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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: Alice Cooper’s title track for the film Man with the Golden Gun was rejected by the film’s producers.

Reader Richard wrote in to ask:

Alice Cooper wrote the song “Man with the Golden Gun” (from his 1973 LP “Muscle of Love”) for the upcoming James Bond film with the same name, but it was rejected.

I remember buying and enjoying that album when it came out and was anticipating hearing the song before the movie and was surprised when it wasn’t used. Throughout Cooper’s version there are snippets of the Bond theme and had a Bond feel to it. I’ve since read, over the years that the film producers rejected it, but never found out why.

A large chunk of what Richard says above is true.

A few different artists were approached to possibly perform the title track to the 1974 James Bond film, The Man With the Golden Gun.

Alice Cooper (who we were just talking about last week) was one of those artists.

His entry ended up appearing on his 1973 album, Muscle of Love…

The entry they ended up using was a rather lackluster performance by Lulu (we were just talking about her!)…

Rumors have abounded since then that Cooper’s version was rejected for any number of reasons.

However, that was not the case.
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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: Nintendo owns the rights to Super Hornio Brothers, a porn parody of Super Mario Brothers.

A curious sort of boom market has developed in recent years for high end porn parodies of popular films and TV series, especially superhero films and shows, like Batman XXX: A Porn Parody (CBR spoke to the director of the film at the time and it is fascinating how much care is put into the production of these films. As CSBG’s Sonia Harris noted a while back, the costume for the porn parody of Wonder Woman looks better and more like the actual comic book character than the costume for the David E. Kelley Wonder Woman TV pilot!). While these porn parodies have become big business these days (you almost see as many mentions of porn parodies as you see car insurance ads these days), the idea of doing a porn parody of popular culture has been around for decades. You would be hard pressed to pick a notable television series or film that has not had a porn parody at one point or another over the years (I did a Comic Book Legends Revealed on a Superman porn parody that DC sued over thirty years ago). However, very rarely do you ever see the inspiration for the porn parody ever get involved in the parody and yet that is exactly what happened with Nintendo and the 1993 film Super Hornio Brothers.

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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: When she was a little girl, Crystal Bernard was part of an Evangelical Christian singing act with her older sister.

Crystal Bernard has had an impressively long career in television.

After one season on Happy Days, she co-starred in TWO long-running sitcoms, keeping her on the TV screen for over a decade, with the waitress sitcom It’s a Living and her most famous series, Wings.

However, Bernard has been in the entertainment business for years before she got into television.

Bernard’s father Jerry was a traveling Baptist evangelist preacher, who would sing and perform all over Texas.

So Crystal and her older sister, Robin, grew up singing.

In the early 1970s, the sisters were “discovered” by singer Bobbie Gentry (who will forever be known for her classic song, “Ode to Billy Joe”)…

Gentry had the girls perform with her during her popular Las Vegas routines.

Well, in 1972, Jerry Falwell released an album called Feudin’, Fussin’ & Frettin’, it was a recording of a “typical” Sunday at Falwell’s church.

The Bernard sisters performed two songs for the album, and as far as I know, they are the only two official recordings of the Bernard sisters that exists.

The song were “The Monkey Song” and “The Ecumenical Movement.”

The first song mocks the theory of evolution while the second song mocks the ecumenical movement (the “movement” that suggested that religions should try to stress the things that all religions have in common rather than their differences).

I bet you folks would like to see the lyrics, wouldn’t you? Read on to see ’em!
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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: Joe Penny forced Jake and the Fatman to move filming from Hawaii to Los Angeles because of his health problems.

Jake and the Fatman starred Joe Penny and William Conrad as Jake and the Fatman, respectively.

Jake was an investigator who worked for J. L. “Fatman” McCabe, a Los Angeles district attorney.

As you may or may not know, Magnum P.I. was originally created to put to use the Hawaiian sets CBS already were renting for use for Hawaii 5-0.

Well, at the end of the decade, Magnum P.I. was also coming to an end, and CBS still owned a lease on the Hawaiian sets.

So, to avoid wasting money, CBS decided that Fatman would retire and become a lawyer in Hawaii (Fatman, apparently, was from Hawaii originally – a useful coincidence, eh?) and he would bring his investigators with him, just in time for Season 2!

