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

MAGAZINE URBAN LEGEND: Gerald Ford was a male model who appeared on the cover of Cosmopolitan.

Gerald Ford had an interesting (and impressive) path to becoming a career politician (before becoming the first President of the United States to never be elected either President or Vice-President, as he replaced Spiro Agnew as Vice President after Agnew resigned and then replaced Richard Nixon as President after Nixon resigned).

He paid his way through college at the University of Michigan by washing dishes in his fraternity house. He was also a star football player, helping to lead Michigan to two national titles in 1932 and 1933. Upon graduation in 1935, he got offers to play professional football but he turned them down to instead go to Yale to become a football and boxing coach. His intent was to enroll at their law school, but they initially turned him down due to his full-time coaching work. After attending Michigan’s Law School in the Summer of 1937, he was finally admitted to Yale’s Law School in the Spring of 1938.

After receiving his law degree in 1941, Ford started a legal practice with a friend but then his destiny (and that of many young men in America) was changed forever by the attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States entering World War II. Ford enrolled in the Navy and after a year of training (where he rose in the ranks to Lieutenant), he went to the Pacific in 1943 and served his country well, receiving a number of medals. Before leaving to go overseas, however, he had an interesting chapter in his life…as a male model!
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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 nude stripper appeared on the Soupy Sales Show.

STATUS: True

David Arroyo wrote in to tell me about this one, but the one he sent me was not even the “real” one, which is even crazier than what he sent me!

You see, Soupy Sales was a popular kids entertainer who had a television show in Detroit.

The show was not filmed in front of a studio audiences, so there was plenty of room for rather ribald practical jokes. The craziest one would have to involve one time in the 1950s when his crew pulled one of the most amazing pranks you’ll ever think of.

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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: Harrison Ford first met George Lucas while building some cabinets for him.

A while back, I wrote a Movie Legends Revealed about the surprising journey Harrison Ford took to auditioning for the role of Han Solo in “Star Wars”. “Star Wars”, of course, was not the first film that Harrison Ford worked on with Director George Lucas.

Ford’s first big movie role was as the closest thing Lucas’s first hit film, “American Graffiti,” had to a villain. While Lucas was wary of casting someone from “Graffiti” in “Star Wars,” Ford ultimately made it impossible for him not to go with him (this was a similar situation Lucas later found himself in with Ford and Indiana Jones – Lucas wanted to cast anyone but Ford as Indy, but circumstances kept leading him back to Ford). Obviously, though, “American Graffiti” played a huge role in Lucas even knowing who Ford was, so it is an undeniably large piece of Ford’s journey to becoming a movie star. In that previous Movie Legend, I said that I would eventually feature a legend about how Ford got the role in “American Graffiti,” so now here we are. It’s really one of the most prolific legends I have come across, which is that Ford first met Lucas while Ford was installing some cabinets for him during his side job as a carpenter.

Is that true?
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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: “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay” ended with whistling because Otis Redding died before finishing the final verse.

“(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay” was by far Otis Redding’s biggest hit recorded by himself.

Tragically, he did not live to see it become a great success, as he died in a plane crash before the song was released.

Reader Jay wrote in with an interesting legend regarding the song that he wanted me to verify or debunk:

I heard a tale that Otis Redding’s Sitting on the Dock of the Bay ending was done with him whistling because he died before it was finished. He went to his label and didn’t have an instrument and whistled the tune while being recorded to give the example of the song. They finished the song from that recording so the story goes.

Is that true? Let’s 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: There would be no Lily Aldrin on “How I Met Your Mother” had Alyson Hannigan not played her.

As I wrote in a TV Legends Revealed a while back, Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, the creators of “How I Met Your Mother,” were so unsure about whether they would get picked up for a full first season that they wrote in a “backup” mother in case the show was canceled early. However, the character of Lily Aldrin might not have even made it that far, according to a legend involving Rebecca Alson-Milkman, the wife of show co-creator Craig Thomas.

Bays, Thomas and Alson-Milkman all attended Wesleyan University together in the late 1990s. The main characters in “How I Met Your Mother” of Ted Mosby (the sitcom was about him telling his kids the story of his life leading up to the time he met their mother) and his best friends Marshall Eriksen and Lily Aldrin, were based on the perpetually single Bays (Bays got married in 2011, during the show’s seventh season) and Thomas and Alson-Milkman, who have been a couple since college. As the story goes, Alson-Milkman did not like the idea of having a character based on her and would only agree to it if Alyson Hannigan played her character. Luckily, Hannigan was looking for a comedy after “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” went off the air, so she was, indeed, cast as Lily and the rest is sitcom history.

