Fallbrook's Don Foulkes relives "War of the Worlds"

FALLBROOK – On Oct. 30, 1938, long time Fallbrook resident Don Foulkes was 16 years old and living in Peabody, Mass. He was a senior in high school. Foulkes' mother had given him a book of a collection of stories by H. G. Wells. The night before Halloween in 1938, the Foulkes family followed their usual routine listening to the weekly radio broadcast of the Mercury Radio Theater.

His mother began to believe that the story on the radio was true until Don reminded her that "the War of the Worlds" was in the book that she had given him. In the morning, the New York Times reported, "A wave of mass hysteria seized thousands of radio listeners between 8:15 and 9:30 o'clock last night when a broadcast of a dramatization of H. G. Wells's fantasy, 'The War of the Worlds,' led thousands to believe that an interplanetary conflict had started with invading Martians spreading wide death and destruction in New Jersey and New York.

The broadcast, which disrupted households, interrupted religious services, created traffic jams and clogged communications systems, was made by Orson Welles, who as the radio character, "The Shadow," used to give "the creeps" to countless child listeners. This time at least a score of adults required medical treatment for shock and hysteria."

Fast forward to October 2016, and Don Foulkes, now 94 years young, is portraying the roles of Orson Wells and General Montgomery Smith in Curtain Call Company's production of the Live Radio Play of "The War of the Worlds". Lending his expertise and experience to the production, Foulkes has written a poem that he will read at the end of the performance to remind the audience of the status of the world in 1938.

Mary Fry, president of Curtain Call Company said, "We are so thrilled to have Don as a part of Curtain Call Company. It is very nice that with "War of the Worlds", we have someone who actually experienced the original phenomenon that it caused in 1938."

More information on "The War of the Worlds - Live Radio Play" is available at www.curtaincallcompany.org or by calling (760) 468-6302.