The War of the Worlds, Take Three

I’ve spent some time here at The Last Wanderer of Mars talking about H.G. Wells’ classic novel about an invasion of the Earth from Mars. And why not? It was one of the novels that established Science Fiction as a valid genre and for very good reasons. The War of the Worlds was believable as hell since it was based on science as it was known in 1896. Astronomer Percival Lowell’s claims that Mars was older world in decline, so canals bringing water from the poles criss-crossed the surface had to have been built by an older and wiser population than we poor humans here on Earth was taken to heart by Wells. Only he took a step further and envisioned a race of totally ruthless monsters with the technology, muscle and might to take over our world since theirs was exhausted.

Orson Welles

Forty-two years after its publication, radical filmmaker and movie and radio actor Orson Welles made a radio version of The War of the Worlds that literally panicked a nation that didn’t know it was a radio play and thought it was really happening. Welles’ revamped, pre-World War II, 1938 version of The War of the Worlds was set along the east coast of the United States -- New Jersey and New York City in particular -- rather than Victorian England. Our weapons were better in this new version of the venerable classic. We fought back with machine guns, artillery barrages and bombers. It was to no avail. The Martian’s tripods armed with heat rays and black smoke were still  devastating.

It didn’t stop there, though. The novel and The Mercury Theater on the Air production weren’t the only versions of The War of the Worlds. Hollywood hadn’t stepped up on it yet. But they would. There were just a couple of things that had to happen first.

Perhaps the most essential of these things was something that had been around for five years before Orson Welles stepped up to the microphone and scared the crap out of everybody. This was an unusual type of movie theater that would one day become an American icon. Originally called the “Park-in” theater, it would later become known as the drive in. I’m betting that a lot of you had no idea that the drive in theater has been around for that long. Most people think of the drive in as a 50s invention right along with McDonald’s and rock and roll. But not so. The drive in was actually invented by a guy who was working for his dad. Even though this guy, Richard Hollingshead, was a sales manager at Whiz Auto Products, it’s was his dad’s company and he dreamed accomplishing things on his own.

Richard had two real interests. Like anyone else that grew up in America, he loved cars and the movies. And there were a lot of good flicks that came out in 1933 believe it or not. That was the year King Kong with Fay Wray hit the big screen. Interestingly enough, it’s sequel, The Son of Kong came out at the end of the same year. It was also the year I’m No Angel with Mae West and Carey Grant; Duck Soup, arguably the best Marx Brothers movie ever made; The Invisible Man with Claude Rains; the big studio version of Alice in Wonderland staring Charlotte Henry and every single Paramount Studios star in cameo roles and Disney’s Three Little Pigs came out.

An early drive in theater

Anyway, Richard, in trying to make a name for himself envisioned a theater where you didn’t have to dress up or worry about the kids throwing a tissy-fit and could watch a movie from the privacy and comfort of your car. So he started experimenting. He was projecting movies on a sheet stretched between two trees using a Kodak projector mounted atop his car to see just how well outdoor projection would work. Then he did it with the lawn sprinklers on to see how well it would work in the rain. Then he lined up cars in his own driveway to find the best placement in a lot. Before you knew it, he had a patent for his new invention and the world’s first drive in movie theater opened in Richard’s hometown of Camden, New Jersey.

The drive in wasn’t an immediate giant hit. It was more something that grew with the passing of time. For one thing, the first drive in theaters didn’t have the individual speakers on poles beside each parking space as the later theaters had. Sound came from RCA Victor speakers mounted on either side of the screen itself. So if you were unfortunately enough to be parked in the back row, you were going to have a pretty difficult time hearing what was going on up there on the screen. Unfortunately, the people living around one of these early drive ins couldn’t drown the sound out, so you can imagine the levels of complaints.

Fortunately, all the kinks got themselves worked out. By the time the vets returned home from World War II and the Baby Boomer generation began to appear, the drive in theater was ready to serve them all. In fact, it became a dominating force in the motion picture exhibition industry. It’s almost hard to imagine today in a world where even finding a drive in theater is rare, but at one time not only were they thriving, but they were huge. One of the very biggest was in Long Island New York. This 29-acre drive in theater had 2,500 spaces, a full-service restaurant, a trolley system to move viewers from their cars to the full-service restaurant, the kid’s playground under the screen, or the 1,200 seat indoor viewing area. In its heyday, 25-percent of theater screens in the United States were drive ins. To put it bluntly, in the 1950s and 60s, the drive in was king.

