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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends related to radio and the people “behind the microphone,” so to speak, and whether they are true or false.

RADIO URBAN LEGEND: A popular radio series changed the name of the show (and title character) because the novelist who originated the character was blacklisted.

Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade had already found success in novels…

and film (with some help from Humphrey Bogart)…

before gaining radio success, as well, with the 1946 radio serial, The Adventures of Sam Spade, starring Howard Duff as Spade (Duff was largely an unknown in 1946 – within a couple of years he would be famous and married to Ida Lupino!).

The show was sponsored by Wildroot Cream-Oil.

Here is an old ad campaign for the show that appeared in comic books of the time…

Wildroot Cream Oil also used one of Al Capp’s characters in their ads, using the catchphrase, “Get Wildroot Cream-Oil, Charlie!”

This becomes important later.

The show debuted on ABC and then ran on CBS for a few years.

So it’s now 1950, and Hammett has been blacklisted by the government due to his constant protests for civil rights. The show had already removed his name on the credits.

Now, though, Howard Duff, as well, has been getting some inquiries from the House Un-American Activities Committtee.
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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 unrated and sexually explicit trailer for Nymphomaniac was accidentally shown to attendees of a showing of the children’s animated film, Frozen.

There is an old journalism adage that goes “everyone reads the false report and no one reads the correction.” This is true to this day, where rarely anyone actually reads the corrections section of a newspaper, but it is an even bigger deal in the era of internet news, where not only does news spread faster, but while a false report in a newspaper might appear in a single edition of a newspaper, false reports on the internet will always remain out there and so when you search for information on the story, the widespread original story is still going to be the one that shows up the most in your searches.

This appears to be the case with the story of how the sexually explicit “red band” trailer for Nymphomaniac was accidentally shown at a movie theater filled with movie goers there to see the Disney animated film Frozen.

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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends related to radio and the people “behind the microphone,” so to speak, and whether they are true or false.

RADIO URBAN LEGEND: A daily Washington D.C. radio show accidentally played a re-run episode complete with a breaking news bulletin from the past.

In 1998, Kojo Nnamdi took over a long-running daily morning talk show called Public Interest on WAMU in Washington D.C. that first began as The Fred Finke show in 1977 (when it was a nighttime public interest show). After a couple of host (and name) changes, WAMU went with “Public Interest” rather than naming it after the new host, Nnamdi.

In 2002, they ended up naming it The Kojo Nnamdi Show anyways, which is what it remains called to this day.

In November of 2002, Nnamdi woke up sick one day and did not feel that he would be able to come in and work.

Without adequate time to find a guest host, the producers decided to re-run a recent show.

They grabbed a show from October and popped it in.

The show went on as it normally did, with Nnamdi discussing various topics. However, while discussing dreams and nightmares with neurologist Richard Cytowik, a bulletin interrupted the show.

Five people had been shot in Montgomery County!!

Yes, the producers had unwittingly chosen the October 3rd episode of the program, the day that the infamous “beltway sniper,” John Allen Muhammed first broke into the news with his early morning sniping murders of four random strangers in Montgomery County, Maryland (just north of Washington D.C.) which was coupled with a shooting from the previous day (Muhammed would go on to murder a sixth victim later that night).
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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.

MUSIC URBAN LEGEND: The famous “I wonder, wonder who, who-oo-ooh, who” part of the Monotones’ “Book of Love” was inspired by a Pepsodent commercial!

If you’re compiling a list of the most famous lines from do wop and early rock ‘n’ roll history, you simply would have to include The Monotones “I wonder, wonder who, who-oo-ooh, who (who wrote the book of love)” from their 1957 hit single, “Book of Love” (a song that became so popular that the record company that originally released the record literally could not meet the demand for the song, so they had to have it be re-issued by a major record label in early 1958).

What’s even more amazing than the coolness of the line (and the song itself, which is an utter classic) is what INSPIRED that great line.

Lead singer Charles Patrick (shown above) drew his inspiration from, of all things, a Pepsodent commercial!
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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: Pretty in Pink originally ended with Andie and Duckie together.

Pretty in Pink was a 1986 romantic comedy written by John Hughes and directed by Howard Deutch that starred Molly Ringwald, Andrew McCarthy, James Spader and Jon Cryer.

The film centered on Ringwald’s working class Andie and her relationship with McCarthy’s upper class Blaine, countered with her relationship with her best friend, Duckie (played by Cryer).

