst
into the church basement.
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- "He was yelling, 'The Martians have
landed in Grovers Mill! The Martians have landed in Grovers Mill!' "
recalled Dey, now 76.
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- The church seminarian said a prayer and
told everyone to go straight home and pray some more. Dey burst through
her own door, screaming for her mother to turn on the radio.
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- "In my history class, we had been
studying about Hitler trying to destroy our country," she said. "I
assumed Hitler had something to do with the Martians, that he had sent
them here to destroy us. I thought it was going to be the end, that they
were going to come and kill us."
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- The broadcast was stunning in its realism,
from matter-of-fact news bulletins to breathless, panicked roving "reporters"
giving reports of black poison gas felling thousands. One character described
slimy, bear-sized beasts with wet, leathery skin, venom dripping from their
V-shaped jaws.
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- Thousands of people across the country
flooded local police departments with calls, phone lines were jammed nationwide
and armed posses took to the fields. A man in Pittsburgh narrowly stopped
his wife from swallowing poison to escape death at the hands of the Martians.
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- Near the purported landing spot in Grovers
Mill, a group of gun-toting men crept through the foggy night, ready to
blast anything that resembled a Martian.
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- "They saw a water tower right by
the mill, and it was dark and foggy, and they saw the tower looming over
them, and they shot at it," said Kay Reed, a co-founder of the local
historical society. "They put holes in it, quite a few of them."
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- "One fellow in town put his kids
in the car and started pumping gas into it, but most of it went onto the
ground, he was so panicked," recalled Malcolm Roszel of Grovers Mill.
"He was in such a hurry to leave that he left his mother sitting in
a chair on the front porch."
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- Most people learned before they went
to bed that they had been had.
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- Today, the only green slime in Grovers
Mill comes from algae on the pond next to that fictional landing spot.
On Saturday night, organizers of the Martian Ball will be raking in a different
kind of green.
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- "We're using lightheartedness to
draw attention to a unique slice of Americana," said Forrester. "We're
the accidental curators of something we feel is very significant."
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