That kind of popularity created a demand for more product. The drive-ins offered patrons a double bill -- two features -- that changed every week. And the tastes of the audience were pretty easy to predict. Basically you had families with small children and teenage couples on dates. Of course lots of other people came to the drive in, so that’s a generality. Me and my friends -- when we didn’t have a date -- used to like to sneak everyone into the drive in, hook up with all our other pals, and then watch the movie and drink a lot beer someone had always “borrowed“ from their dad. But kids and date nights was pretty much your bread and butter core. There’s probably not a kid that was around during those days who doesn’t remember sitting in the back seat of their family car in their jammies so they could just fall asleep during the second feature. And I would love to see a study done calculating how many members of Generation X -- the generation following the baby boomers -- who were actually conceived at the drive in.

Let’s face it, those car windows didn’t get all fogged up by themselves, after all.

So Hollywood began to churn out quickie flicks with incredibly low budgets, most of which were either horror or science fiction featuring lots of science fiction-created monsters. Mad scientists, giant bugs and radiation from A-bomb testing reigned supreme at the local drive in. There were giant crab monsters, giant slugs from the Salton Sea, giant grasshoppers all over downtown Chicago, giant ants in the storm sewers of Los Angeles and even that Tokyo-munching Godzilla were all mutated from radiation left over from Atom bomb tests. Even zombies suffered from it. While today its common knowledge that the zombie apocalypse is caused by mutating viruses, in the movie that started it all, George Romero’s 1968 Night of the Living Dead, the zombies became active due to exposure to radiation from a space probe returning from Venus.

Lyn Osborn, at the controls, as Cadet Happy

Giant bugs and mutants weren’t the only darlings of the drive in, however. There was also lots of flying saucers piloted by zipper monsters. Some crash landed and only took over earthlings minds so they’d get left alone long enough to make repairs and split (It Came from Outer Space) Others crash landed, were found frozen in a block of ice and re-paid the kindness of being dug out by trying to kill everybody while spawning a new race of intelligent carrots (Howard Hawk’s The Thing). Sometimes things came down without a spaceship. Giant seed pods that fell from space tried to take over the world in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And the undisputed king of cool, Steve McQueen got his start in a drive in classic called The Blob, all about an undulating mass of moving red jello that came down in a meteor and immediately started eating people.

The alcohol-happy saucer men

I think one of my favorites, though, was Invasion of the Saucer Men. This one stared Lyn Osborn, who made a name playing Cadet Happy on the Space Patrol television show, as one of the hipsters in a small town were a flying saucer lands depositing a whole bunch of Onion-headed green monsters in the cow pastures. What made this one interesting -- besides Osborn’s signature laugh -- was the fact that when the saucer men (who looked an awful lot like the Martians from Mars Attacks!) attacked you, needles came out of their fingers that injected you with pure alcohol. So every time you reported them, nobody believed it cause they thought you were just drunk and seeing things.


And think of it, somebody got paid to think up that story line.

Statistically, however, it was only a matter of time before somebody came up with some quality work amongst all this hokum. And that very thing happened when, in 1953, a Hungarian-born former animator and friend of Woody Woodpecker creator Walter Lanz took on the task of producing, along with director Bryon Haskin and screenwriter Barrie Lyndon, a modern version of H.G. Wells The War of the Worlds. His name is George Pal. Already acclaimed for producing noteworthy, intelligent, well-conceived science fiction films with unbelievably good (for the time period, anyway) special effects like Destination Moon and When Worlds Collide, Pal was even given a decent budget to produce the H.G. Wells classic tale.

The ultra-cool fighting machine

Pal’s version of The War of the Worlds was like Orson Welles version in the sense that it once again modernized the story. This time, instead of a cylinder shot from Mars, the Martians crash land in a spaceship resembling a very large meteor. The fighting machines are a lot different too. Super-sleek, modern and still looking science-fiction stylish even after all these years, the 1953 Martian tripod is a sort of manta ray shaped vehicle made out of copper with a heat ray on an arm that looks a lot like a cobra coming out of the top. Rather than three metal legs, the machines are supported on three magnetic beams. It’s also equipped with green wing tips that emit a “skeleton beam” that wipes matter out of existence.

These things don’t land outside of London, and they aren’t in a field in New Jersey either. This time, the Martians land just outside of Los Angeles.

The movie stars Gene Barry as Doctor Clayton Forester and Ann Robertson as his squeeze. Forester is a physicist rather than the astronomer, Richard Pearson, Orson Welles played in the 1938 radio version. A tribute to the classic radio drama, one scene has Clayton Forester talking with Professor Richard Pearson in a television interview.

