The War of the Worlds Murder

by Max Allan Collins

  “Damn!” Gibson said, looking back toward the mouth of the alley—no sign of the hoods. They’d apparently disappeared into the dark, as Welles and Gibson made their escape.

  Again, a hand settled on the writer’s shoulder. “Are you all right, Walter?”

  “I may need a change of underwear.” He gave his host a hard look. “That was a little reckless, wasn’t it?”

  Welles snorted. “I wasn’t going to let those overgrown Dead End Kids get away with that nonsense.”

  “The leader had a gun!”

  The cab driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror were on them.

  Welles said, “He wouldn’t have fired, not so close to Broadway, not with a dozen cops around. They were just trying to scare us.”

  Gibson blew out air. “Well, where I’m concerned, it worked like a charm.”

  When the taxi pulled up at the St. Regis, a doorman approaching, Welles said, “Get some rest—I’m heading back to the Mercury. We’ll have breakfast in my room, around ten, then go over to CBS together around noon. Agreeable?”

  But Welles did not wait for an answer, and the taxi glided away, the moon face smiling at him, a cheerfully demented, if slightly overweight elf.

  In his room, between the Egyptian-cotton sheets, Gibson lay exhausted but exhilarated—and it took him a good hour to go to sleep.

  It wasn’t that he was disturbed, and certainly his fear had passed: but story ideas were humming through his mind. Soon he had an image of himself at the antique writing desk, starting another story, not realizing he was only dreaming....

  SUNDAY

  OCTOBER 30, 1938

  WALTER GIBSON’S FAMOUS CREATION WAS not the only Shadow cast by radio in 1938—the shadow of war also served to keep listeners on edge, and in a far more disturbing fashion....

  For several months prior to The Mercury Theatre on the Air’s broadcast of a certain H.G. Wells science-fiction yarn, listeners had been alerted to the troublesome state of the world, homes all across the nation taken hostage by talking boxes in their living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms and automobiles. The same gizmo that was sharing household hints and fudge recipes, cowboy adventures and comedy shows, weather reports and advertisements for corn plasters, popular tunes and classical music, was also bombarding America with the latest disasters, subjecting them to an endless parade of ominous international events. At no other time since the beginning of broadcasting had the collective audience been held in such a rapt, fearful grip, with listeners quite accustomed to their favorite programs being interrupted for news updates...and the news was never good....

  In his September address to the annual Nazi party congress in Nuremberg, German dictator Adolf Hitler demanded autonomy over an area on the Czech border known as Sudetenland. It seemed over three million “Sudeten Germans,” as the Führer called them, were “tortured souls” who could not “obtain rights and help themselves,” so the Nazis had to do it for them. (The translation Americans heard was provided by the dean of radio commentators, H.V. Kaltenborn, who just months before had been chosen by Orson Welles to narrate the Mercury radio broadcast of “Julius Caesar,” to add “a dimension of realism and immediacy.”) On October 3, Germany made its triumphant drive into the town of Asch, and a week later, Hitler’s troops occupied the Sudetenland.

  Hearing of such an ill-boding event firsthand was already old hat to American radio listeners. Hitler’s conquests became a kind of serial for grown-ups, the Czech crisis playing out over three tense weeks—listeners hearing firsthand the march step of Nazi boots, the accusations and the threats, the rumblings of war that included the Far Eastern menace of the Japanese. At the height of the European crisis, about a month before the “War of the Worlds” broadcast, a presentation of “Sherlock Holmes” by The Mercury Theatre on the Air had been interrupted by a news bulletin, irritating (but also making an impression on) Orson Welles.

  Most Americans felt the inevitability of involvement of the U.S.A. in a world conflict in which its allies were either threatened or already embroiled: as the Germans marched into Austria, the English people were issued gas masks, and all of Europe noted with alarm Hitler calling up to active duty one million weekend soldiers from the German army reserve.

