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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: Deadpool is covered by Fox’s X-Men movie deal with Marvel Comics.

As we have discovered when discussing whether Marvel actually owns the rights to do an Incredible Hulk movie, one of the most confusing things about superhero movies is who, exactly, owns the rights to certain characters. We know that, generally speaking, 20th Century Fox owns the production rights to the X-Men and their respective characters, such as Wolverine. We also know that Sony owns the production rights to Spider-Man and his respective characters, such as Venom. Marvel Studios and Disney own most of the other rights (with some interesting disclaimers, like the aforementioned Hulk confusion). There are times, though, when there is debate over who has the rights to certain characters. The most famous instance of this debate came when Marvel Studios/Disney and Fox both claimed rights over the character of Quicksilver, as he was a notable member of the Avengers (so Marvel Studios thinks they should have him) but he also is a mutant who debuted in the pages of X-Men (so 20th Century Fox would want him). They worked out a compromise there.

Another area that is apparently very confusing are the movie rights to Deadpool, who just starred in a 20th Century Fox movie that included a crossover with Fox’s X-Men movie characters.

So most fans just presume that Deadpool is part of Fox’s general deal with Marvel for the movie rights to the X-Men. Is that true, though? A fan wrote in to ask me this question, by the way, but I can’t find their e-mail anywhere, so if they wish to e-mail me later for credit, I’ll add it in for them.
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about the world of photography and whether they are true or false.

PHOTOGRAPHY URBAN LEGEND: Joe Rosenthal’s photograph, “Raising of the Flag at Iwo Jima,” was staged.

As we end Memorial Day this year, I thought it would be nice to clear up a bit of confusion about one of the most famous war photographs of all-time (heck, one of the most famous photographs of all-time period), Joe Rosenthal’s photograph “Raising the Flag at Iwo Jima,” a shot of five United States Marines and a United States Navy corpsman raising the United States flag during the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II.

The photograph was an instant classic, but over the years, Rosenthal has been accused of staging the photograph.

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: The original host of Blue’s Clues left the show because he was going bald.

One of the constants with television fans is that they are obsessed with what happened to actors from their favorite shows when they seemingly “disappear” after leaving said show. This leads to false stories about teen stars going into adult films ((Eddie Haskell from Leave it to Beaver), true stories about teen stars going into adult films (Judy from Family Matters) and far too many “they grew up to become Alice Cooper!” theories to count.

One of the most famous recent examples, though, was what happened to actor Steve Burns when he left the popular children’s programs, Blue’s Clues in 2002.

The show was about a young man (originally Burns) who has a cute, animated puppy named Blue. Blue always wants to do something different each episode and she gives Steve three clues per episode that Steve has to solve and, through the magic of television, the audience plays along with Steve as he figures the clues out. The show was a major hit for Nickelodeon right from its debut in 1996 and it was as critically acclaimed as it was commercially successful (it received nine Emmy nominations during its run). In 2002, Burns left the show as the host and was replaced by actor Donovan Patton as Steve’s younger brother, Joe, with Steve going “off to college.” Patton hosted the show until it ended in 2006. Even before he left the show, Burns was dogged by rumors that he had died (either from a car accident or a heroin overdose). It got to the point where Burns and Blue’s Clues executive producer and co-creator Traci Paige Johnson actually went on to The Rosie O’Donnell Show in 1998 to show everyone that Burns was still alive (Johnson was worried that these rumors were especially difficult for little kids to process). When Burns left the show, seemingly at the height of his success, and seemingly vanished from the public spotlight, then that just made the rumors even more prevalent.

More recently, though, the story has changed, and now the story goes that Burns left the show for a peculiar reason – that he was going bald! Is this the truth or (forgive me) a bald-faced lie? Read on to find out!
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Here is the first in a series of examinations into urban legends related to newspapers and whether they are true or false.

NEWSPAPER URBAN LEGEND: Chicago was first dubbed “the windy city” as a reference to how much they talked.

It’s not so much of an occurrence nowadays, but years ago, it was quite common for newspapers from different cities to rile each other up by writing negative things about each other. These little “wars” helped drive circulation, as it became a matter of city pride for people to read in THEIR local paper about how stupid the people were in those OTHER cities. This would especially pick up when there was a debate over where to hold a major event. In the early 1890s, one such event was the 1893 World’s Fair, which was set to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christoper Columbus “discovering” America. It was a big to do to get the Fair for your city, and there was a big rivalry between the New York newspapers and the Chicago newspapers over who should get the Fair.