Spader played Blaine’s rich friend, Steff, who pressures Blaine to not date Andie (as it turns out, Steff’s anger is mostly based on Andie spurning his advances earlier in the film). Besides perhaps the soundtrack (and James Spader’s amazing performance as the villainous Steff), the film is best remembered for the best friend who wished he could get the girl, Duckie.

However, while the film ends with Andie and Blaine together, in the original version, Duckie actually did get the girl!

Read on to see why that ending failed and how Robert Downey Jr. actually played a small part in it all…
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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.

MUSIC URBAN LEGEND: The cereal Wheaties was saved from termination by a radio jingle.

There always needs to be some sort of lucky confluence of events for ANY product to really break through in the marketplace. But sometimes, the events are a bit more out of the ordinary than others. Like, for instance, how Wheaties managed to be saved by something as a simple as a radio jingle.

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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.

MUSIC URBAN LEGEND: Doublemint gum adapted Chris Brown’s “Forever” into a gum commercial.

Whether you think you are familiar with Chris Brown and his hit single, “Forever,” or not, there’s a very decent chance that you heard it as part of the very famous internet video of the wedding where the entire bridal party dances to the song (eventually parodied/referenced on the TV series The Office)…

In any event, the song in the video is Chris Brown’s “Forever.”

As you might notice in the song, there’s a line about “double your pleasure, double your fun,” which is the slogan for Wrigley’s Doublemint gum.

A variation of this song aired in 2008 as a commercial for Doublemint gum with Chris Brown starring in the commercial…

At the time, most folks presumed that, like many many commercials out there (from iPods to Ford Trucks to Caribbean Cruises), Doublemint was using a popular song for their commercial.

Heck, if you check out this YouTube clip of the commercial (courtesy of YouTube user ilikechrisbrn)…

then you will see that ilikechrisbrn even lists the video as “Chris Brown in a new TV commercial for Wrigley’s Doublemint gum featuring the new jingle based on Forever.”

However, amusingly enough, it is actually the OTHER way around.
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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: Black Widow very nearly had a movie before Iron Man and Thor.

Marvel has had a string of significant successes since they began producing their own films in 2008 with Iron Man. They had a succession of hit films starring Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and Hulk that led to one of the biggest movies of all-time, The Avengers. They even turned a group of minor comic book characters who didn’t even exist as a team until 2008, the Guardians of the Galaxy, into the biggest film of 2014.

However, for all of their successes so far, they have yet to come out with a film starring a female superhero and it appears as though Sony will actually have the first Marvel-related film starring a female hero. Reader Dennis L. wrote in to ask if it was true, though, that there was almost a Black Widow film released before Marvel began making their own films. Read on for the answer!
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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 was at least one back-up Mother in the show How I Met Your Mother.

The CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother concluded its impressive nine-year run earlier this year (its final was one of its highest-rated seasons yet – it ended up as CBS’ second-most popular show in the all-important 18-49 demographic, behind only the ratings juggernaut The Big Bang Theory. If CBS had its druthers, the show likely would have continued for even more seasons).

The show was about a man named Ted Mosby (played by Josh Radnor) who was telling his kids in the year 2030 the (rather long) story about how he met their mother (the narrator telling the story through voiceovers is oddly enough not Radnor, but veteran sitcom actor Bob Saget). At the end of season 8, viewers got to meet the mother, played by Cristin Milioti, and the final season showed flash-forwards of the relationship between Ted and the Mother (their first date, his wedding proposal, the birth of their kids) while we waited to finally see their first meeting in the series finale. Reader Lynn J. wrote in, though, to ask if it was true that the show had a number of other characters originally planned as the titular Mother. Read on to see the answer!
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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: Robert Downey Jr. was written out of his character’s wedding episode on Ally McBeal.

One thing that TV producers can never fully prepare themselves for is the availability of the actors who are starring in their shows. As I have shown in a number of TV legends over the years, shows have lost lead characters through a variety of circumstances and their responses to the loss have been all over the map, from the the 1970s western TV show that did not even take a break in filming when one of their two leads killed himself to the 1960s science fiction sitcom where the lead actor quit the show twenty episodes into the first season, resulting in the wacky neighbor of the main character suddenly taking over as the guardian of a sexy android. That was the challenge poses to David E. Kelley in 2001 when he suddenly did not have access to actor Robert Downey Jr. for the final episode of Ally McBeal‘s fourth season – an episode where Downey Jr.’s character was to marry Ally McBeal! How did Kelley get out of it?
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