National Dictionary Day – October 16:

National Dictionary Day – October 16

Global Cat Day - October 16:

Global Cat Day - October 16

On this day in movie history - Brave New Jersey (2016 movie & book):

Brave New Jersey

directed by Jody Lambert,

written by Michael Dowling and Jody Lambert,

was released at the Austin Film Festival in the United States on October 15, 2016.
Music by Dennis Lambert, Matthew Logan Vasquez and Kelly Winrich.
Based on Orson Welles’ dramatized radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds,

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

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

Cast:

Anna Camp, Tony Hale, Erika Alexander, Sam Jaeger, Heather Burns, Evan Jonigkeit, Raymond J. Barry, Dan Bakkedahl, Grace Kaufman, Mel Rodriguez, Matt Oberg, Sandra Ellis Lafferty, Noah Lomax, Leonard Earl Howze, Adina Eady, Blaque Fowler, Helen Ingebritsen, Jack Landry, Roy Hawkins Jr., Bill Coelius, Michael Dowling, Antoinette Cancelliere, Harp Sandman, David Lundgren, Bruce Boone, Kerry D. Watson, Dean Allen Jones, Anna Claire Watson, Kerry Watson, Jennifer Cooke Turnage, Daniel Debouver, Wes McGullion, Leilani Stephens, Nancy Potts, Chelsea Summerlin, Brian Keith Huggins, Robin Wilson, Gabriel Landis, Kathy Winchell, Dustin Wilson, Brianna Stephens, Melissa Dawn Roberts, Travis Smith, Lynda Austin, Ricky Wilson Jr., Mitch Norville, Stephanie Watson, Patrick Miller.

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 at The Pie Hole:

Pushing Daisies

Season 2. Episode 3.

Episode entitled: Bad Habits.

Released October 15, 2008.

Directed by Peter O’Fallon.

Written by Gretchen J. Berg, Aaron Harberts.

Series created by Bryan Fuller.

Music by Jim Dooley.

Narrated by Jim Dale.

Cast:

Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Jim Dale, Kristin Chenoweth, Ellen Greene, Swoosie Kurtz, Diana Scarwid, Mo Collins, Graham McTavish, Michael Hitchcock, Samantha Bailey, Diana Costa, Mary K. DeVault, Marc Raducci.

On this day in movie history - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003):

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

directed by Marcus Nispel,

written by Scott Kosar,

based on the 1974 screenplay by Kim Henkel and Tobe Hooper,

was released in the United States on October 15, 2003.
Music by Steve Jablonsky.

Cast:

Jessica Biel, Jonathan Tucker, Erica Leerhsen, Mike Vogel, Eric Balfour, Andrew Bryniarski, R. Lee Ermey, David Dorfman, Lauren German, Terrence Evans, Marietta Marich, Heather Kafka, Kathy Lamkin, Brad Leland, Mamie Meek, John Larroquette, Scott Martin Gershin, Harry Jay Knowles.

On this day in the Star Trek universe:

Star Trek: Enterprise (2003 & 2004)

Star Trek: Discovery (2017 & 2020)

Star Trek: Enterprise

Season 3. Episode 6.

Episode entitled: Exile.

Released October 15, 2003.

Directed by Roxann Dawson.

Written by Brannon Braga, Phyllis Strong, André Bormanis, Jonathan Fernandez.

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, Maury Sterling, Philip Boyd, Alexandrea Ortiz, Mark Correy, Evan English, John Jurgens.

Star Trek: Enterprise

Season 4. Episode 2.

Episode entitled: Storm Front, Part II.

Released October 15, 2004.

Directed by David Straiton.

Written by Manny Coto.

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 Kevin Kiner, Dennis McCarthy.

Cast: Scott Bakula, John Billingsley, Jolene Blalock, Dominic Keating, Anthony Montgomery, Linda Park, Connor Trinneer, Golden Brooks, Jack Gwaltney, John Fleck, Matt Winston, Christopher Neame, Steve Schirripa, Mark Elliott Silverberg, David Pease, Burr Middleton, Ken Lally, Alexandrea Ortiz.

Star Trek: Discovery

Season 1. Episode 5.

Episode entitled: Choose Your Pain.

Released October 15, 2017.

Directed by Lee Rose.

Created by Bryan Fuller, Alex Kurtzman.

Written by Kemp Powers, Gretchen J. Berg, Aaron Harberts, Bo Yeon Kim, Erika Lippoldt, Kirsten Beyer, Sean Cochran.

Based on Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry.

Music by Jeff Russo.

Cast: Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug Jones, Shazad Latif, Anthony Rapp, Mary Wiseman, Jason Isaacs, Jayne Brook, Mary Chieffo, Wilson Cruz, Conrad Coates, Emily Coutts, Julianne Grossman, Patrick Kwok-Choon, Sara Mitich, Airiam, Simon Northwood, Oyin Oladejo, Christopher Russell, Kirk Salesman, Tyler Evan Webb.

Star Trek: Discovery

Season 3. Episode 1.

Episode entitled: That Hope Is You, Part 1.

Released October 15, 2020.

Directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi.

Created by Bryan Fuller, Alex Kurtzman.

Written by Michelle Paradise, Jenny Lumet, Alex Kurtzman, Sean Cochran, Anthony Maranville, Chris Silvestri, Brandon Schultz.

Based on Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry.

Music by Jeff Russo.

Cast: Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug Jones, Anthony Rapp, Mary Wiseman, David Ajala, Adil Hussain, Nicole Dickinson, Riley Gilchrist, Julianne Grossman, Brandon McGibbon, Jake Michaels, Fabio Tassone, David Benjamin Tomlinson, Avaah Blackwell.

On this day in music history:

Chant d’amour by Cecilia Bartoli (1996)

Soul Be It by Deborah Coleman (2002)

Desert Suite by Greg Maroney & Sherry Finzer (2021)

Chant d’amour

Album by Cecilia Bartoli,

released October 15, 1996.

Track list: Chant D’amour; Ouvre Ton Coeur; Adieux De L’hotesse Arabe; Tarentelle; La Coccinelle; Les Filles De Cadix; Hai Luli!; Havanaise; Les Filles De Cadix; La Mort d’Ophelie; Zaide; Chanson Francaise; Chanson Espagnole; Chanson Italienne; Chanson Hebraique; Vocalise-Etude (En Forme De Habanera); Kaddisch; L’Enigme Eternelle; Tripatos.

Soul Be It

Album by Deborah Coleman,

released October 15, 2002.

Track list: Brick; My Heart Bleeds Blue; Don’t Lie to Me; I’m a Woman; You’re with Me; I Believe; The Dream; Goodbye Misery.

Desert Suite

Album by Greg Maroney & Sherry Finzer,

released October 15, 2021.

Track list: Saguaro Sunrise; On the Great Colorado; The Gentle Night Surrounds Us; Mesa Grande; Through an Eagles Eye; Cave of the Wind; Wide Open Spaces; Rare the Snow Falls; Wild Horses Run Free; Through the Winding Canyon; Saguaro Sunset.