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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: Some of Shel Silverstein’s poems for Where the Sidewalk Ends and A Light in the Attic originally appeared in the pages of Playboy.

Reader Jeff asked:

I know that Shel Silverstein, now most famous for his illustrated books of poems for kids, was a songwriter and contributor for Playboy as well. I think I heard a rumor that some of the poems from Where the Sidewalk Ends or A Light in the Attic started out in Playboy, as odd place for a children’s classic to sprout from. Any truth to that?

As Jeff notes, Silverstein did, indeed, get his start in the entertainment industry working for Playboy.

While he did not start with the company, he got involved very early on, in 1956, to be precise, when the magazine was not even two years old.

A cartoonist, Silverstein first contributed cartoons to the magazine before gradually adding more material, including a popular travelogue series.

Soon, Silverstein was the second-most popular feature of the magazine – trailing only, well, you know, the naked ladies.

Eventually, he expanded his work into books.

His first Playboy-influenced work was 1961’s Uncle Shelby’s ABZ Book, an “adult primer.”

It was basically a satire of children’s book from an adult perspective.

Silverstein clearly was not thinking about children’s work at this point in time. Heck, later that year he released the more explicit A Playboy’s Teevee Jeebies oh la la.

However, his editor at Harper & Row, Ursula Nordstrom, felt that Silverstein’s sensibilities would work well with stories for children.

So she convinced Silverstein to try to do children’s books.
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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: Marianne Moore was asked to come up with a name for the brand of car that eventually became known as the Edsel.

Marianne Moore was one of the most acclaimed Modernist poets of the 20th Century, with a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award on her mantelpiece.

A darling of the New York literary circle, Moore branched out into other areas, as well, particularly the sports world.

Moore was a major supporter of the New York Yankees, and even threw out of the first pitch for the 1968 season (she had a stroke later that year, and would pass away in 1972 after a series of strokes).

She also was a big fan of Muhammad Ali, even writing the liner notes to his spoken word album, I Am The Greatest…

But perhaps the oddest area where Moore lent her services was as an auto marketer!!
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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 University of Oregon agreed to let Animal House film at their college because their Dean of Students had earlier turned down The Graduate.

When the producers of National Lampoon’s Animal House began production on the film, they had a major problem – they could not get a university willing to let them film the movie on their campus!

Most universities tend to shy from anything that leads to colleges being viewed as “party schools.” I went to a college that was ranked the #1 party school for at least one of the four years I was there (and I think it has been #1 since that time, as well) and they were quite displeased, and certainly did not advertise the ranking.

So a movie starring a bunch of drunk fraternity guys?

Not something most colleges want to associate with, and in fact, the University of Missouri, who had originally said yes, backed out at the last minute.

Due to the budget of the film, it was imperative that the film actually film on a campus (as they could not afford to build a college set).

After twelve colleges in six different states said no, they finally received a yes from the University of Oregon and its President William Boyd.

But WHY Boyd said yes was pretty interesting.
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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: Theodor Geisel won two Academy Awards for Documentaries.

During World War II, a number of famous creative folks were involved in doing films for the United States military.

Legendary director John Ford was probably the most famous, but plenty of notable directors did work for the military, like William Wyler and Frank Capra.

Another man who got involved in doing propaganda for the military was Theodor Geisel, known better as Dr. Seuss.

By the beginning of World War II, Geisel had already began to make a name for himself as a popular children’s author, with his first book, And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street…

He quickly did a series of other books, including the class Horton Hatches an Egg, introducing the Horton character.

In any event, when the United States entered the war, Geisel began doing political cartoons, as well.

In 1943, he joined the Army and was placed in charge of the Army’s animation department, and he created many propaganda films for the Army and the Air Force.

Now here’s the slight twist. Read the rest of this entry »

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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: Did Dracula (and vampires in general) not have vampire fangs in films until a Turkish film in the 1950s?

We as readers and viewers of popular culture do an interesting thing that I like to call “intellectual consolidation.” When given a number of different films and shows and stories about a particular topic, whichever aspects that we deem to be the most memorable sort of end up squished together into a patchwork collective memory, whether that memory is accurate or not. I have written about this effect in the past, also in relation to a horror film, specifically the fact that there was no assistant named Igor until the third Frankenstein film and yet now Dr. Frankenstein having an assistant named Igor is considered an integral part of the Frankenstein story. Along the same lines, it was a surprisingly long and strange journey before we saw the motion picture introduction of the classic vampire fangs we are all familiar with in the story of Dracula.
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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: A typo led to the title of the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies.