  Radio statistics indicated that the medium’s audience had never been larger; what the numbers didn’t spell out was that these masses of listeners had never been more worried. Days before the “War of the Worlds” broadcast, Leni Riefenstahl—German filmmaker and rumored mistress of the Führer—was in Manhattan promoting her documentary about the 1936 Olympics, finding critical acceptance and public hostility. Meanwhile in Rome, the voice of fascism—the newspaper II Tevere—ordered the boycott of the films of Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers and the Ritz Brothers, the humor of these Jewish filmmakers condemned as “not Aryan.”

  And the looming war was not the sole source of American jitters—earlier in 1938, a hurricane had hit the East Coast with devastating power; and, the year previous, the first disaster ever to be broadcast live exposed thousands to the explosion of the Hindenburg. When the German zeppelin caught fire at its mooring in Lakehurst, New Jersey, the announcer had been in the midst of describing the huge craft’s grandeur, only to witness...and report in “on the spot” fashion...the bursting flames and the dying people and all the ensuing chaos. His sobs—even his retching—had gone out over the air waves, “live”....

  Just four days before the “War of the Worlds” broadcast, CBS’s prestigious (if little-listened-to) Columbia Workshop aired a verse play by Archibald MacLeish: “Air Raid.” Orson Welles listened to the production on a break rehearsing Danton’s Death, because he had loaned his friend and Mercury regular, Ray Collins, to the production to be its narrator, a mock announcer reporting an air raid from a European tenement rooftop—the whine of attacking planes could be heard, the explosions of their dropped bombs, the sounds of a confused populace running for shelter, machine-gun fire, the screams of victims, including a young boy....

  Though written in verse, and clearly a play, the approach invoked a live news report. Welles heard this realistic radio drama a few hours before he made his suggestions to Howard Koch, John Houseman and Paul Stewart, about revising the script for “War of the Worlds” into a collage of broadcasts interrupted by news bulletins.

  As one of the participants in the “War of the Worlds” broadcast would reflect many years later, “The American people had been hanging on their radios, getting most of their news no longer from the press, but over the air. A new technique of ‘on-the-spot’ reporting had been developed and eagerly accepted by an anxious and news-hungry world. The Mercury Theatre on the Air, by faithfully copying every detail of the new technique—including its imperfections—found an already enervated audience ready to accept its wildest fantasies....”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SHANGHAIED LADY

  THOUGH HE’D HAD A GOOD (if dream-troubled) night’s sleep—his breakfast with Orson at the director’s suite had not been till ten A.M.—Walter Gibson felt logy, almost groggy, in the aftermath of the Welles morning repast. Enough orange juice, coffee, eggs, sausage, hash brown potatoes with melted cheese, and assorted muffins and sweet rolls had been delivered by St. Regis butlers to attend the gastric needs of your average lumberjack camp.

  Perhaps in an ill-advised effort to keep up with his host, Gibson ate around a Paul Bunyan’s worth. Welles ate easily two Bunyan’s plus one Babe the Blue Ox’s worth to boot, conversation scant, the food commanding the boy-man’s full attention. What conversation had preceded and followed the feast touched little on the Shadow project, concentrating instead on their mutual fascination with magic. Welles inquired how Gibson had developed that interest.

  “Just before my tenth birthday,” Gibson said, sitting back, the meal finished, having to work to think, his body and all the blood in it occupied with a major digestive task, “I attended the birthday party of a friend—typical kind of kid celebration, you know....”

  Well
es, also sitting back, hands folded on his belly (he was again wearing the bathrobe with the hotel crest), said, “I don’t remember attending any birthday parties as a child.”

  “Pin the tail on the donkey, games of tag, plenty of cake and ice cream...”

  Welles—who loved being on either end of a story, and listened with keen, obvious interest—lighted up one of his pool-cue cigars.

  Gibson was saying, “The parents of my young friend, a girl, knew that my birthday was coming up fast, as well, and perhaps out of deference to me, they came up with a special game: each child was presented with a long ribbon that disappeared out of the parlor into the house—a two-story house, Victorian in style. Some ribbons slithered like snakes around the furnishings, to go up and down the stairs, others led out the front and back doors....”

  “Walter,” Welles said, sighing smoke, “you paint a vivid picture—as always.”