Some have said that CBS had actually CANCELED Jake and the Fatman after Season 1 when this idea was offered up as an alternative to cancellation. That might very well be true (it sounds logical enough), but I haven’t seen anything definitive to back that assertion up.

During the fourth season of the show in 1991, two things happened.

One, the show moved from Hawaii back to Los Angeles.

Two, Joe Penny lost a lot of weight.

“Shockingly,” when a never-married actor in his mid-30s suddenly started losing weight, rumors began popping up that Penny was gay and now had AIDs and that was why the show was moving back to Los Angeles (for more access to medical care for Penny).

Is it 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: Michael J. Fox had a clever “revenge” for Brandon Tartikoff’s early doubts about whether Fox would be popular enough to star in a regular TV series.

The original actor cast in the role of Alex P. Keaton in Family Ties was Matthew Broderick, but Broderick ended up backing out of the show. You can only imagine how much that irked show creator Gary David Goldberg. It was pretty clear, even then, that Broderick was going to be something special, so the idea of having him and then NOT having him was pretty rough, and Goldberg seemingly took his frustration out on the hundreds of young men who auditioned to take Broderick’s place.

Eventually, though, his writers and co-producer had him take a second look at one of the actors that had auditioned before they had cast Broderick in the first place, Michael J. Fox.

This time, Goldberg was converted.

However, he had to sell the idea to the network, particularly NBC Head of Entertainment Programming, Brandon Tartikoff. Before the pilot was even filmed, Tartikoff took issue with Fox’s height. He felt he was too short for the role of the son of Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter-Birney. However, he let Goldberg have his way for now.

Once the pilot was filmed, though, NBC loved the show itself, but Tartikoff, once again, tried to have Fox replaced. This time, his argument (in response to Goldberg’s argument that Fox was quite good) was “Maybe, but this is not the kind of face that you’ll ever see on a lunchbox.”

Eventually, though, Tartikoff relented and let Goldberg have his way.

And, of course, Family Ties was a big hit and Fox, in particular, became a star.

Tartikoff was friendly with Fox, and he told Fox about his earlier issues with his casting (Fox obviously had a general idea that Tartikoff did not want him on the show, but Tartikoff told him his specific objections).

Well, a couple of years passed, and Fox (now perhaps at the height of his popularity) starred in the major motion picture Back to the Future (once again replacing a notable 1980s’ teen actor, Eric Stoltz).

The movie was a gigantic smash hit, and, naturally enough, they made, you guessed it, lunch boxes for the film. So Fox had some fun with that fact…
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends related to dancing and dancers and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the dancing urban legends featured so far.

DANCING URBAN LEGEND: Louis Horst had a stinging review of an early Paul Taylor choreographed performance.

Louis Horst was one of the VERY earliest proponents of modern dance.

He was around for so long that Martha Graham was HIS student!!

Besides being a prominent dance teacher, Horst was also a notable dance critic.

In 1934, he debuted a new magazine called the Dance Observer to get across his particular views and theories about the world of modern dance.

The magazine lasted until 1964, when it ended upon Horst’s death.

In any event, one of Graham’s students was a man named Paul Taylor.

Taylor began performing in the early 1950s in a special dance performance joint choreographed by Graham and the famous ballet choreographer, George Balanchine (you might recall Balanchine from one of the very first installments of Dancing Urban Legends Revealed). Balanchine developed a solo that was so unique that they had to drop it from the show when Taylor left the show.

Within two years, Taylor was choreographing his own shows!

When Taylor started out, he was all about the ideas and theories of what one could accomplish with modern dance – what different kinds of expression you could make.

As a result, some of his dances were not exactly audience friendly.

In 1957, just three years after making his professional dance debut, Taylor debuted his choreographed work, “Seven New Dances.”

Mixed in throughout the dances were dances that, well, did not appear to the naked eye to BE dances. Much like how John Cage felt that his four minutes and thirty three seconds of “silence” showed you how silence was not ACTUALLY silent, so, too, did Taylor feel that, depending on how you handle it, NOT moving could be as dramatic as moving.

He played with that idea throughout the show, but one dance, in particular, stood out – in this dance, Taylor and a fellow dancer basically stand/sit still for four minutes.

