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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: Phil Spector recorded a non-Christmas version of “Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home).”

Easily one of the greatest Christmas albums of all-time is the 1963 collection, A Christmas Gift From Phil Spector, where the producer used his famous “Wall of Sound” on a number of classic Christmas songs…

Perhaps the most famous song off of the album is Darlene Love’s “Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home),” which was not a huge hit at the time it was released as a single but has become a Christmas standard in the years since (Love performed it on David Letterman’s late night show every Christmas from 1986 until his final Christmas show last year – only missing 2006 because of the Writer’s Strike that year)…

However, did you know that originally Spector thought it could work as a NON-Christmas song?
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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: Princess Leia was not intended to be Luke’s sister until Return of the Jedi.

A while back, I did a piece on Comics Should Be Good about the moments during the Star Wars comics where Luke and Leia kiss, moments that look kind of odd in hindsight when we discover in Return of the Jedi that Luke and Leia are twins. However, there are some similar points in the Star Wars films that are a bit awkward along those same lines, primarily the kiss that Leia plants on Luke in Empire Strikes Back which is, well, far too much of a kiss for either Luke and Leia to feel good about upon thinking back on it.

This, though, leads to the question that has been on many Star Wars fans minds ever since – did George Lucas intend for Luke and Leia to be siblings during The Empire Strikes Back?
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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: Waylon Smithers was originally going to be black with a wife and kids.

After a lot of back and forth, Harry Sheare ultimately decided to return to “The Simpsons” for two more seasons. I figured it would be nice to spotlight a legend about one of the many, many Simpsons characters that Shearer does the voice for on the show, namely Waylon Smithers, Montgomery Burns’ sycophantic second-in-command at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. Smithers has been a constant presence on the series since early in the show’s first season.

However, did the show nearly go in two very different directions with the characters? Smithers first appeared as an African-American in an early episode of the series. Was that originally the plan for Smithers? And did he almost have a wife and kids? Read on to find out!
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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: Marvel does not own the rights to make an “Incredible Hulk” film.

During Marvel’s announcements last year about their third phase of films, there was some surprise among fans over the lack of a solo “Incredible Hulk” film. This led some to wonder whether Marvel even had the rights to do a Hulk film.

In fact, that’s specifically what reader Paul D. wrote to me a while back asking about. Paul wrote about a quote he saw from Mark Ruffalo where the Hulk actor said:

As far as a Hulk movie, a standalone Hulk movie, Marvel doesn’t really have the rights to that yet. That’s still Universal’s property, so there’s that issue.

This led Paul to note, “So, to me, it now sounds like we were all wrong that Marvel made some deal for a standalone move and some other appearances (sounds a lot like the Spider-Man deal) but Marvel never gained the rights back.” Paul is referring, of course, to the recent deal between Marvel and Sony where they will co-produce a Spider-Man film together and Spider-Man will make at least one appearance in a Marvel Studios film, while Sony will continue to own the movie rights to Spider-Man.

The truth is a bit more complicated than that.
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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: “South Park” wasn’t allowed to kill off Sally Struthers in an early episode of the series.

While there are certainly a lot of other differences between “The Simpsons” and “South Park,” a notable one is how each show treats celebrities. “The Simpsons” specifically courts celebrities to do cameos on the show, to the point where they build entire episodes around said guest stars. In fact, as I wrote in an old TV Legends Revealed, when one comedy icon wouldn’t appear on the show if they poked fun at him at all, “The Simpsons” staff just re-wrote his scenes to the point where he would agree to appear.

“South Park,” on the other hand, routinely turns down celebrities when they offer to do voices (or have them do silly voices, like having George Clooney play Stan’s gay dog, with all of his lines simply being “woof” or “bark”). Trey Parker and Matt Stone will often be a lot more vicious towards celebrities than “The Simpsons” writers would ever dare. They have even killed their share of celebrities on their show, with the most famous perhaps being Barbara Streisand, who had transformed herself into an evil giant mechanical dinosaur (luckily, Robert Smith from The Cure showed up to save the day and help kill Streisand after Leonard Maltin and Sidney Poitier were unable to stop her…yes, “South Park” can be really weird at times). However, while the Mecha-Streisand episode appeared in Season 1, it was after the show had already become a bit of a cultural phenomenon and Parker and Stone had gained a bit more leeway from Comedy Central (which airs the show). Early on, they had less freedom, which led to them not being able to kill a celebrity in an early episode. 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:Just months after being filmed for a scene in the Will Ferrell comedy, Semi-Pro, a bear killed its trainer.

