A recent showing on television of the remake of the classic movie: “The War of the Worlds” made me think of the extraordinary circumstances and events which occurred on October 30, 1938 when Orson Welles who was at that time relatively unknown, broadcast his radio drama over the WABC radio network. The first two thirds of the one hour broadcast was presented as a series of semi-real news bulletins, which made many listeners actually believe that a Martian invasion was in progress. This broadcast was to be the making of Orson Welles as a celebrity!
What isn’t so widely known about Orson Welles however is that he was a very enthusiastic and competent magician who frequently performed card tricks. In an interview with Tannens Magic a couple of years before he died, he said :
“My father loved magic and bought me a couple of big illusions when I was a young boy. In those days we had Thurston and all those great stage magicians. I started doing sleight-of-hand when I was 11 or 12. The first thing I wanted to do was the boxes (that’s what Thurston did). I loved Houdini but he wasn’t an illusionist; he was a challenger. He challenged the audience. He didn’t seduce them. He set up a kind of Olympic game and then won it at the end … he was dynamic … he had a kind of contempt for illusionists.”
Even David Blaine, who like past performers has cultivated an air of mystery and eccentricity has named Orson Welles as one of his major inspirations in this aspect.
Photograph: A young and dynamic looking Orson Welles photographed by Carl Van Vechten