75 years on - Orson Welles' 'War of the Worlds' broadcast

‘The War Of The Worlds’ radio play has taken on an almost mythical status, and the notion that huge swathes of the U.S. public was gripped by fear of Martian intruders has gained a foothold in the popular imagination. A patchy-but-enjoyable 1975 made-for-television movie, ‘The Night That Panicked America’, reinforced newspaper stories at the time suggesting the alarm sizeable: farmers grab their shotguns and fearful families jump into their cars and hit the freeway, while others seek refuge in churches.

BBC Radio 4’s ‘Archive on 4’ series, which last week examined the broadcast’s legacy in ‘Myth or Legend: Orson Welles and The War of The Worlds’ and questioned the extent of the panic, noted that out of an estimated 6 million listeners, around 1.7 million believed the play to be true. Only 1.2 million were said to be “frightened”, according to a study, and just 20 people – a tiny fraction of those who actually heard the show – had to be treated for shock.

Radio 4’s programme also points to later suggestions that a hostile print media, miffed by radio’s growing dominance, embellished or simply made up stories of people fleeing their homes and driving their cars off bridges in some faint hope that the young upstart medium’s influence may be curbed.

- Hugh Leask, 'Myth and media: Orson Welles’ ‘The War Of The Worlds’ – 75 years on', Independent, 30 October 2013

Wellington 1966

There's recognisable elements of modern Wellington visible in this mid-1960s feature from the National Film Unit, but the charming aspects are those that have changed in the 47 years since this was shot. The glaring red city buses, the opening aerial shots making a beeline for the Beehive that is yet to be even a glint in Sir Basil Spence's eye, the mandatory beehive hairdos (to carry on the apian theme), and the stilted, theatrical vox pops that set the scene for this magazine summary of the capital in the mid-60s: all of it is designed to advance the notion of a go-ahead modern city, replete with mid-20th-century brutalist office blocks, with convertible Mercedes coupes cruising around the many tropical inlets where bathing beauties (nowadays aged in their seventies, mind) cavort and gambol in the plentiful Cook Strait rays. And if you believe that, then Telly Savalas has a thing or two to tell you about Birmingham.



[Via Nikolai]

See also:
Blog: Ans Westra Wellington 1976, 30 June 2013
Blog: The creatures beyond the Devil's gate, 25 May 2013
Blog: The Mutton Birds - Wellington, 31 January 2009

Wright's Hill Fortress

Yesterday I paid a visit to Wright's Hill Fortress in Karori for the first time in around 10 years. To be precise, I've been to Wright's Hill many times in the past decade, but I'd not been back to revisit the tunnels underneath the hilltop that link together the various gun emplacements and supporting facilities. The fortress was designed to be a key factor in Wellington's naval defences, with huge 9.2 inch guns overseeing the whole harbour and beyond thanks to their 18-mile (29km) firing range. Construction started in March 1942 but by the time the guns were installed in 1944 the situation in the Pacific theatre had improved so considerably that the order for the site's third gun was cancelled. The fortress guns were only fired once in a 1946 test exercise, and in the 1960s the site fell into disrepair. Since 1989 locals have been restoring the fortress, and it now opens for public viewing on four public holidays per year.

 

Entrance tunnel from War Shelter No.1

Stairs to Gun Pit No.1

Old wireless

Old telephone switchboard from Trentham Camp

See also:
Blog: Royal Marines Band, 30 September 2013
Blog: Norway's greatest resistance hero, 7 September 2013
Blog: Fort Ballance, 5 November 2011

The Yorkshire dialects

The Yorkshire accent is a many and varied thing, as you can see. I've got a map here with every Yorkshire town, and each town has its own accent. From right over here in the east with Hull, where they talk about having 'a pahnt of mahld at fahve to fahve', and 'I've got all the Stern Rersers albums'. Then you go west to Bradford where we are now, and they don't say their Ts - 'go'a go 'o [got to go to] Bradford; go'a go 'o Batley'. Then you go across to Leeds and the Es are lengthened. Then you go down here through Wakefield to Barnsley, which is a very harsh [accent] and you think of Geoff Boycott, 'that's proper cricket is that'. I do genuinely think it's to do with the harsh winds of Yorkshire - you don't want to open your mouth too far. Then you go a bit further south to Sheffield where there's this fantastic difference between Barnsley and Sheffield - where we say 'now then now then', as you approach Sheffield it becomes 'now den'. So we call them 'de-das'. And in Chesterfield they call their house their 'arse' - my Auntie Mabel, who was from Chesterfield, would say things like 'I've just had double-glazing fitted in my arse', or 'I've got a detached arse' - oh, have you really? And they don't think it's funny!

- Yorkshire poet Ian McMillan, in Fry's Planet Word s01 e02, BBC2, 2011

See also:
Video: Ian McMillan - The day they found the king, February 2013
Blog: 8am: Bacon & egg butty, four pints of cider, 22 May 2013
Blog: Treasures of Mercia, 17 December 2009

As I cling to the earth with my eyebrows

Yesterday was a rare day for Wellington - normally the days with 100km/h plus wind gusts are accompanied by rotten horizontal rain and plummeting temperatures. Instead we had a bright sunny day graced with a refreshingly boisterous squall that cleared the waterfront of all but the most hardy and those with a firm sense of balance. While I felt sorry for tourists unaccustomed to the ferocity of the northerly flurry, you have to ask yourself why anyone risks visiting the capital during springtime. I mean, the airport seems to be shut half the time and the insides of the smaller planes must resemble a blender by the time they touch down in non-hurricane strength locales. I had to grab hold of my camera bag several times to prevent it flitting away whilst taking the pictures below, and when I ventured down to sea level on the harbour ferry floating platform I decided my visit would have to be as short as possible, because it was bucking around like crazy.