1997’s Tomorrow Never Dies, the second film to star Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, was the first James Bond film whose title had no connection to Bond creator Ian Fleming (the first 16 films were based on Fleming novels starring Bond and the 17th film, GoldenEye, was named after the estate where Fleming wrote the novels).

Screenwriter Bruce Feirstein was tasked with coming up with a name for the film, and he was stuck until he was listening to the Beatles’ classic album, Revolver, which includes the song “Tomorrow Never Knows.”

In the film, Jonathan Pryce plays a villainous media mogul who runs a newspaper called Tomorrow.

Their slogan, like the New York Times’ slogan of “All the news that’s fit to print,” was to be “Tomorrow never lies,” and Feirstein was going to use that as the title of the movie. “Tomorrow never lies” is a common enough phrase, so it would have made sense as a title.

Here’s where there is a little confusion, though. Read the rest of this entry »

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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: Old Crow Medicine Show co-wrote a song with Bob Dylan, working nearly thirty years apart!

In 2004, the band Old Crow Medicine Show released their first album (self-titled)…

The album was a commercial and critical success.

The most popular song off of the album was a tune called “Wagon Wheel.”

Confusion soon set in, though, when people began talking about the song being a cover of a Bob Dylan song.

Dylan never had a song called “Wagon Wheel,” and never recorded any song that sounded like this one.

Heck, the song did not even appear on the Basemant Tapes (in 1967, Dylan and the Band recorded over a hundred demo songs, the “best” of which appeared on 1975’s album The Basement Tapes)…

So what was the deal?
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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: Giorgio Moroder wrote “Danger Zone” and “Take My Breath Away” with his former mechanic.

Italian-born singer/songwriter Giorgio Moroder is one of the most successful dance music writers of all-time.

After moving to Germany in the late 60s when he was in his late 20s, Moroder began a career as a singer.

It was his meeting with British aspiring songwriter Pete Bellotte, though, that really changed Moroder’s career forever.

The pair formed a production team and were at the forefront of the disco scene in the mid-1970s.

The two men teamed up with singer Donna Summer, and the three of them dominated the music charts with a ton of disco hits by Summer.

In the late 70s, Moroder began to get involved in doing music for films.

His very first film score, 1978’s Midnight Express, won him an Academy Award for Best Film Score!

He won his second Oscar for the hit song off of the soundtrack to Flashdance, “Flashdance (What a Feeling)”

Moroder contributed a few songs to the soundtrack to the film Top Gun…

One song was recorded by Kenny Loggins, called “Danger Zone”…

the other song, recorded by Berlin, won Moroder a THIRD Oscar, his second for Best Song.

It was called “Take My Breath Away”

Both songs were co-written by lyricist Tom Whitlock.

Amazingly enough, Whitlock first began working with Moroder when he was the mechanic for Moroder’s Ferrari sports car!

While this is true, I find the way this story is told to be more than a bit misleading.
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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: Barry Manilow wrote “Mandy” about his dog.

A very popular urban legend is that Barry Manilow wrote the song “Mandy” about his dog.

It is so popular that it even made it into the film Can’t Hardly Wait as a plot point (the male lead is into a girl named Amanda, and he thinks of “Mandy” a lot, but various characters keep telling him that it is about a dog).

But is 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: A short-lived Matthew Perry sitcom from the 1980s correctly predicted the year that Muammar Gaddafi would be killed.

Let’s just be clear from the start. TV series do not actually predict future world events. As noted in an old TV Legend Revealed, Quantum Leap did not seriously predict Super Bowl XXX. Similarly, an old Uncle Sam comic book did not really predict the attack on Pearl Harbor and comic book creator John Byrne does not have weird prediction powers. That said, quite often, there are some awfully eerie concidences out there that at the very least are weird enough for us to take notice. Reader Mark G. wrote in about one such coincidence when he asked if it was true that an old Matthew Perry sitcom seriously predicted the year of Muammar Gaddafi’s death. Read on to see if it is true!
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