The Night That Panicked America

The Night That Panicked America
DVD cover
Genre	Drama
Screenplay by	Nicholas Meyer Anthony Wilson
Story by	Nicholas Meyer
Directed by	Joseph Sargent
Starring	Vic Morrow Meredith Baxter Tom Bosley Will Geer
Music by	Frank Comstock
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
Production
Executive producer	Anthony Wilson
Producer	Joseph Sargent
Production location	Los Angeles
Cinematography	Jules Brenner
Editors	Bud S. Isaacs George Jay Nicholson Tony Radecki
Running time	92 minutes
Production companies	The Culzean Corporation Paramount Television
Original release
Network	ABC
Release	October 31, 1975 (1975-10-31)

The Night That Panicked America is an American made-for-television drama film that was originally broadcast on the ABC network on October 31, 1975. The telefilm dramatizes events surrounding Orson Welles' famous — and infamous – War of the Worlds radio broadcast (based on the 1898 novel of the same name by English author H. G. Wells) of October 30, 1938, which had led some Americans to believe that an invasion by Martians was occurring in the area near Grover's Mill in West Windsor, New Jersey.

The Welles broadcast and the reaction to it had been earlier dramatized on television as The Night America Trembled, a live presentation that aired September 9, 1957, on Studio One.

Plot

The Night That Panicked America tells the story of the 1938 broadcast from the point of view of Welles and his associates as they create the broadcast live, as well as from the points of view of a number of different fictional American families, in a variety of locations and from a variety of social classes, who listened to the broadcast and believed the imaginary Martian invasion was actually occurring, with some people even about to commit suicide.

Cast

• Vic Morrow as Hank Muldoon
• Cliff DeYoung as Stefan Grubowski
• Michael Constantine as Jess Wingate
• Walter McGinn as Paul Stewart
• Eileen Brennan as Ann Muldoon
• Meredith Baxter as Linda Davis
• Will Geer as Reverend Davis
• Tom Bosley as Norman Smith
• Paul Shenar as Orson Welles
• John Ritter as Walter Wingate
• Granville Van Dusen as Carl Phillips
• Burton Gilliam as Tex
• Joshua Bryant as Howard Koch

Reception

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction praised the film's recreation of events in the radio studio, but was unimpressed by its depiction of the resulting panic, calling it "a routine disaster movie with hackneyed characters reacting in predictable ways." Through the 1980s, some local stations in various areas of the United States made an annual tradition of rebroadcasting Night on October 30 (the anniversary of the original radio broadcast) or on October 31 (Halloween).

The movie received three Emmy Award nominations, winning for Outstanding Achievement in Film Sound Editing – For a Single Episode of a Regular or Limited Series in 1976.

Home media

The film was released on DVD by CBS Home Entertainment on October 28, 2014.

See also

• The War of the Worlds, 1898 novel by H. G. Wells
• List of American films of 1975
• The Night America Trembled - the earlier dramatization. The cast included Alexander Scourby, Ed Asner, and Warren Oates. James Coburn made his television debut, and, in one of his earliest acting roles, Warren Beatty appeared in the bit part of a card-playing college student.

External links

• The Night That Panicked America at IMDb
• Illustrated summary of The Night That Panicked America Archived 2007-05-25 at the Wayback Machine