To be perfectly honest, this flick is a classic. It won an academy award for its special effects, and it was selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. It deserves the honors. Sure there’s some hokey stuff. But what do you expect? It’s 1953. There’s also some decent humor, like when the hatch starts unscrewing and the guys guarding it decide to approach with a white flag. “What should we say to them?” one of the guys asks. Another considers this for a moment, then with determination, says…”Welcome to California!” The battle scenes are scary. The scene in the small plane is scarier. The scene with the pastor is a study in pathos, the atom bomb doesn’t seem fair and even if you aren’t religious, the finale in downtown Los Angeles is unforgettable.

A scene that always makes me smile is the one showing people trying to escape using the multilayer downtown interchange on the 110 Harbor freeway. This particular part of the freeway was an engineering marvel back in 1953, which is probably why it’s so prominently featured in the film. Today its just an aging feature of an inadequate freeway system. But back then it was something else.

The War of the Worlds was not just an incredible drive in flick. It wasn’t simply an incredible science fiction movie either. It was simply put, an incredible movie.

Something that has almost been forgotten to time is the fact that there was a radio version made of George Pal’s The War of the Worlds. It was produced for a weekly radio show called the Lux Radio Theater, sponsored by Lux soap. Lux was a show that turned the scripts of the latest movies into hour-long radio plays using, whenever possible, the original stars. The Lux Radio Theater had been doing this since the 1930s. One of its very last broadcasts was the 1955 version of The War of the Worlds with Dana Andrews and Pat Crowley filling the roles Gene Barry and Ann Robinson played in the film. Faithful to the 1953 motion picture, it even uses the film’s score and sound effects. It’s amazing to me that when the 50th anniversary collector’s version of The War of the Worlds was released as a DVD set, it contained the 1938 Orson Welles radio show but not this one. And that’s quite a shame. The Lux Radio Theater version is one that any War of the Worlds collector would want to have. Unfortunately, its relatively rare.

But here’s a touch of irony. In 1938, when the Lux Radio Theater signed off for the summer, its replacement was none other than The Mercury Theater on the Air, and of course you know what they did with The War of the Worlds.

Following the success of the George Pal film, not counting the Lux Radio Theater production, it would be nearly 20 years before The War of the Worlds would appear again in a new version. But in 1978 a brand new take on the H.G. Wells classic was released. This time it was in the oddest form you can imagine given the theme. This version wasn’t a book, a radio show or even a new film. This was a double record album called Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds. This was the decade of the rock opera. And The War of the Worlds stands among the best. Wayne, the composer, uses a combination of progressive rock, string orchestra and narration to tell H.G. Wells original tale set in 19th century England. And the result is nothing short of epic. The talent Wayne tapped is awesome for its time. The War of the Worlds features Richard Burton as the newspaperman narrator of the tale along with vocals by Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues, Chris Tompson of Manfred Man, Phil Lynutt of Tin Lizzy along with Broadway star Julie Covington and British chart buster David Essex. The two-record original vinyl set was presented in two parts, The Eve of the War and The Earth Under the Martians. Some of the driving songs include Eve of the War, Forever Autumn (with lead by Hayward), Thunder Child, Spirit of Man (Covington) and David Essex’s Brave New World.

An unexpected hit, Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds stayed on the British pop charts for 29 weeks.

Some considered the album to be the ultimate retelling of Wells’ cautionary tale. But then the same thing was said about the 1938 radio broadcast and particularly about the 1953 film. When George Pal realized the success of his creation, he envisioned bringing War of the Worlds back as a television series that would follow the events of the film. Pal was unfortunately never able to pull the project off. In 1988, however, another producer named Greg Strangis  did.

This was a time when new television series were doing end-runs around the networks (cable wasn’t much a player yet back then) by producing new programs specifically for syndication. The innovator for this technique was none other than Gene Roddenberry, who decided to produce Star Trek, the Next Generation without the kinds of network interference he’d encountered with the original Star Trek. Based on the success of this bold new venture, a whole bunch of new shows for syndication came out including Friday the 13th the Series, Freddy’s Nightmares, the New Nightmares on Elm Street and The War of the Worlds. 

1953 Martian

The new series was supposedly a sequel to Pal’s ‘53 flick, and it even used the film’s Martians and the ultra-cool Martian fighting machine and its totally cool heat ray sound effects. The story line went this way; In 1953, Earth experienced a War of the Worlds. Common bacteria stopped the aliens, but it didn't kill them. Instead, the aliens lapsed into a state of deep hibernation. Now the aliens have been resurrected, more terrifying than before. In 1953, the aliens started taking over the world; today, they're taking over our bodies!

