Parenthesis: War of the Worlds Season 1 Press Kit

It feels like every time I post an article about my collection of War of the Worlds-related swag, there’s an implicit “This will probably be the last of these,” about it. Well, this will probably be the last of these. But I’ve got a little bit more pocket money recently, so it’s entirely possible I will blow a few bucks on a fanzine or something.

Anyway, a while back I blew fifty bucks or so on the print press kit for War of the Worlds. Just the folder of press releases, sadly; not the globe. Even more sadly, as I was scanning it, I discovered that it’s not even complete. But all the same, for the sake of history, I might as well talk about this…

The version of the press kit I managed to snag is a cardstock folder emblazoned on the front with the same “Alien hand grabbing the Earth” art that’s on basically everything else. The hand is the thinner, more skeletal version of the hand, like we saw on the novelization, rather than the beefier ones used for visuals in the show. The cover uses an unadorned sans serif font. Internally, the title of the show is rendered with the Science Fiction Warp Trail Effect we’ve seen a bunch of times before.

The back is a plain starfield with a small copyright notice at the bottom. The folder is in the same style as the one that was used for the fancier globe-style press kit, but is simpler and lacks dividers.

The kit I received contained nine 8×10 glossy black and white photos and eleven documents. I’ve seen all these photos before – most of them were reproduced in Elyse Dickenson’s concordance. It’s nice to have them in this quality, though. Because this is 1988, these are photographic prints rather than 4-color process prints, which means I’m in luck if I ever decide I need to have a mural-sized black-and-white picture of Jared Marten printed up. There are headshots of the four leads, three group shots, and two set photos. It looks like the globe kit also included the promotional reference photos for compositing. According to the documents, the press kit originally came with a copy of the novelization.

While painstakingly destapling the documents for scanning, I discovered that the pages had been shuffled at some point, and a bunch were missing. Here’s what I’ve got:

• An introductory document that gives the series premise and credits. It’s one page that ends with a continuation mark, but the rest is missing.
• A document describing possible angles for media coverage. The first page is missing. This was stapled to the introductory document, implying it’s one complete document, but page two starts in the middle of a sentence that doesn’t begin on page one.
• A three page document suggesting promotional tie-ins for the show.
• A typewritten press release about the show on KCOP 13 letterhead
• Biographies for Sam Strangis, Greg Strangis, Herbert Wright, Tom Lazarus, and Jonathan Hackett. For some reason, there’s two copies of the second page of Sam Strangis’s bio.
• Biographies for Richard Chaves, Jared Martin and Philip Akin.

If there was a manifest page, it’s missing, so I can only speculate at what isn’t here. I assume there was originally a bio for Lynda Mason Green, and at least two additional pages to cover the gaps in the first two documents. I guess it’s possible that there’s nothing missing, though. The page numbers all work out right, so it could be that the first two documents really were one continuous thing and the discontinuity between pages one and two is sloppy editing. No bio for Lynda seems obviously wrong though.

Page two of the media coverage document begins with the tantalizing parenthetical, “(Gene Barry’s character from the 1953 film)”, but embeds it in a paragraph about the upcoming festivities for the fiftieth anniversary of the 1938 radio show. It goes on to suggest interviewing effects supervisor Bill Sturgeon, modelmaker Greg Jein, and special effects coordinator Bernie Laramie, as well as Ann Robinson. It ends on a suggestion that the potential for another outbreak of mass hysteria like (allegedly) in 1938 would be a good angle for a story about the new series.

The promotional tie-in suggestions guide is even more interesting. They point out that Halloween is coming soon, and already has a historical association with the franchise, so why not print your station’s logo and the series logo on bags of candy for trick-or-treaters? I mean, other than the fact that this is definitely not a show for children of trick-or-treat age. I mean, a dude gets his face casually slapped off by a little old lady. “This would also be a prime opportunity to sponsor a WAR OF THE WORLDS party, perhaps in conjunction with a local dance club and college campus.”

