On this day in music history - Angel Above My Piano, by Fiona Joy Hawkins (2006):

Angel Above My Piano

Album by Fiona Joy Hawkins,

released October 31, 2006.

Track list:

Escarpment Dreaming; View from My Studio; Portrait of a Waterfall; Opus Rain: 1st Movement ‘Through Cloud’; 2nd Movement ‘Rain’; 3rd Movement ‘The Ascent’; Prelude to a Landscape; A Winter Morning; Improvisation; Ciney’s Theme (Wedding March); For the Roses; Portrait of a Waterfall Reprise; Opus for Love: Love Forever (Reprise).

On this day in movie history - Sylvia (2003):

Sylvia

directed by Christine Jeffs,

written by John Brownlow,

was released in the United States on October 31, 2003.
Music by Gabriel Yared.

Cast:

Gwyneth Paltrow, David Birkin, Alison Bruce, Amira Casar, Daniel Craig, Blythe Danner, Lucy Davenport, Julian Firth, Jeremy Fowlds, Michael Gambon, Sarah Guyler, Jared Harris, Andrew Havill, Theresa Healey, Liddy Holloway, Robyn Malcolm, Michael Mears, Siobhan Page, Derek Payne, Sonia Ritter, Billy Seymour, Antony Strachan, Katherine Tozer, Sam Troughton, Eliza Wade, Ben Want, Joel Want, Hannah Watkins, Tandi Wright, Rhys Bond, David House, James Hurn, William Palmer.

On this day in the Star Trek universe:

Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987 & 1992)

Star Trek: Enterprise (2001)

Star Trek: The Next Generation

Season 1. Episode 6.

Episode entitled: Lonely Among Us.

Released October 31, 1987.

Directed by Cliff Bole.

Written by D.C. Fontana, Michael Halperin.

Created by Gene Roddenberry.

Music by Ron Jones.

Cast: Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, LeVar Burton, Denise Crosby, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner, Wil Wheaton, John Durbin, Colm Meaney, Kavi Raz, Marc Alaimo, James G. Becker, Darrell Burris, Dexter Clay, Jeffrey Deacon, Susan Duchow, Shana Golden, Nora Leonhardt, Tim McCormack, James McElroy, John Meier, Lorine Mendell.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

Season 6. Episode 7.

Episode entitled: Rascals.

Released October 31, 1992.

Directed by Adam Nimoy.

Written by Allison Hock, Ward Botsford, Diana Dru Botsford, Michael Piller, Brannon Braga, René Echevarria, Naren Shankar.

Created by Gene Roddenberry.

Music by Dennis McCarthy.

Cast: Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner, Colm Meaney, Rosalind Chao, Michelle Forbes, David Birkin, Megan Parlen, Caroline Junko King, Isis Carmen/J. Jones, Mike Gomez, Tracey Walter, Michael Snyder, Brian Bonsall, Whoopi Goldberg, Morgan Nagler, Hana Hatae, Majel Barrett, Lena Banks, Michael Braveheart, Tracee Cocco, Debbie David, Grace Harrell, Christi Haydon, David B. Levinson, Adam Lieberman, Keith Rayve, Victor Sein.

Star Trek: Enterprise

Season 1. Episode 7.

Episode entitled: The Andorian Incident.

Released October 31, 2001.

Directed by Roxann Dawson.

Written by Fred Dekker, Rick Berman, Brannon Braga, Fred Dekker, Phyllis Strong, Michael/Mike Sussman, Stephen Beck, André Jacquemetton, Maria Jacquemetton, 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 Paul Baillargeon.

Cast: Scott Bakula, John Billingsley, Jolene Blalock, Dominic Keating, Anthony Montgomery, Linda Park, Connor Trinneer, Jeffrey Combs, Bruce French, Steven Dennis, Jeff Ricketts, Richard Tanner, Jamie McShane, Bill Blair, Jane Bordeaux, Solomon Burke Jr., Steve Chvany, Amy Kate Connolly, Evan English, Jack Guzman, John Jurgens, Linwood Porter, Aric Rogokos, Cynthia Uhrich, Gary Weeks.

