In 1938, Herz was a member of the Mercury Theater on the
Air, a drama company founded by a little-known director named Orson Welles.
"He was a brilliant, wonderful, impossible human
being," Herz says.
The Mercury Players broadcast on CBS Radio. On Oct. 30,
Halloween Eve, they did an adaptation of H.G. Wells' "War of the
Worlds." Herz, the only surviving member of the cast, read Welles' part
during dress rehearsal.
"I really thought it was pretty far out and people
would not respond to it," Herz says.
Herz couldn't have been more wrong.
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Bob Sanders, who grew up in Grovers Mill, recalls that
night. He’s 81 now and remembers his father assuring the family during the
broadcast that it was just a radio drama.
“We all sat there and listened to it, and I guess about
halfway through the road filled up with cars,” he tells KYW Newsradio 1060 AM
in Philadelphia . Some of the local people put their families
in the car and took off before they found out it was a hoax, and others wanted
to come see what the Martians looked like!
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