They again point out the Grover’s Mill celebrations, suggesting that plane ticket to New Jersey might be a good contest giveaway, and pointed media departments to Creation Conventions and Starlog magazine as resources if they’re interested in getting involved with the local convention scene.

Another aspect of brand promotional opportunities that seem obvious but I never would’ve thought about on my own is that the actors from a broadcast show in this era would be expected to record promotional bumpers for the local stations. A station could write to Paramount with their requirements and get back a ten second tape of Jared Martin saying, “I’m Jared Martin and you’re watching War of the Worlds on WDCA 20,” or suchlike, as explained at the bottom of page two.

The last section, though short, is pregnant with denied potential. They point readers to Simon and Schuster for discounted copies of the novelization to be given away for promotions, and promise other merchandise to come in the months ahead. “Additional premium items with the WAR OF THE WORLDS logo will be available for purchase,” they optimistically promise, then claim that they are planning to release T-shirts, sweatshirts, posters, more novelizations, and sleepwear. Yes, dear reader. Somewhere, tucked away in a warehouse in Los Angeles, I can only assume, I can only hope, I can only pray, there is an unreleased prototype version of a Lieutenant Colonel Paul Ironhorse camisole.

The KCOP press release contains no new information, but is a neat physical artifact. Its most interesting feature is what it chooses to highlight in each performer’s capsule bio. For Martin, Dallas, of course, but also his Broadway work in Torch Song Trilogy. For Chaves, obviously Predator, but also an Aristotle Onaissis biopic.

There’s something similar in the press kit bios for the production team. For Jonathan Hackett, they highlight his role as the production manager on Follow That Bird. Yes. The Sesame Street movie. Tom Lazarus has an extensive resume, and they cite some things you’d expect (Though I guess by 1988, his work on Knight Rider wasn’t noteworthy any more), but also his 20 educational films for Psychology Today and his work on – I am not making this up – Mazes and Monsters. Sam Strangis’s bio is oddly short – only a single page including the press contact blurb. It’s also weighted toward his works in the ’60s and ’70s, giving the unfortunate impression that his heyday is behind him. The younger Strangis’s bio gives a surprising amount of words to The Karen Valentine Show, an unsold pilot from 1973.

While I’m sure every other thing I’ve read about the War of the Worlds cast draw primarily from these bios, there’s still a handful of tidbits in there I hadn’t heard before. A fun fact from Richard Chaves’s writeup is that his first acting role playing a Native American character was as “Irondog” in the third The Gambler movie. Philip Akin has a sweet anecdote wherein he declined a nice pair of loafers from the costume department because his research for the part suggested they would be hard for a wheelchair-user to put on unassisted. They note that Norton would come to be known for his distinctive printed T-shirts. Which I had, being honest, never noticed. Another new piece of trivia for me is that Jared Martin was in Marat/Sade. This sticks in my mind because yesterday, I learned that Abe Vigoda was too, through not, as far as I can tell, the same production.

His bio includes a quote along similar lines to what we’ve seen before about Martin’s take on the character, that he’s playing him as a “sexy” intellectual. I like that idea on paper, particularly given how it slots in with Gene Barry’s character in the film, but in practice, I never found Sex God Harrison convincing. I know Jared Martin was able to convincingly play “sexy” given his experience in Dallas, but I never felt he managed to thread the needle in War of the Worlds largely because his eccentricities were clearly meant to be charming, but more often were offputting. He’s too Big Bang Theory and not enough Stargate. The bio also mentions that he prepared for the role by reading Sagan and The Oxford Companion to the Mind, and there’s a brief mention of his interest in photography.

I’m glad to have one more physical artifact from this show. I wish there were more. I was promised sleepwear. It’s nice to have the original sources for some of the details we’ve seen crop up in various articles and other readings, and even if this doesn’t add much of anything new, it’s certainly interesting to see what Paramount thought were the show’s major selling points back in 1988.

So… Anyone have the pages I’m missing?