Or is it? Let’s 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: OJ Simpson was originally cast as the Terminator robot in “The Terminator.”

Over the years, I’ve come across plenty of interesting reasons why actors weren’t given (or almost weren’t given) certain roles in films and television shows, from Brandon Tartikoff not wanting Michale J. Fox on “Family Ties” because he couldn’t see anyone putting Fox’s face on a lunch box (Fox’s “revenge” on Tartikoff years later was hilarious) to CBS executives fearing Meg Foster made Cagney and Lacey seem like lesbians to an actor losing out on the chance to play John Lennon in a film because he had the same name as the guy who assassinated John Lennon, but few reasons could quite strain the limits of irony as the alleged reason why OJ Simpson was not cast as the cyborg assassin Terminator in James Cameron’s 1984 sci-fi classic, “The Terminator.”

As the story goes, Simpson had the role until the studio feared that audiences just wouldn’t believe Simpson in the role of a killer.

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: “Family Guy” was originally going to be part of “MadTV”

“Family Guy” recently began its fourteenth season on the air. The show is particularly famous for reaching that significant milestone despite being canceled twice.

Once temporarily after Season 2 before getting a third season and then after Season 3, where it actually stayed off the air for four years before triumphantly returning for a fourth season after high DVD sales and strong performances of reruns of the show on cable suggested that the show might still have a chance to make it. The show returned more popular than ever and has remained a hit ever since. Interestingly enough, the development process of “Family Guy” was even more complicated than its history since it went on the air. Initially, the show that became “Family Guy” wasn’t even going to start as its own series, but as part of another show on Fox, “MadTV”! Learn how it all went down…
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about novels and novelists and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the novel urban legends featured so far.

NOVEL URBAN LEGEND: Sir Thomas Malory wrote Le Morte d’Arthur while in prison.

The very first Novel Legends Revealed that I did was about whether Cervanted wrote Don Quixote while in prison. That legend was not true (saved you a click, I guess), but reader Mike B. wrote in about ANOTHER famous novel that was supposedly written in prison!

Did Sir Thomas Malory really write the most famous book about King Arthur, Le Morte d’Arthur, while in prison?

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: Back to the Future originally ended with “To Be Continued…”

Back to the Future has always had a rather unique ending for such a blockbuster hit.

The 1985 time travel film ended with Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) returning to the 1985 after a week-long stay in 1955 (hence him was trying to get Back to the Future throughout the movie). He is marveling at all the improvements in his and his family’s life based on his influence upon his parents when he interacted with them thirty years earlier. While celebrating these new changes in his life, eccentric scientist Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) shows up in the time traveling DeLorean car and tells Marty that he needs him to go with him to 2015 because something needs to be done about Marty’s children. When Marty (and Marty’s girlfriend and future wife, Jennifer) get into the car, Marty is worried that the car won’t have enough road to get up to 88 miles per hour (the speed needed to trigger the time-traveling aspect of the vehicle) but Brown informs him, “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.” The car then begins to fly and takes off into the future and then “To Be Continued…” flashes on to the screen.

Or did it?
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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: Patti LaBelle did not know what “Lady Marmalade” was about when she recorded it.

After performing for many years as the Blue Belles (or Bluebelles, they used both spellings) and then Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles (or Blue Belles), in 1971 the vocal group led by Patti LaBelle officially changed their name to just LaBelle.

In 1974, they had their first and only #1 hit, with “Lady Marmalade,” a song about a New Orleans prostitute…

(The song was written by Bob Crewe and Kenny Nolan, who had first released the song through Nolan’s own group, The Eleventh Hour, with Nolan on vocals – producer Allen Toussaint heard it and decided it would be a good song for LaBelle).

The song has been covered many times since, most notably by Christina Aguilera, Lil’ Kim, Mýa and Pink.

The song was somewhat scandalous for the time, being as how it was about a prostitute and all (the French part of the chorus was “”Voulez-vous coucher avec moi (ce soir)?”, which roughly translate to “Do you want to sleep with me?”). However, did Patti LaBelle seriously not know what the song was about when she recorded it?
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