Welles wanted a spook show, deciding against better judgments to dust off the 40-year-old H. G. Wells fantasy The War of the Worlds and air it Oct. 30. The dissenting voices were afraid that the story would be hopelessly dated, and dull on the air. But Koch had his assignment, and the date was six days away. Welles laid out some general guidelines: he wanted the story told in a series of news bulletins, with cutaways to first-person narrative. As Koch read the original work, a sense of despair set in. H. G. Wells had set his tale in England, and his writing style was long past its prime. This was no simple cutting job: as Koch would recall in his memoir, "I realized I could use very little but the author's idea of a Martian invasion and his descriptions of their appearance and machines. In short, I was being asked to write an almost entirely original play in six days.
( John Dunning )
[ On the Air: The Encyclopedia ]
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