Sounds good, huh? Unfortunately, it wasn’t. The story was such a mess that the first season made very little sense. Somehow the Martians weren’t Martians anymore (well, that had to be expected after the Mariner flyby in 1966 proved that Percival Lowell and everyone else had been completely wrong about Mars). Next, for some unexplained reason the aliens could take over human bodies. But the worst story flaw of all was the invention of some sort of curious mass amnesia that prevents everyone from remembering that the 1953 invasion ever happened at all. Paramount studios, who made this TV turkey, tried for years to pretend they couldn’t remember the invasion or the series either, denying that it even existed.

This had to be the creative low point for The War of the Worlds. It seems that the once extremely plausible story had finally run its course. There have been imitators, or course, in fact everything from Star Trek’s Borg invasion to Ronald Emmerich’s 1996 Independence Day, which was nothing but a blatant rip-off of The War of the Worlds all the way down to killing the aliens with viruses -- this time a computer virus fed into their computers does the trick. But the glory days of H.G. Wells tale were over.

A final shining tribute came, however, in 1993 when a group calling themselves Alien Voices performed Howard Koch’s original Mercury Theater on the Air script of The War of the Worlds on National Public Radio on Halloween night. It was the cast that made this broadcast such a spectacular experience. Spearheaded by Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock on Star Trek and John de Lancie, who played Q on Star Trek the Next Generation, Alien Voices was made up of  the actors and actresses from one or all of the various Star Trek television shows.

Originally produced and presented live in Santa Monica by L.A. Theater Works, the Howard Koch script was directed by de Lancie and starred him, Nimoy, Dwight Schultz, Wil Weaton, Gates McFadden, Brent Spiner, Armin Shimmerman, Jerry Hardin and Tom Virtue. Sometime after the War of the Worlds broadcast, Nimoy announced that Alien Voices would produce a number of radio versions of science fiction classics on cassette tape or compact disc. The first Alien Voices production available was the live, L.A. Theater Works NPR broadcast of War of the Worlds. And while it’s still fun to listen to, there is something missing. The original live broadcast segued  into a second show without listeners knowing it, called When Wells Collide. This show begins as the live show ends by the announcer going backstage to talk to the actors celebrating in the green room when a real Martian invasion is launched by Martian fighting machines rising from the sea. The classic ending has Armin Shimmerman, who played the Ferringi named Quark on Star Trek Deep Space Nine, trapped in a van on Mt. Wilson above Los Angeles surrounded with the Martian’s black smoke trying to call a radio station to warn people about what happened. Coughing, he frantically tells the tale of the Martian invasion only to stop and announce, “Oh my God…they put me on hold!“ Meanwhile on the other end, the D.J. who still thinks L.A. has been struck with a massive earthquake says, “my engineer just told me someone called in with a story about…what‘s that Jimmy? Invaders from Mars? You people are too much. You got me. I give up. But let‘s talk about O.J…”

When Wells Collide was written by de Lancie and Nat Segaloff, who penned many of the scripts for the rest of the Alien Voices series. Unfortunately, if you weren’t listening on the night L.A. Theater Works produced the live show, you’re out of luck.

And that’s a total shame, since it was probably the last best thing done with the 19th Century classic.

Tom Cruise

Depending on how you look at things, 2005 was either a stellar or abysmal year for The War of the Worlds. Two different productions of The War of the Worlds -- one by a newcomer named Timothy Hines and the other by the legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg -- came out. Unfortunately, both were dreadful. Hines’ version, called H.G. Well’s The War of the Worlds is the only film made that is absolutely faithful to the 1896 novel. At nearly three hours long with horrible acting and some of the worst special effects imaginable, it’s almost unendurable to sit through. Just imagine if Edward K. Woods had decided to make the War of the Worlds instead of Plan 9 from Outer Space and you’re pretty much on track.

Spielberg Tripod

Spielberg’s mish-mashed version isn’t any better. Like George Pal’s version, Spielberg’s is set in modern times only in this one the main character is some loser heavy cargo loader in New York played by Tom Cruise. He ain’t no top gun in this, that’s for sure. The invasion doesn’t come from Mars. In fact no one knows exactly where the alien invaders came from since their tripod fighting machines were buried under the ground and crews got placed inside them during a lightening storm. As if this isn’t ridiculous enough, Spielberg does what Spielberg does best, namely, gum up a potentially good story with little kids just like he did in Jurassic Park. When you think back on the history of this amazing story, this final, big budget version is a total slap in H.G. Wells face. Its just a shame that Spielberg, with all his talent and influence, couldn’t have done what Hines tried to do instead of making an Independence Day remake with a moody and aging Tom Cruise prancing through a red-weed landscape hand in hand with a diminutive Dakota Fanning.


It just makes Mars seem more like a desert than ever.

Next week, a 100-percent true story about a hero, a Princess and a trip to Mars called A Sort of Fairy Tale. 

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