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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about music and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the movie urban legends featured so far.

MUSIC URBAN LEGEND: The Mister Mister song “Kyrie” was written in response to a brutal attack.

“Kyrie” was a hit song released by the band Mister Mister in 1985 off of their album, Welcome to the Real World, hitting number one on the Billboard charts for two weeks (another song off the album, “Broken Wings,” also hit #1 on the Billboard charts for two weeks).

The song, whose title is a reference to the Christian prayer, “Kýrie, eléison,” is one of the more misheard song lyrics of all-time, as people often have a hard time understanding that the band is singing “Kýrie, eléison.”

Here is a sample of the song’s lyrics:

The wind blows hard against this mountainside
Across the sea into my soul
It reaches into where I cannot hide
Setting my feet upon the road

My heart is old, it holds my memories
My body burns a gem-like flame
Somewhere between the soul and soft machine
Is where I find myself again

Kýrie, eléison
Down the road that I must travel
Kýrie, eléison
Through the darkness of the night

Kýrie, eléison
Where I’m going, will you follow?
Kýrie, eléison
On a highway in the light

I don’t know where you would get it from those lyrics, but a longstanding rumor has come about that says that the song was written by the songwriter in response to a brutal attack. Is that true?
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about TV and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the TV urban legends featured so far.

TV URBAN LEGEND: Hanna-Barbera’s The Fonz and the Happy Gang began as a Doctor Who animated series.

It is remarkable how different many famous film and television projects looked like when their development began. What began as a horror film about aliens ended up becoming the heartwarming family film E.T.. What became Die Hard With a Vengeance was once both a Lethal Weapon film and a Brandon Lee starring vehicle! Most bizarrely, instead of making both a He-Man film and a Spider-Man film, Cannon Films combined the two and ended up with a surprising hit film.

So I keep an open mind when it comes to legends about the origins of projects, even if they initially seem hard to believe, like this legend sent to me by reader Chris, asking:

There is a TV legend I have heard a few times but I have never discovered how true it was. That in the early 1980s Hanna-Barbera wanted to make a cartoon version of Doctor Who but couldn’t get the rights so instead made one about the time-travelling adventures of the characters from Happy Days

The show Chris is referring to is Hanna-Barbera’s 1980-1982 series, The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang, about a girl from the future (voiced by Didi Cohn, from Grease) showing up in 1957 Milwaukee in a time machine and accidentally getting Richie Cunningham, Ralph Malph, Fonzie and (of course) Fonzie’s anthropomorphic dog, Mr. Cool, trapped in her time machine and subsequently lost in time (Ron Howard, Donny Most and Henry Winkler all did their own voices!)!

It is not that difficult to imagine such a show being instead about Doctor Who traveling through time in his TARDIS. Doctor Who was popular in the United States at the time. Marvel even put out a comic starring the Doctor in 1980 (after Marvel UK acquired the rights to the Doctor in England a year earlier).

So it certainly wouldn’t be that shocking to imagine Hanna-Barbera wanting to license the character, or even that they did a work-up for a proposed show and after it fell through, then used the basic concept for another licensed property, namely the Happy Days characters (Hanna-Barbera had a deal with Paramount for all of their Garry Marshall television characters, as they put out a Laverne and Shirley animated series at the same time, as well as later a Mork and Mindy/Fonzie/Laverne and Shirley show). After all, the popular Hanna-Barbera TV series Wacky Races was originally developed to be part of a live action game show, so it is not like Hanna-Barbera were strangers to the concept of “pivoting.”

But is is true?
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about movies and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the Movie urban legends featured so far.

MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: Katharine Hepburn’s temperance nearly killed her during the filming of The African Queen.

The African Queen is a wonderful adventure film starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, written by James Agee (adapted from the C. S. Forester novel of the same name) and directed by John Huston.

It involves a missionary (Hepburn) caught up in an adventure with a river boat captain (Bogart) in Africa during World War I.

The film was made on location in Uganda and the Congo.

During the filming, Hepburn came down with a severe case of dysentery. She ended up losing nearly 20 pounds! It got to the point where she would do a scene and then have to go vomit (or the other variety of expulsion) right afterwards. She actually ended up suffering from the disease for months AFTER the filming ended! She did a whole other movie, the romantic comedy, Pat and Mike, while still suffering from the disease!

