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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: The Ghostbusters originally traveled through time and other dimensions.

Released on June 8, 1984, Ghostbusters starred Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis as a trio of parapsychologists who develop a way to actually capture ghosts. With the addition of Ernie Hudson’s character Winston Zeddemore, the four heroes fight ghosts in New York City and get caught up with Murray’s character’s girlfriend (played by Sigourney Weaver) who is possessed by a demon that is aiding the invasion of a demon called Gozer, who famously attacks New York City as a giant version of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. The movie was a smash hit, becoming the second-highest grossing film of the year behind Beverly Hills Cop.

Just like Beverly Hills Cop, though, Ghostbusters was a dramatically different film as originally written (check out this old Movie Legend about how Beverly Hills Copy was a vehicle for Slyvester Stallone). Read on to see how Dan Aykroyd originally envisioned the “Ghost Smashers!”
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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/BASEBALL URBAN LEGEND: A baseball player spent his career in the Major Leagues also as a pop artist, using a slightly different name.

Lee Maye broke into the Major Leagues in 1959 with the Milwaukee Braves, one year after the club, led by Hammerin’ Hank Aaron and Eddie Matthews, had lost to the New York Yankees in the World Series. Maye would play a little in 1959 and 1960 before settling in for a solid four-year run for the Braves from 1961-1964, including leading the league in doubles in 1964!

He was dealt to the expansion Houston Astros in the middle of the 1965 season. That would start Maye on a long career as a journeyman. A season and a half in Houston, a season or two in Cleveland, a season in Washington and two seasons spent mostly on the bench for the Chicago White Sox to close his career out. His last game was in June of 1971.

Oddly enough, Maye’s career ended at roughly the same time that Arthur Lee Maye’s career ended. Who was Arthur Lee Maye?
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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 show 227 used the same set as Sesame Street.

227 was a starring vehicle for Marla Gibbs (who became famous as the sassy maid on The Jeffersons). Gibbs played inner city housewife Mary Jenkins.

The series was actually put into production a year ahead of schedule, as the plan was for Gibbs to do the series when The Jeffersons ended in 1986. Instead, The Jeffersons was canceled a year early so the series went into production in 1985. Based on a play by Michael G. Moye, the show took place in an apartment building in Washington, D.C. with predominantly African-American residents (the official address was 227 Lexington Place). Moye’s original play was set in Chicago in the 1950s. He actually ended up taking his name off the series as he did not approve of the many changes that producers made to his original work, so the creator of the series is credited to a pseudonym Moye came up with, C.J. Banks. 227 eventually became more of an ensemble show over its five seasons, especially as Mary’s best friend, Sandra Clark (played by Jackée Harry) became a breakout character. Another member of the show’s original cast was Alaina Reed Hall, who played the kindhearted Rose Lee Holloway in all five seasons of the show.

Hall first came to national prominence as a cast member on the PBS children’s series Sesame Street, where she joined the series in 1976 as Olivia, the younger sister of Gordon Robinson, one of the original human characters on the series. Hall remained on the series until 1988, even doing the first three seasons of the show concurrently with her work on Sesame Street.

So Hall linked the two shows. However, there is an interesting legend that suggests that there is more of a connection between the two programs. According to Sesame Street’s official website:

When she left Sesame Street, actress and singer Alaina Reed didn’t have to move far. Her new show, 227, shared a set with Sesame Street. In fact, the front steps of the 227 apartment building were the stairs next to Oscar the Grouch’s trash can! Reed has appeared in stage productions on and off Broadway. Her film credits include Death Becomes Her and Cruel Intentions.

Is that true?
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends related to poetry and poets and whether they are true or false. Click here for an archive of all poetry legends featured so far.

POETRY URBAN LEGEND: Dorothy Parker’s ashes sat in a filing cabinet for nearly two decades.

Dorothy Parker was one of the leading humorists and wits of the 20th Century.

After selling her first poem to Vanity Fair in 1914, Parker eventually went to work for that magazine as well as Vogue as she became famous for her presence as a founding member of the gathering of New York wits known as the Algonquin Round Table.

