Mars attacks! And ‘City Hall’ is dust

May 8, 1952: When Paramount Pictures blew up a 6-foot-tall replica of Los Angeles’ City Hall, people could see “what a direct A-bomb hit might do to the city’s tallest building if war ever comes,” The Times reported under the headline “Men from Mars Blast City Hall to Pieces!”

“The blast was shot as part of a scene in George Pal’s forthcoming production, ‘The War of the Worlds,’ the same H.G. Wells story which Orson Welles produced on radio years ago to scare the wits out of the Eastern seaboard,” the newspaper said. “Paramount has modernized the story to tell of the nationwide invasion by Martians, with the first of the strange monsters landing in Southern California to devastate Los Angeles and environs with deadly rays.”

Special effects director Gordon Jennings was responsible for the sequence, which left “City Hall nothing but a crumpled mess of debris,” The Times said.

The 1953 science fiction classic won an Academy Award for its visual effects.