Max Collins: The War of the Worlds Murder

Suddenly it was the Shadow creator and the kid from Iowa, alone in the crowded suite.

“I’ve always loved Orson Welles,” I said, returning gingerly to the topic. “What were the circumstances of you knowing him, if you weren’t very involved with the radio program?”

“Well…” Gibson, who was nursing a beer, glanced about the smoky room, as if to make sure no one was around; of course, thirty or thirty-five people were around….

“If I’m overstepping…”

Gibson studied me; something about him seemed at once ancient and childlike. “It is a hell of a story.”

“And you’re a hell of a storyteller, Mr. Gibson.”

He let out a single laugh. “And don’t think I wouldn’t get a kick out of sharing it with somebody. It’s just…well, a lot of the people are still alive.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand…”

“People could still get in trouble-at the very least, be embarrassed, badly so.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “Suppose we went down to the bar, and found a quiet corner…”

“I know just the corner.”

“Would you promise not to tell anyone? At least, not until the players have…shuffled off this mortal coil? As Orson might put it.”

“I won’t betray your confidence, Mr. Gibson.”

“When a magician shares a magic trick with a student, he must do so in full confidence that the student will guard the secret of that trick.”

“You’re killin’ me, Mr. Gibson…. I have to hear this story….”

He grinned his uncle’s grin. “You deserve a reward, young man. For sticking up for your hero. For sticking up for pulp writers everywhere…. Let’s go down and have a few more beers. Who knows how good this story might get?”

The two of us eased out of the suite, unseen shadows slipping into the night-or at least, the hallway.

Soon we had settled into our corner of the little bar off the lobby, and I’d bought a pitcher of beer, though over the next hour and a half, we barely dented it. The tale Walter Gibson told provided all the intoxication either of us needed.

His eyes narrowed in thought in the pleasant, jowly face. “It was just about…let me do the computation…thirty-seven years ago. Almost exactly thirty-seven years ago. I was older than you, but not by much.”

“Thirty-seven years…what, 1938 then? Was Welles still doing the Shadow?”

“He’d just quit. The show was on Sunday afternoons, done live, and young Orson had a new program… The Mercury Theatre on the Air ….”

“Wait a minute…this weekend-Hallowe’en’s just days away.”

“Yes it is.”

“Isn’t Hallowe’en when…?”

“Yes it was.”

I was sitting forward. “ ‘The War of the Worlds’…most famous radio show of all time. And you were there ?”

“Yes,” Gibson said, eyes twinkling. “I was.” He was staring at me with mischievious delight over his folded hands, those fingers that had pounded out so many pulp yarns, one of them wearing an impressive gold ring that I realized was a replica of the Shadow’s famous fire opal. “And I’ve never told a soul about it…not even any of my wives.”

A chill of excitement went up my spine; I hadn’t felt anything like it since my bedroom was dark and I was six and the Shadow was laughing his deep, sinister laugh….

“But you’re going to tell me, aren’t you, Mr. Gibson?”

“Call me Walter…. And yes, I am. I am indeed going to tell you. I’m going to tell you about the murder that happened thirty-seven years ago, right in the CBS studios-the day, the night, that Orson Welles sent America into a panic. A murder that even the Martians didn’t know about….”

And he began to speak, in a mellow voice that was not as commanding as that of Orson Welles, but commanding enough, stage magician that Walter Gibson had been, and still was. His was a voice in the near darkness, and I sat enthralled by it, much as so many in the mid-twentieth century had crowded around their radio consoles in their own homes in Depression-era America.

Now another thirty years have passed.

And I’ve never told anybody the story. Not my wife. Not even Bob Randisi.

Walter Gibson is gone; so is Chris Steinbrunner, and Lawrence R. Trout, too. A few years ago I was Guest of Honor at a Bouchercon, and I’m pleased to report that no one treated me as badly as I treated the esteemed Mr. Trout. Mickey Spillane, at 87, is still with us; and a few years back, I was among a handful of mystery writers who saw to it that Mike Hammer’s creator did indeed receive a Grand Master Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

But just about everyone who was at CBS the day and night of “The War of the Worlds” broadcast is long since gone-among them, Howard Koch, the scriptwriter, and Welles’s partner and future nemesis, John Houseman. Paul Stewart (so memorable a bad guy in the film of Spillane’s Kiss Me, Deadly ) has left the earthly studio, as has the musical genius Bernard Herrmann, who lives on in such film scores as Vertigo, North by Northwest and Taxi Driver .

Welles himself, of course, has also departed, though leaving behind a handful of classic films and a certain unforgettable, history-making radio broadcast.

No one can be hurt now, or even embarrassed, by my revealing what really occurred at CBS, on the eve of Hallowe’en in 1938.

I have added to the account Walter shared with me in that Palmer House bar in Chicago in 1975 a good deal of research into the other events of October 30, 1938-the ones that occurred outside the CBS studios. So the picture I will paint, in the theater of your mind, will flesh out somewhat the story the Shadow’s creator shared with me.

And I must admit that nothing in my research confirmed what Walter said, in our dark corner of the hotel bar at Bouchercon Six; but nothing contradicted it, either….

I leave it to you to decide, and remain obediently yours,

Max Allan Collins

October 31, 2004

Muscatine, Iowa

B y 1938, that experimental novelty known as radio had become mass communication, informing and entertaining listeners from (as announcers of the era so loved to point out) coast to coast .

In 1920 the first public broadcast told the United States that President Harding had been elected; now President Roosevelt was using the medium for “fireside chats”…and when November rolled around, FDR (and all American politicians) would listen with rapt attention to election returns, courtesy of this most immediate of mediums .

The first radio entertainment emanated from a garage in Pittsburgh-station KDKA-serving thousands; now ventriloquist Edgar Bergen with his dummy Charlie McCarthy brought laughter to over thirty million every Sunday night on their Chase and Sanborn Hour. The drawing power of the young medium could hardly be denied, even if the popularity of a ventriloquist act unseen by its audience did raise certain questions about the willingness of these listeners to buy just about anything, and not just what the sponsors were selling ….

If the diversions radio provided were less sophisticated than those of a concert hall, the Broadway theater or even your neighborhood moviehouse, Amos ’n’ Andy, Major Bowes and Fibber McGee and Molly didn’t cost a dime, and were accessible at the flip of a switch and the turn of a dial. After all, just about everybody had a radio-ten million were sold per year, most homes having at least one, with car radios and portable sets making broadcasting a mobile member of the family. Radio was seriously undermining newspapers as the nation’s preferred news source (ironically, many stations were owned by those same papers), even while providing-in a country still reeling from the Depression-a cheap alternative to movies .