In 1925, Harold Ross founded the New Yorker and Parker was one of his star writers. She wrote more than 300 poems for the magazine, specially in viciously dark poems, with suicide being a common topic. In 1926, Parker released the first volume of her poems titled ENOUGH ROPE : POEMS. It sold well.

Eventually, Parker moved to Hollywood where she became a successful and acclaimed screenwriter. Her left-wing politics though resulted in her eventually becoming blacklisted.

She returned to New York City where she worked for various magazines, perhaps most famously doing book reviews for Esquire. She had two separate “stints” being married to fellow writer Alan Campbell that ended with Campbell’s suicide in 1963 (from a drug overdose). However, her later years were mostly noted by her problems with alcoholism and after Campbell’s death, Parker did not have very many close friends.

This, therefore, led to the sad, strange fate of Parker’s ashes.
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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: Stevie Nicks wrote “Edge of Seventeen” based on the way that Tom Petty’s wife pronounced the word “age.”

“Edge of Seventeen (Just Like the White Winged Dove)” is perhaps Stevie Nicks’ most iconic solo hit. It was released on Nicks’ debut solo album, Bella Donna, which came out in July of 1981. Nicks began recording the songs that would make up the album in August of 1980.

In 1980, Nicks recorded “Stop Dragging My Heart Around” with rock singer Tom Petty (it was the top single off of Bella Donna).

While recording the song, Nicks hung out with Petty and his then-wife, Jane, which led to an important conversation that inspired her hit song, “Edge of Seventeen,” in a peculiar way!
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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: Robert Altman’s son made over a million dollars writing the lyrics to “Suicide is Painless.”

“Happy accidents” are common in the world of entertainment. as there often needs to be a rare confluence of events for anything to become a hit, but a particularly odd branch of hit songs are the ones where the artists behind the song truly did not believe in the material. In the past, I’ve spotlighted the story of how the hit Strawberry Alarm Clock song “Incense and Peppermints” was recorded by a teenager hanging out in the studio because no one in the band wanted to sing such a dumb song and how the classic hit song “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” was recorded by a made-up band name because the songwriters didn’t want to be associated with such a dumb song. In the “proud” tradition of those artists, then, we have for you the story of how a teenager was enlisted to help write the “stupidest song ever written” and how said song then made millions.

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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: Gabrielle Reece was cast as the She-Hulk in a failed She-Hulk TV pilot.

The creation of the She-Hulk came directly as a result of the success of the late 1970s Incredible Hulk TV series. Marvel was afraid that the show would eventually introduce a female version of the Hulk so they made sure that they invented one first. I covered it in an old Comic Book Legends revealed here (Spider-Woman owes her creation to a similar scenario). Reader Stephonie wrote in to ask:

There’s a legend where the late Bill Bixby developed and filmed a tv pilot spinoff based upon The Incredible Hulk. It was supposed to star Gabrielle Reece as She-Hulk. I’ve tried to find photo evidence of this but couldn’t find anything. Could you investigate this?

Sure thing, Stephonie! Read on for the answer!
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends related to poetry and poets and whether they are true or false. Click here for an archive of all poetry legends featured so far.

POETRY URBAN LEGEND: Thomas Bowdler “bowdlerized” Longfellow’s “Wreck of the Hesperus” by editing “bull” to “gentleman cow.”

Thomas Bowdler was a physican at the turn of the 19th Century who is much more famous for the work he did with his sister, Harriet, in editing the works of Shakespeare into a form that would make it appropriate for women and children to read. Bowdler recalled when he was a child and his father would entertain the family with the plays of Shakespeare, his father would surreptitiously omit parts of the plays that he felt were inappropriate for the ears of his wife and children. Bowdler felt that many people would appreciate an actual text version on these omissions, so that they did not have to do the omitting on their own.

So Thomas and Harriet set out to edit Shakespeare (with Harriet taking the lead). Eventually roughly 10% of Shakespeare’s words had been expunged, with some of them replaced by other words and some words (and characters) omitted entirely. One of the most famous changes in the collection (titled The Family Shakespeare) was the edit made to Macbeth, where Lady Macbeth’s famous cry “Out, damned spot!” was altered to “Out, crimson spot!”

