THEATER / T.H. McCULLOH : ‘War of Worlds’ Invades Imagination

“This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen,” the bronze-toned voice announced at the end of the program, “out of character, to assure you that ‘The War of the Worlds’ has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be, the Mercury Theatre’s own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying, ‘boo.’ ”

That, of course, was the sign-off. But it was too late. Much of the country was already in a panic.

On Oct. 30, 1938, on the eve of the opening of Welles’ New York WPA-Mercury Theatre production of “Danton’s Death,” Welles had a Halloween joke up his magical sleeve. Tonight through Sunday, in the same tongue-in-cheek vein, the Garden Grove Community Theatre is presenting a re-creation of that broadcast, live on stage, including sound effects, period props and costumes and all the surprises and drama that shook American audiences more than a half-century ago.

Robert Kozlowski, president of the theater’s board, is making his directorial debut with this holiday weekend show, and recalls his early days when he sat glued to his family’s old Philco enraptured with what has been called theater of the mind.

“I was born after this broadcast,” Kozlowski says, “but I remember listening to radio and having the imagination going. Looking back on radio today, if you’re doing film or television, you have to really present the visual images. With radio, you used words. Each person could have a different image, but to each person it was real. And it’s cheaper to do.”

Kozlowski notes the effect this particular broadcast had on many of its listeners, those who had started listening to Edgar Bergen and Charley McCarthy on NBC, gotten bored with their guest singer and switched over to CBS and the “Mercury Theatre on the Air.” What they heard was a dance band remote broadcast, the fictional Ramon Raquello and his Orchestra.

Suddenly a fictional reporter interrupted the broadcast with the announcement that a meteor had landed in a field in Grover’s Mill, N.J. More music. Then another report that it was not a meteor, but a space ship. More music. Then, from inside the ship, something was emerging. The chance listeners, the ones who hadn’t heard the show’s intro, fell for it hook, line and sinker.

Kozlowski’s fascination with radio drama came back to him when his wife started giving him tapes of old radio shows to listen to in his car on the freeway. He was mesmerized. “I have driven past my off-ramp, I’m so into whatever tape is on the radio,” he admits. “You really get involved.”

He began thinking about presenting the Welles classic at the theater two years ago. Last year, he says, the group “talked about it.” This year the time was ripe, and he thought the show would be a neat Halloween gift from the theater to the neighborhood.

First, he had to get the rights. He located a phone number in Woodstock, N.Y., that might guide him to the estate of the author of the show, Howard Koch. When he inquired of the answering voice about the estate, the voice said, “I’m Howard Koch.”

At 91, Koch--who also wrote the final shooting script for the film “Casablanca”--is retired. He readily granted GGCT the rights to do “War of the Worlds.”

In a telephone interview, Koch appears unimpressed with having created two such classics. “They were both accidental,” he says. “They both seemed to have their own life, apart from any of us. All I was asking was to keep my job.”

Koch was a struggling playwright when he started working for Welles, and when he, John Houseman and Welles were, as he says, “bounced out to Hollywood.”

“At first,” Koch says about the morning after the broadcast, “we were in danger. The police raided the studio and gathered up all the scripts.” Welles was held at CBS overnight. Koch was at his apartment on Manhattan’s West Side, looking forward to his usual half-day off before beginning the next week’s script.

“I walked up Broadway to my barber, and on the way I heard people saying, ‘invasion . . . war’ and so on,” Koch says. “So I hurried into the barbershop and I said, ‘Are we at war? Has Hitler made his move?’ My barber held up the paper to me with a headline, ‘Mars Invasion Broadcast Panics Nation.’ It was a very strange moment in my life.”

Koch also recalls, with a chuckle, an incident at CBS on the night of the broadcast: “On that night, the CBS telephone information people were asked to be more polite to the people who called in. The supervisor was walking up and down and heard one of the operators say, ‘I’m sorry, we don’t have that information here.’ The supervisor tapped the girl on the shoulder and said, ‘That was very nicely spoken. What question did they ask?’ And the girl said, ‘They wanted to know if it was the end of the world.’ ”

If those terrified radio listeners had stayed with the show, they would have heard the smile in Welles’ voice as he finished his sign-off:

”. . . that grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the punkin patch. And if your doorbell rings and nobody’s there, that was no Martian; it’s Halloween.”

* Orson Welles’ “The War of the Worlds,” Garden Grove Community Theatre, Chapman and Valley View, East Gate Park, Garden Grove. Tonight, Saturday and Sunday at 8 p.m. Tickets are $8. For information and reservations, (714) 897-5122.