What was particularly amazing, though, was HOW she caught it.
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends related to cuisine (chefs, dishes, etc.) and whether they are true or false.

CUISINE URBAN LEGEND: Swanson’s TV Dinners were invented due to them trying to come up with a way to get rid of the large supply of Thanksgiving turkeys they got stuck with one year.

There is a famous quote that is most commonly attributed to Plato that states, “Those who tell the stories rule society.” This is a similar thought to the idea that the winners write the history books. In other words, whoever has the control of the historical narrative is the one who is going to get their version of events into the hands of the everyday person. That was definitely the case with Gerry Thomas, a former employee for Swanson who, when he passed away about a decade ago, had obituaries all over the world that said some version of his New York Times’ obituary headline, “Gerry Thomas, Who Thought Up the TV Dinner, Is Dead at 83” Perhaps Thomas WAS the guy who coined the term “TV dinner.” Perhaps Thomas DID come up with the idea for Swanson (a food processing company that began at the end of the 19th century) to get into the world of frozen dinners. Those things MIGHT be true. But what is definitely true is that Thomas got credit for these things primarily due to his ability to put his story out there constantly over the past thirty years of his life, continually telling the story of the creation of the TV dinner. Since he was really the only one talking (and he DID work at Swanson when they began producing TV dinners), his version of events has been accepted as gospel in a variety of major publications, including Time magazine.

His story of how Swanson got into the TV dinner business had a great hook, one that commenter Gavin thought would make for a good legend, namely:

TV Dinners were created because the company had a huge supply of leftover turkeys from Thanksgiving that were traveling around the country in railroad freezer containers. They were losing money on the storage so they had to come up with a way to sell them.

That’s precisely the story that has been told on many sites, magazines and newspapers over the years.

Here’s one take on the story from Smithsonian.com (but really, TONS of people have the same story):

In 1953, someone at Swanson colossally miscalculated the level of the American appetite for Thanksgiving turkey, leaving the company with some 260 tons of frozen birds sitting in ten refrigerated railroad cars. Enter the father of invention, Swanson salesman Gerry Thomas, a visionary inspired by the trays of pre-prepared food served on airlines. Ordering 5,000 aluminum trays, concocting a straightforward meal of turkey with corn-bread dressing and gravy, peas and sweet potatoes (both topped with a pat of butter), and recruiting an assembly line of women with spatulas and ice-cream scoops, Thomas and Swanson launched the TV dinner at a price of 98 cents (those are Eisenhower-era cents, of course). The company’s grave doubts that the initial order would sell proved to be another miscalculation, though a much happier one for Swanson; in the first full year of production, 1954, ten million turkey dinners were sold.

Is it TRUE, though?
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about movies and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the Movie urban legends featured so far.

MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: Ryan Reynolds first became interested in playing Deadpool when he saw a joke in a Deadpool comic about Deadpool looking like Reynolds.

The journeys that actors and actresses take on the way to iconic roles can often be quite circuitous. Just look at Harrison Ford’s two most famous characters, Han Solo and Indiana Jones. Ford wasn’t even supposed to try out for Han Solo, gaining the role while working as a scene partner for other actors trying out for the roles of Luke and Leia. Heck, he was making more money as a carpenter at the time than as an actor. Then he only got the role of Indiana Jones because CBS decided to hold Tom Selleck to his contract to make the TV series Magnum P.I. instead. Few actors, though, had quite the journey that Ryan Reynolds had on the way to playing the title character in the blockbuster 2016 film, Deadpool.

The initial discussions about Reynolds in the role took place over a decade ago and had a disastrous shortcut of Reynolds playing a bizarre version of the character in X-Men Origins: Wolverine in 2009.

But what were the origins of Reynolds’ interest in the character? A legend has sprung up that Reynolds was inspired to play the character based on a joke that appeared in Cable and Deadpool #2 (by Fabian Nicieza, Mark Brooks, Shane Law and Chris Stevens). He told Latino Review back in 2009:

“Ya, I love the character. I’ve always loved the character. I remember reading one of the Deadpool comic books, and somebody asked Deadpool what he looks like. And he said he looks like a cross between a Shar-Pei and Ryan Reynolds. And I was like, I really, really wanna play this guy at some point. I thought it was pretty cool. It’s a guy that knows he’s in a comic book. How hard is it to shoot that properly? That’s not something they put in Wolverine nor would it belong in that universe.”