  “Thank you. Anyway, each child followed the ribbon through the house...and we all were led to a present of our very own!”

  “Ah!”

  “Mine led up the stairs and into a guest bedroom, where under the bed I discovered my prize...” Gibson leaned forward, milking it. “...a box of magic tricks.”

  Welles’s eyes widened, as if his guest had reported discovering Blackbeard’s hidden treasure.

  “It was German-made, with all the standard tricks of the day—I suppose, objectively speaking, it was nothing special. But it changed my life. It was as if that ribbon had led me to my future.”

  Welles, smiling with delight, eyes sparkling, said, “No wonder we’re kindred spirits! My godfather gave me a professional magician’s box of stage tricks—I was five! And it was my godfather, my guardian—Dr. Bernstein—who took me backstage to meet Houdini, when I was six!”

  Finally, Gibson thought, the Houdini story. Would it be true?

  “I apparently impressed the great man with my childish enthusiasm—I blurted out virtually everything I knew about magic in a matter of a minute or two—and that was how I came to be taught a simple but effective trick with a red handkerchief, presenting me with everything I needed to pull it off myself—the vanishing coin trick?”

  “I know it well.”

  Placing a handkerchief over the left hand, the magician pokes a pocket in the cloth, so that the coin can be dropped there; then the magician shakes the handkerchief...and the coin has vanished! (This was achieved by having a rubber band around the fingers and thumb of the left hand, which closed the “pocket” the coin was pushed into, so that the coin remained caught and hidden when the handkerchief was shaken out.)

  Welles leaned forward, one eye narrowed. “I was always a quick study, so I followed Houdini to his dressing room like a stray puppy. He glanced around at me, not knowing whether to be irritated or amused. ‘Look, sir!’ I said...and I performed the trick for him!”

  Gibson chuckled and clapped, once.

  Welles lifted his eyebrows. “Well...let us say that the great Harry Houdini was less than overwhelmed by my childish legerdemain. He gave me a stern scolding: never, ever was a trick to be performed until it had been practiced a thousand times!”

  “Not bad advice.”

  “Splendid advice...but there’s more. I practiced and practiced the vanishing coin trick, and a few months later, when Houdini returned with his stage act, we again went backstage, before the show...this time it was with my father accompanying me, on a rare visit home...and were welcomed warmly. Houdini remembered my obnoxious, precocious little self. I was about to demonstrate my improved stagecraft when a certain Carl Brema arrived—”

  Gibson grinned. “Of course—the manufacturer of magic tricks.”

  “Yes. Brema had a vanishing lamp trick he’d just perfected. He demonstrated it for Houdini, who beamed and said, ‘Wonderful, Carl—I’ll put it in the show tonight!’ ”

  Welles’s roar of laughter was worthy of Henry the Eighth, and Gibson—despite the overeating-inspired discomfort—joined in heartily.

  Now Gibson believed Welles had really met Houdini—the story sounded just like the man....

  “There’s a coincidence,” Gibson said, “that further cements our destiny together.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The trick of mine I mentioned the other day—the Hindu wand trick Houdini requested from me, but died before he could use it...?”

  “Yes?”

  “It was Carl Brema who executed my design—who built the wands for Houdini to use.”

  “But never did.”

  “No.”

  His expression intense, Welles sat forward. “Walter, I must have that trick. When I take out my magic act on the road, that trick must be included!”

  “You haven’t even seen it yet, Orson...”

  “If it’s good enough for Houdini and Gibson, it’s good enough for Welles. Name your price!”

  Gibson raised his palms in surrender. “I already told you, Orson, it’s yours—and I wouldn’t take a dime for it. The experience of this weekend is payment enough.”

  Welles glowed, the fat cigar in his teeth at a rakish angle. He lifted a coffee cup for a toast; Gibson clinked cups with him.

  “To us,” Welles said. “To our collaboration....”

  Soon—looking every bit the magician with his Shadowesque cloak, slouch hat, black suit, bow tie and walking stick, Welles escorted Gibson to the elevators. As they waited, Welles blurted, “Walter—do you really believe in magic?”