Included below are two familiar sights of the Wellington port. The derelict Southern Prospector fishing vessel has been laid up here for years, having been rescued from sinking in July 2010 when its engine room flooded and having been accidentally rammed by the ferry Santa Regina (the Bluebridge) as it was reversing into dock on a day with strong southerlies in April 2011. And the Sea Lion, a 100-ton launch built in Port Adelaide in 1946, which was used for squid fishing in the Bass Strait in the 1980s and sailed over from Australia in 1990 for use as a private recreational vessel. It's been berthed at the northern end of Queen's Wharf since at least 2005. Wellington seems to attract this sort of maritime detritus; perhaps because once they arrive here they deteriorate quickly in the harsh winds and swiftly become too unsafe to venture out of the harbour?

Also, the blog title comes from this lovely audio clip from a WW2 soldier, recorded by 2YA for broadcast to New Zealand forces deployed in the Pacific. Definitely worth a quick listen.

Clyde Quay Wharf development.
Kevin McCloud would have something to say about weathertightness.

Point Halswell & Point Jerningham

Southern Prospector in a wind flurry

Sea Lion

Sea Lion  & Queen's Wharf

See also:
Blog: Command an argosy to stem the waves, Petone, 14 July 2013
Blog: Repairing the Kaitaki, 23 June 2013
Blog: In fear of the Tsar's navy, 5 November 2011

My broken spirit is frozen to the core

I was busy last night and missed a acoustic gig at Bodega by the 80s pop star Nik Kershaw. I would've been intrigued to see what his singles (Wouldn't It Be Good, The Riddle, Wide Boy et al.) sounded like stripped-down, low-tech and played by a now fifty-five year old Kershaw. But in honour of his visit to Wellington, I thought it would be timely to quote from the chapter named after him in my favourite book about music: Giles Smith's 1995 book Lost In Music ('one man's journey into the world of rock and then back to his mum's').

Smith, who now writes on sports and motoring for the Times, grew up in Colchester idolising bands and musicians, and was a passing acquaintance of Nick (before he dropped the 'c') when the latter was impressing local audiences in covers band Fusion. Here he recounts spotting Kershaw a year or so after Fusion split up - a year in which a strange and mysterious transformation had occurred:

It was in Colchester's shopping precinct, outside Lasky's electrical store and at the back of Marks and Spencer's. And this was not the Nick Kershaw I had known (or rather, not known). First, there was the hair - all spiky and bright blond as if a small bomb containing bleach had gone off on his head, the de rigueur 1980s pop-star plumage. And then there were the clothes. No more wearisome waistcoats, no more duff ties. He was wearing a tiny black jacket with some complicated fastenings, and black drainpipe jeans which bottomed out in a pair of pointy boots. There were only two possible explanations: either a major record company had signed him up and had got its people to make him over, ready for stardom; or Kershaw had retrained as a hairdresser and was now working in a shiny-floored unisex salon in Chelmsford - Sophisticut, maybe, or Hair Today. Naturally, I assumed the latter and shook my head ruefully all the way home on the bus. 

And of course, I was wrong. The haircut and the grimly fashionable threads were courtesy of MCA, who were right at that moment priming Kershaw, ready to detonate him and his new hair in the teen market [...] and suddenly he was on Top of the Pops for the first time. I watched with a friend who had come round specially. The room positive thrummed with our nervousness, our proximity to this momentous event and our feeling of tragic non-involvement in it all. We leant close to the screen as the camera swung from whichever Radio 1 DJ was presenting that week, across the backs of the squawking audience and picked out Kershaw, alone amid the fake chrome piping and the flashy lights. 

It shook us that he had no guitar around his neck. (Top of the Pops was completely mimed at this time). Instead, he was wearing a white boiler suit and a pair of fingerless gloves and clutching his bunched fists up to his chest like someone working out with a set of hand-held dumb-bells. At the same time, he would bring up a knee in the manner recommended by aerobics videos. Who had taught him to do this? It was certainly never a feature of his performances at the Goose and Firkin in Tollesbury. Staggered, we realised he was also wearing a snood - a tube of netting, the kind you sometimes see protecting strawberries, bunched around his neck. (It became a trademark of sorts). He looked terrified, at least to us seasoned Kershaw-watchers, but he bopped and clenched and wilfully concentrated his gaze on the floor, and as the song faded and the camera drew back, there was the usual hilarious applause. We went to the pub afterwards and drank in silence, alone with our thoughts. 

- Giles Smith, Lost in Music, London, 1995, p.127-9. 

(I love the notion that a Colcestrian would picture a swish 80s hair salon as being in up-market, yuppified Chelmsford.) Kershaw went on to have eight UK top 40 hits in 1984 and 1985, performed at Live Aid in 1985, had one of his songs covered for the Pretty in Pink soundtrack, and wrote the 1991 UK chart-topper I Am the One and Only  for Chesney Hawks. Here's the TOTP performance Smith wrote about:



See also:
Music: Nik Kershaw - The Riddle (Live Aid, 1985)
TV: Nik Kershaw - Live Aid interview (brief, 1985)
Blog: When Smokey sings, I hear violence, 19 May 2008