This is the eighteenth in a series of examinations of legends about television and the people involved in TV and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the previous seventeen.

Let’s begin!

TV LEGEND: Mister Ed was made to talk through the use of peanut butter on his lips (in the alternative, through tiny electric shocks).

STATUS: Both False

Mister Ed has had a surprising amount of false stories surrounding the series. One notable one was about Mister Ed being a zebra. Snopes covered that one right here with a fake story about it.

A tougher nut to crack was the story that Mister Ed was made to talk through the use of peanut butter on his lips (an alternate version I’ve seen some places is that he was made to talk through slight electric shocks - that is not nearly as popular as the peanut butter story, though).

This was always tougher to disprove, mostly because the story came straight from Alan Young, who played Wilbur on the popular series, which aired from 1961 to 1966.

Young, though, presumably was just trying to cover up the real truth (why, I do not know), which was that Ed was gotten to “talk” through the use of a piece of nylon that was placed in Ed’s mouth (under his lips). Originally, the piece of nylon would be pulled by a string, which would result in Ed (the horse’s actual name was Bamboo Harvester - he was voiced by Allan Lane) trying to get the nylon out, which would, of course, look like he’s moving his lips.

Over time, I understand that it got to the point where the string was not even needed and Bamboo Harvester would try to remove the nylon on cue. The horse was so well-trained that it let the piece of nylon stay in its mouth without trying to remove it unless commanded to.

After years of denying it (or offering up the alternate solution that the nylon was just used to make Ed turn his head or whatever), Alan Young fessed up a couple of years ago and admitted that he had just invented the peanut butter story for interviews (again, I don’t know why).

So there ya go!

TV LEGEND: Star Trek once got John Drew Barrymore suspended from the Screen Actors Guild!

STATUS: True

The story of John Drew Barrymore is a pretty sad one.

His father, John Sidney Blyth Barrymore, was one of the greatest actors of his generation. Here is the elder John Barrymore in Hamlet from 1922.

John Drew was born in 1932, but his parents divorced in 1935 and he grew up never knowing his father (who died in 1942 when John Drew was 9 years old).

However, while he might have never known his father, he certainly did not have trouble following in his father’s footsteps in more than just pursuing a career in acting. The first John Barrymore had a serious problem with alcoholism, and the same affliction cursed his son.

Most likely due to alcohol and drug abuse, the younger Barrymore never managed to secure a place for himself in the American film industry, as he bungled away several film roles.

In the late 1950s, Barrymore managed to sober up long enough to have a fairly notable career in Italian cinema, starring in a number of films. By the early 1960s, he was back to his old tricks, and even ended up in jail a few times. Despite all of this, in 1966, he was hired to do a guest spot on the television series Star Trek.

In the episode “The Alternative Factor,” Barrymore was to play Lazarus, a reality-hopping magician, who the crew of the Enterprise would encounter in both his “good” version and his alternate reality “bad” version (much like the later classic Star Trek episode, “Mirror, Mirror”).

However, when it came time to film the episode, Barrymore was nowhere to be found. Although an official explanation was never given (to my knowledge), it’s likely that he was just too drunk/too high to show up.

The show had to quickly re-cast the role, ending up with actor Robert Brown playing Lazarus.

Here is Brown as the “good” Lazarus and the “bad” Lazarus, respectively…

While this was a sad state of affairs, it was taken a step further when the producers of Star Trek actually filed a grievance against Barrymore with the Screen Actors Guild (SAG)!!

SAG agreed with Star Trek, and suspended Barrymore from acting for six months!

Not surprisingly, the end of Barrymore’s life was spent basically derelict, although his estranged daughter Drew Barrymore took care of his medical expenses at the end of his life, as he died of cancer in 2004.

TV LEGEND: Sammy Davis Jr. did not do the theme song for Baretta at first for a slightly out of the ordinary reason.

STATUS: True

The TV series Baretta debuted in 1975 (check out this previous installment of TV Legends Revealed for some more information about the origins of Baretta)…

The series, which starred Robert Blake as the titular detective, became a popular series and a well-received show from a critical audience, too (Blake was nominated for Best Lead Actor in a Drama Series).

However, when it debuted, the network was a bit unsure about just how successful the series would be.

As a result, the theme song for the series is fairly well-known for being sung by Sammy Davis, Jr.

The song, “Keep Your Eyes On The Sparrow,” is even on Sammy Davis Jr.’s greatest hits album!

However, initially, the song was an instrumental!

Why?

The network wouldn’t authorize the costs involved in hiring someone as famous as Davis to sing the song if they were just going to cancel the show after a few episodes.

Once it was clear that the show was going to make it, THEN they allowed the show to hire Davis to sing lyrics to the theme!

Pretty funny way of cutting costs.

Okay, that’s it for this week!

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is bcronin@legendsrevealed.com