  “As an art?”

  “As a science...even a religion. What we do with stagecraft—whether it’s the Mercury transforming some musty classic into a vital contemporary experience, or sawing a woman in half who then gets up and walks around—is tap onto the public’s fascination with the unknown, the occult. Fakers we may be, but what we touch in people is genuine.”

  Gibson was nodding. “I do believe in some force, something greater than the human mind.”

  “I ponder that frequently.” Welles watched the dial on the floor indicator above the elevator doors; their ride was on its way. “Of course, our friend Houdini spent much time debunking psychics....”

  “He did indeed—but that was all part of a search to find real evidence of psychic phenomenon.”

  A bell dinged and in a moment they were stepping onto a car otherwise empty but for a young elevator attendant.

  On the way down, Welles said to his companion, “Would you care for anecdotal evidence, to support the existence of genuine magic?”

  “Certainly.”

  “You know of our so-called ‘voodoo’ Macbeth...?”

  “I do. I regret not seeing it.”

  Welles smiled wistfully. “It was a wonderful production.... Nothing is likely to top it in my experience....” Then he shifted gears. “Did you know that only one New York critic wrote an unfavorable review?”

  “I recall the show was a huge success, well-received.”

  Nodding, Welles said, “Yes, but Percy Hammond was dismissive, and hurt the feelings of our Lady Macbeth. We had a number of real Haitians in the show, you know...”

  “I didn’t.”

  “In fact, we even had a sort of company witch doctor, who decided to treat the critic in question to a particularly virulent curse.”

  Gibson chuckled. “You’re not saying the voodoo bit took hold, are you?”

  With an altar boy’s smile, Welles said, “I leave that for you to decide, Walter—but the facts are these: Percy Hammond’s review appeared on Tuesday, he fell sick on Thursday and was dead by Sunday.”

  A bell announced the lobby, and the young elevator operator opened the door for them, but made no announcement, looking agape as the tall man in the cape and his companion stepped off.

  No ambulance was needed today—they took a cab.

  Leaning back in the backseat, arms folded, traffic gliding by his window, Welles said, “You know for all the fuss we’re making about this show, tonight—we have one of the worst Crossley ratings around. Why do we try so
hard?”

  “For the satisfaction?”

  With a shrug, Welles said, “I suppose. The blessing of having a low-rated program is that we don’t have to please the lowest common denominator among listeners. Still, one craves a wider audience....”

  Gibson was aware that The Mercury Theatre on the Air was a “sustaining” program—unsponsored, supported only by the network itself (The Shadow’s longtime sponsor was Blue Coal). No one wanted to advertise on a program opposite something as popular as Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergen. But CBS had earned a reputation as a prestige network because these low-rated shows were considered artistic and creative oases in a medium ruled by sponsors who asked only, “Will it play in Peoria?”

  By half past noon, Gibson was following Welles off another elevator, this time onto the twentieth floor of the Columbia Broadcasting Building, as the uniformed attendant held the door open for them both.

  “Thank you, Leo my boy,” Welles said to the attendant.

  Leo—a diminutive “boy” of perhaps fifty-five—beamed as if God had heard his prayer. “Thank you, Mr. Welles!”

  They had barely stepped into the lobby when Welles’s shrimp of an assistant, Alland a.k.a. Vakhtangov, was suddenly just there...as if he’d materialized, to lift the cloak from Welles’s shoulders, remove his suitcoat exposing the black suspenders on the white shirt, take charge of his hat and walking stick, and then disappear somewhere. This all happened so quickly, Gibson couldn’t even manage a, “Huh?”

  Then Welles moved quickly across the lobby, only to stop so short Gibson almost bumped into him. The great man had paused at the receptionist’s desk, where a uniformed CBS security guard sat leaning back, reading the Sunday funnies. He was about thirty, brown eyes, brown hair, average build, the textbook definition of nondescript.

  “You are not Miss Donovan,” Welles said, arching an eyebrow.

  The security guard peered over the front page—Dick Tracy—and revealed an oval unimpressed face, eyes half-lidded, a typical blank cop mask.