Theodore Roosevelt, on books:

There are rainy days in autumn and stormy days in winter

when the rocking chair in front of the fire

simply demands an accompanying book.

- Theodore Roosevelt.

Happy Halloween:

October 31 - Halloween

 

On this day in music history - Long Road Out of Eden, by the Eagles (2007):

Long Road Out of Eden

Album by the Eagles,

released October 30, 2007.

Track list:

No More Walks in the Wood; How Long; Busy Being Fabulous; What Do I Do With My Heart; Guilty of the Crime; I Don’t Want to Hear Any More; Waiting in the Weeds; No More Cloudy Days; Fast Company; Do Something; You Are Not Alone; Long Road Out of Eden; I Dreamed There Was No War; Somebody; Frail Grasp on the Big Picture; Last Good Time In Town; I Love to Watch a Woman Dance; Business As Usual; Center of the Universe; It’s Your World Now.

On this day in the Star Trek universe:

Star Trek: The Next Generation (1993)

Star Trek: Voyager (1995 & 1996)

Star Trek: Enterprise (2002)

Star Trek: The Next Generation

Season 7. Episode 7.

Episode entitled: Dark Page.

Released October 30, 1993.

Directed by Les Landau.

Written by Hilary J. Bader, René Echevarria, Naren Shankar.

Created by Gene Roddenberry.

Music by Jay Chattaway.

Cast: Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner, Majel Barrett, Norman Large, Kirsten Dunst, Amick Byram, Andreana Weiner, David Keith Anderson, Michael Braveheart, Buck (the Wolf), Tracee Cocco, John Copage, Debbie David, Hal Donahue, Gunnel Eriksson, Fumiko Hamada, Deborah Landis, Christina Wegler Miles, Rad Milo, Gina Saadi, Richard Sarstedt, Teddy (the Wolf); Oliver Theess.

Star Trek: Voyager

Season 2. Episode 8.

Episode entitled: Persistence of Vision.

Released October 30, 1995.

Directed by James L. Conway.

Created by Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor.

Written by Jeri Taylor, Kenneth Biller, Lisa Klink.

Based on Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry.

Music by Dennis McCarthy.

Cast: Kate Mulgrew, Robert Beltran, Roxann Biggs-Dawson, Jennifer Lien, Robert Duncan McNeill, Ethan Phillips, Robert Picardo, Tim Russ, Garrett Wang, Michael Cumpsty, Carolyn Seymour, Stan Ivar, Warren Munson, Lindsey Haun, Thomas Dekker, Patrick Kerr, Marva Hicks, Majel Barrett, John Copage, Tarik Ergin, Susan Henley, Kerry Hoyt, Susan Lewis, Lisa Kennedy Montgomery, Louis Ortiz, Richard Sarstedt.

Star Trek: Voyager

Season 3. Episode 7.

Episode entitled: Sacred Ground.

Released October 30, 1996.

Directed by Robert Duncan McNeill.

Created by Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor.

Written by Lisa Klink, Geo Athena Trevarthen / Geo Cameron.

Based on Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry.

Music by Jay Chattaway.

Cast: Kate Mulgrew, Robert Beltran, Roxann Biggs-Dawson, Jennifer Lien, Robert Duncan McNeill, Ethan Phillips, Robert Picardo, Tim Russ, Garrett Wang, Becky Ann Baker, Estelle Harris, Keene Curtis, Parley Baer, Harry Groener, Renna Bartlett, T. Budeck, Damaris Cordelia, Tarik Ergin, Gregg France, Dorio Gray, Kerry Hoyt, Diane Lee, Irene Lonker.

Star Trek: Enterprise

Season 2. Episode 6.

Episode entitled: Marauders.

Released October 30, 2002.

Directed by Michael/Mike Vejar.

Written by David Wilcox, Rick Berman, Brannon Braga, André Bormanis.

Created by Rick Berman, Brannon Braga.

Based on Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry.

Opening theme song: Faith of the Heart, performed by Russell Watson.

Closing theme: Archer's Theme, by Dennis McCarthy.

Music by Velton Ray Bunch.