One newspaper editor in particular, Charles Dana, of the New York Sun, was very much hated in Chicago for all the nasty things he said about the city. One of these things, allegedly, is that Chicago should be called the “Windy City,” not for the winds off of Lake Michigan, but because they TALKED so darn much!

“The Windy City,” of course, remains the practically official nickname for Chicago. But did the name really come about from an insult?
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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: Bob Dylan wrote “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” about the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Since today is Bob Dylan’s 75th birthday, I thought it only right to do a legend about Dylan. This one is about one of his earliest classics, “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”…

The song was written in 1962 and its lyrics are striking and, at times, quite bleak:

I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded with hatred
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

In the liner notes to the 1963 album that had the song on it, Dylan’s breakout hit album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Nat Hentoff quotes Dylan about the song, talking about how he wrote it at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, where the United States seemed like it might be involved in a nuclear war with the Soviet Union over the presence of missiles in Cuba:

“Every line in it is actually the start of a whole new song. But when I wrote it, I thought I wouldn’t have enough time alive to write all those songs so I put all I could into this one.”

So that seems like it addresses it evenly, right? Or no?
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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: Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace stole the trophy for the twist dancing competition in Pulp Fiction.

One of the most memorable sequences in Quentin Tarantino’s classic 1994 film, Pulp Fiction, is when Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) compete in a twist competition at a 1950s style restaurant (Vincent was assigned by his boss, Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames), to take care of Mia while Marsellus is out of town).

Later, when they return to Wallace’s home, they’re carrying a trophy from the competition. A very popular theory has popped up, though, that they actually STOLE the trophy. 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: The head of CBS insisted on making an alternate version of Gilligan’s Island to show why his ideas for the show were better than Gilligan’s Island creator, Sherwood Schwartz.

Hot off of his stint as head writer for the Red Skelton Show, for which he won the 1961 Emmy Award for Best Comedy Writing, Sherwood Schwartz got a development deal at CBS.

His first idea for a show was Gilligan’s Island, a show about a small group of castaways living on an island, sort of a comedic version of Robinson Crusoe…

CBS President James T. Aubrey liked the general idea of Gilligan and the Skipper, but he thought that the idea of limiting yourself to a cast of only seven characters (the castaways) was far too limiting of a concept. So instead, he suggested that Schwartz take Gilligan and the Skipper…

and make them the stars of a show in which they would take people out of on three-hour charter tours and wacky hijinx would ensue. In some ways, it actually mirrored the basic format of the love boat (as different guest stars would show up each week to take a tour, and on that tour, presumably their lives would change in some manner or fashion).

Schwartz would not agree to change the show.

So instead, Aubrey actually had ANOTHER producer put out ANOTHER show that same season (1964-65), utilizing Aubrey’s idea – so basically, Gilligan’s Island without the shipwreck! Read on to see how it all went down…
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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: Vicki Vale was originally going to die at the end of the 1989 Batman.

One of the most difficult decisions that a filmmaker can make is whether or not to kill off major characters in their films. Quite often, characters who were originally meant to die have their lives “saved” later in the film-making process. We’ve spotlighted a few of them over the years, like Robin Williams’ character in Dead Poet’s Society, Duke in G.I. Joe the Movie and even Han Solo in Return of the Jedi. Was Vicki Vale, Batman’s love interest in Tim Burton’s 1989 blockbuster film, Batman (played by Kim Basinger), another example of this trend?

Was she originally going to be killed off in the film?

Read on to find out!
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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: Steven Tyler wrote the lyrics to “Walk This Way” on a wall of a stairwell.

After initially releasing the song in 1975 as a single from their third album, Toys From the Attic, Aerosmith re-released “Walk This Way” as a single upon the release of their fourth album, Rocks, in 1976, and it became a top ten hit.

The song had a very unusual origin, at least in part based on the strange ways that the group used to work back in their early days.
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about toys and whether they are true or false. Click here for an archive of all toy urban legends featured so far!

TOY URBAN LEGEND: Mattel initially produced a friend of Barbie’s called “Wheelchair Becky.”

Mattel certainly is no stranger to awkward moments over the decades that they’ve produced Barbie dolls. After all, they’ve done so many versions of the doll that they are almost bound to screw up now and again. I’ve even covered one of these instances in the past, when Sleepover Barbie came with a diet book that advised girls simply “don’t eat.”

This brings us to the case of Barbie’s friend, Becky, who is in a wheelchair.

The website “Climbing Every Mountain” (but really, this information has popped up a number of places”) discussed the doll…

In 1997, Mattel ignored even the basic “People First” language with Wheelchair Becky. When a little girl with cerebral palsy complained, they renamed the doll Share-a-Smile Becky. Most advocates would say, “Becky” would have been enough.

Is that true?
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