On this day in movie history - Borderline (1980):

Borderline

directed by Jerrold Freedman,

written by Jerrold Freedman and Steve Kline,

was released in the United States on October 31, 1980.
Music by Gil Melle.

Cast:

Charles Bronson, Bruno Kirby, Bert Remsen, Michael Lerner, Kenneth McMillan, Ed Harris, Karmin Murcelo, Enrique Castillo, Wilford Brimley, Norman Alden, James Victor, Panchito Gómez, John Ashton, Lawrence P. Casey, Charles Cyphers, John Roselius, Murray MacLeod, Jerry DeWilde, Katherine Pass, Virgil Frye, Luis Contreras, Eduardo Ricard, John O’Banion, Rodger LaRue, Cha Cha Sandoval-McMahon, Virginia Bingham, Anthony Munoz, Ray Ochoa, Ab Taylor, Frank Deatsch, Juan DeLira, Tammy Wilson, Chris Coronado, Tony Alvarenga, Ferdinand Pina, Arnold Diaz, Sy Fuentes, Carlos Muñoz, Norberto Hernández, Luther Fear.

On this day in television history - Space 1999 (1976):

Space 1999

Season 2. Episode 8.

Episode entitled: The Rules of Luton.

Released October 31, 1976.

Directed by Val Guest.

Written by Charles Woodgrove.

Series created by Gerry Anderson and Sylvia Anderson.

Music by Derek Wadsworth.

Cast:

Martin Landau, Barbara Bain, Catherine Schell, Tony Anholt, David Jackson, Godfrey James, Roy Marsden, Yasuko Nagazumi, Jenny Cresswell, Annie Lambert.

On this day in movie history - The Night That Panicked America (movie & book):

The Night That Panicked America

directed by Joseph Sargent,

written by Nicholas Meyer and Anthony Wilson,

based on a story by Nicholas Meyer,

was released in the United States on October 31, 1975.
TV movie, originally screened on the ABC network.
Based on Orson Welles’ dramatized radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds,

in turn based on the novel H. G. Wells,

broadcast as part of the CBS Radio series The Mercury Theatre on the Air on October 30, 1938.

Music by Frank Comstock.

Cast:

Paul Shenar, Vic Morrow, Cliff De Young, Michael Constantine, Walter McGinn, Eileen Brennan, Meredith Baxter, Tom Bosley, Will Geer, John Ritter, Granville Van Dusen,   Burton Gilliam, Joshua Bryant, Liam Dunn, Shelley Morrison, Walker Edmiston, Marcus J. Grapes, Art Hannes, Casey Kasem, Ron Rifkin, Byron Webster, Clarke Gordon, Linda Dano, Tracy Brooks Swope, Hanna Landy, Robert Lussier, Ed Bakey, Bob Harks, Michelle Stacy.

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.

On this day in movie history - They Came to Rob Las Vegas (1968):

They Came to Rob Las Vegas

directed by Antonio Isasi,

written by Antonio Isasi, Lluis Josep Comeron, Jorge Illa and Jo Eisinger, based on the novel by André Lay,

was released in Spain on October 31, 1968.
Music by Georges Garvarentz.

Cast:

Gary Lockwood, Elke Sommer, Lee J. Cobb, Jean Servais, Georges Géret, Jack Palance, Fabrizio Capucci, Roger Hanin, Gustavo Re, Daniel Martín, Maurizio Arena, Enrique Ávila, Gérard Tichy, Rubén Rojo, Ingrid Spaey, Carlos Ballesteros, Luis Barboo, Rossella Bergamonti, Antonio Casas, Beni Deus, Fernando Hilbeck, José Marco, Julio Pérez Tabernero, George Rigaud, Lorenzo Robledo.