Cast: Scott Bakula, John Billingsley, Jolene Blalock, Dominic Keating, Anthony Montgomery, Linda Park, Connor Trinneer, Larry Cedar, Steven Flynn, Bari Hochwald, Jesse James Rutherford, Robertson Dean, Wayne King, Peewee Piemonte, Alexandrea Ortiz, Michael Bailous, Chelsea Bond, Michael Braveheart, Mark Correy, Vince Deadrick Jr., Christopher Doyle, Leigh Hennessy, Pablo Soriano.

On this day in movie history - The Hidden (1987):

The Hidden

directed by Jack Sholder,

written by Bob Hunt,

was released in the United States on October 30, 1987.
Music by Michael Convertino.

Cast:

Kyle MacLachlan, Michael Nouri, Claudia Christian, Clarence Felder, Clu Gulager, Ed O’Ross, William Boyett, Richard Brooks, Larry Cedar, Katherine Cannon, John McCann, Chris Mulkey, Lin Shaye, James Luisi, Frank Renzulli, Duane Davis, Kristen Clayton, Whitney Reis, Joey Sagal, Jeff Levine, Mark Morante, Jill Friedman, Rick Lieberman, Joseph Whipp, Donald Willis, Beau Gibson, Joe Perce, Jason Edwards, Joy N. Houck Jr., Mary Petrie, Joey Aresco, Judy Kerr, Luce Morgan, Richard B. Whitaker, Michael Yama, Charlene White, Marc Siegler, Jack McGee, Steve Eastin, Ted White, Loren Haynes, Rachel Todd, Buckley Norris, Lenna Robinson, Cate Caplin, Joe Gilbride, Deke Anderson, Wren T. Brown, Alan Marcus, Mark Phelan, Danny Trejo, Branscombe Richmond, Charles Edward Smith, Lew Hopson, Doug Collins, Bob K. Cummings, Alonzo Brown Jr., Rick Diamond, Charlie Skeen, Robert Brown, Chris Wentzel, Jake (the Dog), Kris Gilpin, Michael Joiner, Robert Shaye.

On this day in television history - M Squad (1959):

M Squad

Season 3. Episode 7.

Episode entitled: Mama’s Boy.

Released October 30, 1959.

Directed by Robert Ellis Miller.

Written by Arthur Rowe.

Music by Benny Carter.

Cast:

Lee Marvin, Paul Newlan, William Allyn, John Beradino, Katharine Warren, Joseph Vitale, Julie Scott, Mary Alan Hokanson, Mike Bradford, Joe Conley, Larry Perron, Sue Randall.

On this day in radio history - The War of the Worlds (1938 radio broadcast & book):

The War of the Worlds

directed by Orson Welles,

originally broadcast on CBS Radio, on October 30, 1938.
A one-hour dramatization, based on the novel by H. G. Wells.
Written by Howard Koch.
Produced by Orson Welles and John Houseman.
Broadcast from 8 – 9 p.m. (ET)
Announced by Dan Seymour.
Hosted by the radio series: The Mercury Theatre on the Air.
Narrated by Orson Welles.
Cast: Orson Welles, Frank Readick, Kenny Delmar, Ray Collins.

-------------------------

Recommended reading:

Dead Air: The Night That Orson Welles Terrified America

By William Elliott Hazelgrove.

Published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Published 2024.

Hardcover.

ISBN-10: 1538187167

ISBN-13: 978-1538187166

Description:

A "granular history" (Wall Street Journal) of the greatest hoax in radio history and the panic that followed, which Publishers Weekly calls "a rollicking portrait of a director on the cusp of greatness" and Booklist, in a starred review, says, "Hazelgrove’s feverishly focused retelling of the broadcast as well as the fallout makes for a propulsive read as a study of both a cultural moment of mass hysteria and the singular voice at its root.”

On a warm Halloween Eve, October 30, 1938, during a broadcast of H G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, a twenty-three-year-old Orson Welles held his hands up for radio silence in the CBS studio in New York City while millions of people ran out into the night screaming, grabbed shotguns, drove off in cars, and hid in basements, attics, or anywhere they could find to get away from Martians intent on exterminating the human race. As Welles held up his hands to his fellow actors, musicians, and sound technicians, he turned six seconds of radio silence – dead air – into absolute horror, changing the way the world would view media forever, and making himself one of the most famous men in America.