So is that the origin of Reynolds’ interest in playing Deadpool? Read on to find out!
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about TV and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the TV urban legends featured so far.

TV URBAN LEGEND: Terry O’Quinn accidentally stabbed Matthew Fox with a real knife in the finale of Lost.

SPOILERS FOR LOST AHEAD!

In the final season of the ABC series Lost…

Terry O’Quinn’s character, Locke, is killed off and the Man in Black takes his place by taking on his form (one of the Man in Black’s powers). In the series finale, through various machinations, the Man in Black is finally mortal and can leave the island. Matthew Fox’s character, Jack, tries to stop him.

They struggle…

and in the ensuing struggle, the Man in Black stabs Jack in the abdomen…

Amazingly enough, O’Quinn accidentally used a REAL knife in the scene!!
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about movies and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the Movie urban legends featured so far.

MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: Wes Craven’s original ending for A Nightmare on Elm Street was dramatically different than what made it into theaters.

If you haven’t seen A Nightmare on Elm Street, you might not want to read this one. You are spoiler warned!

The low-budget horror film, written and directed by Wes Craven, was a massive success upon its release in 1984 and a sequel was quickly rushed out for release the next year (the series ultimately became a successful film franchise).

However, when Craven wrote the film, he never intended it as the beginning of a franchise, and in fact, Craven’s original ending for the film had a happy ending!
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends related to children’s literature and whether they are true or false.

CHILDREN’S LITERATURE URBAN LEGEND: The authors behind Curious George built bicycles to escape from the Nazis, along with a copy of their original manuscript for Curious George.

In 1941, husband and wife team Margret and Hans Reyersbach (he shortened his name to Rey for his nom de plume, going by H.A. Rey) released their children’s book, Curious George.

The book was an instant success and has never been out of print since it first came out. However, the road that the Reys took to getting their book published was simply amazing, as they actually managed to escape Paris right ahead of the Nazis on bicycles literally built for two!
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about TV and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the TV urban legends featured so far.

TV URBAN LEGEND: Yvonne Craig’s Batgirl costume ended up being owned by a surprising person.

On the 1966-68 Batman television series, Julie Newmar’s Catwoman and Yvonne Craig’s Batgirl and their respective skintight costumes launched a million crushes by adolescents watching the show (and I’m sure plenty of adults watching the show, as well). Newmar specifically went out of her way to make sure that her costume accentuated her curves by altering the way her belt hung on her Catwoman costume so that it showed off her hips. Newmar was so involved in that sort of thing that she even ended up getting a federal patent on special pantyhose that wouldn’t flatten a woman’s curves! While all the attention was likely flattering to Newmar and Craig, at the same time it must have been a bit disturbing, as well, to constantly be under the scrutiny of the “male gaze,” even from fellow actors. Mark Evanier has a hilarious story about the late Craig’s response to some of that excess attention, while there is also a legend about Newmar responding to the come-ons of another actor with a sharp rebuke.

Craig, meanwhile, was also in for a bit of a surprise when she returned to the Batgirl role one last time a few years after the series ended, when there was a mystery of – who had Batgirl’s costume?
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about TV and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the TV urban legends featured so far.

TV URBAN LEGEND: One of Christine Baranski’s earliest roles was as a friend of Marcia’s on the Brady Bunch.

Reader Rob N. wrote in with this one a while back.

The story is a simple one. In the Season 2 episode, “The Slumber Caper,” Marcia almost is not allowed to have a big slumber party because her principal believes she drew an unflattering portrait of her teacher. Marcia insists that it was just a drawing of George Washington that someone else captioned in such a manner as to make it look like Marcia was insulting her teacher. Her parents eventually trust her enough to let her throw the party, but Marcia then disinvites a friend of hers that she thought wrote the caption. In the end, it turns out it was a different friend who did it, thinking that only Marcia would see the humorous caption.

The friend, Paula, was played by a child actress named Chris Charney…

Over the years, the rumor has been that Chris Charney was the stage name for a young Christine Baranski, star of shows like Cybill and The Good Wife…

Is that true?
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