As you might imagine, even over 200 years ago their actions drew derision from the literary community, and soon the term “bowdlerize” was coined to describe inelegant edits designed to cut out “offensive” material.

As the story goes, one of the most egregious edits Bowdler ever made was when he edited a reference to a bull in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s classic poem, “The Wreck of the Hesperus”

She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool;
But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.

from “bull” to “gentleman cow.”

And so “gentleman cow” has become a famous term for when someone is trying too hard to be inoffensive about a reference.

So, did this happen?
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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.

BASEBALL/MUSIC URBAN LEGEND: A song had a strange history with the Boston Red Sox to the point of seeming to be a World Series “good luck charm.”

“Tessie (You Are the Only, Only, Only)” was a popular song from the Broadway musical The Silver Slipper. It was written by WIll R. Anderson. The musical lasted just 160 performances (which actually is not that bad) from October 1902 and March 1903, but the song remained popular after the show closed.

In the classic book, The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It, Lawrence S. Ritter had longtime Pittsburgh Pirate great Tommy Leach tell the story of the 1903 World Series and the effect that Leach felt that “Tessie” had on the series…

I think those Boston fans actually won that Series for the Red Sox. We beat them three out of the first fouer games, and then they started singing that damn “Tessie” song, the Red Sox fans did. They called themselves the Royal Rooters and their leader was some Boston character named Mike McGreevey. He was known as “Nuf Sed” McGreevey, because any time there was an argument about anything to do with baseball he was the ultimate authority. Once McGreevey gave his opinion that ended the argument: nuf sed!

Anyways, in the fifth games of ther Series the Royal Rooters started singing “Tessie” for no particular reason at all, and the Red Sox won. They must have figured it was a good luck charm, because from then on you could hardly play ball they were singing “Tessie” so damn loud. “Tessie” was a real big popular song in those days. You remember it, don’t you?

Tessie, you me feel badly,
Why don’t you turn around.
Tessie, you know I love you madly,
Babe, my heart weighs about a pound.

Yeah, that was a real humdinger in those days. Like “The Music Goes Round and Round” in the ‘thirties. Now you surely remember that one?

Only instead of singing “Tessie, you know I love you madly,” they’d sing special lyrics for each of the Red Sox players, like “Jimmy, you know I love you madly.” And for us Pirates, they’d change it a little. Like when Honus Wagner came up to bat they’d sing:

Honus, why do you hit so badly,
Take a back seat and sit down.
Honus, at bat you look sadly.
Hey, why don’t you get out of town.

Sort of got on your nerves after a while. And before we knew what happened, we’d lost the World Series.

Here is a picture of the Rooters in 1903…

Whatever luck effects the Royal Rooters and their song, “Tessie,” had, the group disbanded in 1918 (their leader, the aforementioned McGreevey, ran a saloon, so perhaps he knew Prohibition was coming soon. His bar closed in 1920). In case you don’t recall, 1918 saw the Red Sox win a World Series…something they would not duplicate until 2004!

Here’s where things get weirder.
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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: Superman Returns used CGI to reduce the size of Brandon Routh’s crotch while he was wearing his Superman costume.

When people think of special effects in films, they often think of outlandish action sequences or fantastic creatures interacting with human actors. However, there are often much smaller special effects that go unnoticed in films unless you are specifically looking for them and the key to those effects is for you not to notice that they are there. A famous example (which I covered in an old Movie Legends Revealed here) is the sequence in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator where Scott used computer-generated imagery (CGI) to insert old footage of an actor who had passed away during the filming of the movie into a new scene in the film (so Scott could properly write the character out of the movie). Even old school films would use what effects they had access to in interesting ways, like the scene in the classic western film Shane, where director George Stevens played footage backwards because the villain of the film, Jack Palance, couldn’t properly mount a horse (so he just played the footage of Palance dismounting the horse in reverse). A long-running urban legend has it that director Bryan Singer also used special effects in an unusual way during the editing of his 2006 film, Superman Returns. The film starred Brandon Routh as Superman and the legend states that the crotch area of his costume was so distracting that Singer had to use CGI to “tone down” the size of Routh’s crotch.

Is that true?
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