In Dead Air: The Night that Orson Welles Terrified America, Willliam Elliot Hazelgrove illustrates for the first time how Orson Welles’ broadcast caused massive panic in the United States, convincing listeners across the nation that the end of the World had arrived and even leading military and government officials to become involved. Using newspaper accounts of the broadcast, Hazelgrove shows the true, staggering effect that Welles’ opera of panic had on the nation. Beginning with Welles’ incredible rise from a young man who lost his parents early to a child prodigy of the stage, Dead Air introduces a Welles who threw his Hail Mary with War of the Worlds, knowing full well that obscurity and fame are two sides of the same coin. Hazelgrove demonstrates that Welles’ knew he had one shot to grab the limelight before it forever passed him by – and he made it count.

In this fine-grained account, historian Hazelgrove (Writing Gatsby) chronicles the mass hysteria that accompanied Orson Welles's infamous 1938 radio adaptation of H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds. Hazelgrove presents Welles as an actor of immense ambition and preternatural talent, noting that by age 22, he had put on headline-grabbing plays (the government shut down his 1937 production of The Cradle Will Rock, fearing its pro-labor themes would be incendiary) and traveled around New York City in a faux ambulance to move more quickly between his numerous radio and theatrical commitments. The author recounts the rushed scriptwriting process for War of the Worlds and offers a play-by-play of the broadcast, but he lavishes the most attention on the havoc Welles wreaked. Contemporaneous news accounts reported college students fighting to telephone their parents, diners rushing out of restaurants without paying their bills, families fleeing to nearby mountains to escape the aliens' poisonous gas, and even one woman's attempted suicide. Hazelgrove largely brushes aside contemporary scholarship questioning whether the hysteria's scope matched the sensational news reports, but he persuasively shows how the incident reignited elitist fears that "Americans were essentially gullible morons" and earned Welles the national recognition he'd yearned for. It's a rollicking portrait of a director on the cusp of greatness. – Publishers Weekly.

Orson Welles may be best known for his film Citizen Kane, but a much earlier outing in his career led to the opportunity to make such an artistically ambitious undertaking. Hazelgrove charts Welles' rise from a hectic childhood to the anointed genius of stage, radio, and, eventually, film. But it was the night before Halloween in 1938 when Welles' bombastic radioplay rendition of H.G Wells' War of the Worlds, styled as a breaking-news report, caused an uproar. Arriving at a nexus point when Americans began not only to rely on the relatively new invention of radio for entertainment but also as a trusted news source, the radioplay brought many who were listening to the brink of madness, wholly believing that aliens had actually touched down in a New Jersey town. Suicides, car accidents, and general unrest swept the country, and, at show's end, Welles could only wonder if his career (and even freedom) was over too. Hazelgrove's feverishly focused retelling of the broadcast as well as the fallout makes for a propulsive read as a study of both a cultural moment of mass hysteria and the singular voice at its root. – Booklist, Starred Review.

William Elliott Hazelgrove's richly anecdotal "Dead Air" is the story of Welles's landmark October 1938 radio broadcast and the nationwide panic that resulted. Welles's "you are there" adaptation, crafted to imitate a breaking-news bulletin, sent a tremor of panic into listeners across the country who believed it to be a real report of a flying-saucer invasion. Mr. Hazelgrove has scoured regional newspapers of the time to provide a ground-level view of the hysteria that Welles's radio drama instilled—on the night before Halloween, no less. – Wall Street Journal.

"A fantastical tale about Martians coming to earth and incinerating humans with heat ray guns - up to 12 million people tuned in and were convinced aliens were exterminating the human race." – Daily Mail UK.

"The book highlights what made Welles' production particularly powerful, airing at a time when millions remained unemployed from the Great Depression and the nation was on edge about the threat of Nazi Germany. He details how Welles took advantage of those fears, including using an actor who sounded like Franklin D. Roosevelt for a part in his broadcast.

"A bottled-up sense of panic was in the air and people could almost smell the fear," he writes. "Orson Welles would open that bottle and let the fear run wild." – Associated Press.

"A convincing portrait of the artist as a young man—defiant, reckless, ruthless, and teeming with talent and ambition—Dead Air packs delights worthy of its subject." – New York Journal of Books.