In 2008, the Will Ferrell comedy, Semi-Pro, was released.

The movie was about an American Basketball Association team in Flint, Michigan, owned by Will Ferrell’s character (who is also the coach AND plays for the team) that is not doing very well with the fans. When the ABA announces that they are closing up shop and only four teams will be allowed to merge into the NBA, Ferrell’s character, Jackie Moon, comes up with various outlandish stunts to raise attendance so that his Flint Tropics team might have a shot at making the NBA.

One of these ridiculous stunts is that he, Jackie Moon, will wrestle a bear.

Here is the trained grizzly bear named Rocky that Ferrell’s character was to wrestle…

In the film, one of Rocky’s two trainers, Randy Miller, (two cousins, Randy and Stephan Miller, who both worked for Randy Miller’s animal training company, “Predators in Action”) stood in for Ferrell in the scenes where the bear fights with Ferrell’s character…

The film was released in February of 2008.

In April of 2008, Stephan Miller was dead, killed by Rocky the Bear!
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends related to board games and whether they are true or false. Click here for an archive of all board game urban legends so far.

BOARD GAME URBAN LEGEND: Twister avoided going under by getting the game to appear on The Tonight Show.

Something that always perks my interest in a legend is when the dates don’t quite check out. In the case of this legend, the dates really don’t work. So I sort of surprise myself with my ultimate answer…

Twister, as you are all quite aware, is a very popular game for Milton Bradley where the contestants are the game pieces. You are randomly assigned colors on a board where you have to place your arms and legs.

The object, then, is to be the last person left standing.

The game has an interesting history…
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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: A character on ER was saved from death because of the name of the character.

In Season 9 of E.R., a new character named Erin Harkins was introduced, played by Leslie Bibb.

Harkins was an idealistic medical student who first showed up in Season 9 who became enamored with brooding Croatian doctor Luka Kovac (played by Goran Visnjic). Her puppy dog crush was rejected several times by Kovac before he made a drunken pass at her at a Christmas party after he revealed to his ex-girlfriend that he was still in love with her.

Later in the same episode, an exhausted and angry Kovac (who had been called in to work hungover and had made a mistake while at work) crashes his car with Harkins in the passenger seat.

Originally, the accident was meant to have killed Harkins, giving the character of Kovac (who had already lost his wife and child to a bombing back in Croatia) even MORE trauma before slowly building the character back up (most of Season 9 was spent tearing Kovac down). Harkins does not appear in the next couple of episodes. However, she then makes one final appearance (to finish her ER rotation) before never being seen again.

Amazingly enough, the character was saved for one simple reason – her first name!
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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: “Sledgehammer” by Peter Gabriel was about sex.

“Sledgehammer” became Peter Gabriel’s first (and only) #1 hit song on the Billboard Pop Charts in 1986 (amusingly enough, it unseated “Invisible Touch,” the first (and only) #1 hit by his old band, Genesis). The song is famous for its groundbreaking music video by director Stephen R. Johnson that undoubtedly helped the song become such a major hit…

Anyhow, reader Chris F. wrote in to ask about a legend he had heard (he had a few others he was wondering about that I’ll probably get to in the future), that

“Sledgehammer“ is about a man trying to seduce a woman – the sledgehammer is male genitalia

Is that 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: An earlier version of “Beauty and the Beast” was scrapped due to Belle not being enough of a feminist heroine.

A peculiar challenge exists when you are writing a film for a large corporation such as Walt Disney Studios is that there are so many executives to answer to on each movie that it is difficult to maintain a cohesive voice for any given film. Therefore, it is unsurprising to note that a number of Disney films have undergone rather dramatic makeovers from their original screenplays. For instance, as we noted in a Movie Legend Revealed from a while back, Elsa in Frozen was originally the villain of that film.

The 1991 Disney classic, “Beauty and the Beast,” however, underwent a more dramatic transformation than most, as the original version of the film was completely scrapped well into the filmmaking process, leading to a completely new film having to be created in less than the normally allotted production time of a Disney animated film. Amazingly enough (in a good way), one of the key areas of contention with the original version of the film was that the heroine of the film wasn’t enough of a feminist!

Read on to see how it all went down!
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