An alternate version of “War of the Worlds”? A theory…
Recently, the OTR Digest mailing list has been buzzing with a discussion about what, on the surface, sounds like an alternate performance of “The War of the Worlds” that has been unearthed on a tape. Some conjectured initially that it might have been a repeat performance for the West coast feed of the “Mercury Theater” or a rehearsal recording.
Charlie Summer has made this “alternate” version available on his blog:
http://blogs.oldradio.net/archives/2009/11/05/podcast-the-war-of-the-worlds-program-2/
However, if you listen closely, it’s the well-known recording of the program that has been edited.
In the first few minutes, I can hear that the surface noise is the same, but there’s quite a bit of editing going on - the musical passages are shortened, pauses that Welles does in the intro are shortened, and the sound seems to be faded in and out to take out the discs surface noise in between phrases of speech.
Why in the world would anyone bother creating an edited version of the program?
I seem to recall, deep from the recesses of my brain, hearing WoW on some documentary or movie that was edited this way.
Was this prepared for use on a movie or tv production where characters were listening to the show? That would make sense - the director might have wanted to give the impression of listening to the “live” broadcast, trying to eliminate as much of the surface noise as possible and to take out “dead” air or “flubs” that would have been distracting to the drama of the film?
That’s my new theory about this mysterious recording - it’s from some documentary or movie. Editing the music would make sense in this situation, since the director or editor would have been trying to match narration or scenes with actors to timing of the “War of the Worlds” show or vice versa.
Anyone have a copy of Ken Burns’s “Empire of the Airwaves”, that tv movie about the “War of the Worlds” broadcast or other films where it was used to compare?
November 23rd, 2009 at 6:09 am
I think your theory is a good one - also possible someone just wanted a shortened version to air on the radio and thought “cleaning it up” and editing would make it flow faster.
November 25th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Good idea, but probably not done for Empire of the Air as there are edits throughout the entire 60 minute program and that’s a lot of extra work for a documentary. Edited for timing? The “new” version is maybe 15 seconds shorter than the accepted version, so that doesn’t seem to be a factor.
But it does flow a bit differently…there are both cuts and lengthened bits…so at different times different versions are ahead of one another. It’s not a case of version 2 always being faster.
December 18th, 2009 at 11:18 am
I suspect this version is simply a result of a faulty turntable being used for the transfer. Compared to the circulating version it seems to run slightly fast then slow, fast then slow, in roughly 15-minute segments, which suggests 4 sides of standard transcription disks. If that is the case the program would run ahead of, then behind, the “standard” version, but would come out at about the same overall length, which is exactly what happens here.