Horst, the modern dance pioneer, was especially put off by this dance, and he made that clear with one of the more brilliant critiques you’ll get a chance to see.
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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: Was Scooby Doo really based on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis

Pinpointing exactly what inspires a TV series into existence can often be a difficult proposition. I’ve done a number of legends on it over the years, like how a disc jockey’s joke inadvertently re-launched Alvin and the Chipmunks in the 1980s (including their hit TV series) or how a strange contract clause on a cop show led to the creation of Baretta. Today we look at the creation of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!…

and whether it was based on the early 1960s TV series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.

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

DANCING URBAN LEGEND: Unexpected acceptances by two major rock bands led to Merce Cunningham developing a brand new dance routine.

Mercier “Merce” Cunninghamn (pronounced like terse) just passed on a few years ago, at the age of 90. He died as one of the most prominent dance figures of the 20th Century.

Cunningham began working with Martha Graham (one of the early leaders in the modern dance movement) during the 1930s, and by 1944 he was doing his own shows.

He soon began working with John Cage, the avant garde musician (I discussed Cage in this installment of Music Urban Legends Revealed).

The pair would become partners both on the stage and off, working (and living) together for nearly 40 years until Cage passed away in the early 1990s.

Cunningham continued working (in fact, he was doing podcasts about dance just five years ago, at the age of 89!) and his dance studio continued to be one of the most well respected modern dance studios out there.

However, as Cunningham got older, a problem was to get people still interested in going to see the dances that Cunningham was choreographing – also, more specifically to get a NEW crowd interested as Cunningham’s Dance Company reached its FIFTIETH year of existence in 2002.

So Trevor Carlson, the general manager of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, came up with a novel idea for the Company’s 50th season – instead of having Cunningham’s dances alongside the music of Cage – the avant garde, post-modern style of music (Cage’s most famous piece of music was four minutes and thirty three seconds of ambient crowd noise), Carlson would ask a major contemporary rock ‘n’ roll band to work alongside Cunningham!

Carlson sent off requests to two separate hip bands…

Radiohead…

and Sigur Rós…

Carlson’s plan was that if he sent out two invitations, PERHAPS one of them would say yes.

However, surprisingly (to Carlson, at least), while neither group had ever actually seen a performance by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, they both agreed to do the show!

So now, just like a sitcom character, Carlson had basically TWO dates for the same event!

This being Merce Cunningham, though, weird situations were not a problem…
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends related to dancing and dancers and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the dancing urban legends featured so far.

DANCING URBAN LEGEND: George Bernard Shaw had a particularly witty rebuke to a comment by Isadora Duncan.

Isadora Duncan was one of the first “modern” dancers, beginning at the turn of the 20th Century.

In the first 30 years of the 20th Century, Duncan was one of the most celebrated figures in the world.

Meanwhile, during this same period, one of the most celebrated intellectuals (due to his long life, he remained famous until the 1950s, when he died at the age of 94) was the writer George Bernard Shaw.

Shaw is most well known for his play Pygmalion, which was adapted into the classic musical, My Fair Lady.

In any event, as the story goes, one day when the pair met while at a party, Duncan suggested to Shaw that the two should have a child together:

Think of it! With your brains and my body, what a wonder it would be.

According to the story, Shaw thinks for a moment before replying:

Yes, but what if it had my body and your brains?

It’s a great line, and that’s likely why the story has lasted so long. But is it 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: Bob Dylan co-wrote “The Ballad of Easy Rider.”

Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper’s 1969 film, Easy Rider, was not just a notable film for its aid in ushering in the age of “New Hollywood,” but also for its impressive soundtrack.

Fonda and Hopper had an interesting approach to requesting licenses from various artists to use their songs in the film. They were using popular contemporary artists of the day (mostly bands that Hopper, the director of the film, enjoyed) and they would actually screen the film for the artists in question and tell them where they planned to use their songs (as Hopper, naturally, had specific songs in his mind when filming different scenes).

Well, for the closing credits, they wanted to use Bob Dylan’s “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” (which, if you recall the ending of Easy Rider, would fit really well for the film).

Dylan said no (I don’t believe Fonda has ever publicly said why and good luck getting an answer from Dylan, but people, including Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, say that it was because Dylan disliked the ending of the film, feeling it was too dark), so instead, Fonda had McGuinn do a cover of the song.

So instead of using THAT song for the shot, Fonda asked if Dylan would write a NEW song for the closing (the only new song they planned on having in the film), with “It’s Alright” being moved slightly before the ending then.

What Dylan did next is the issue here…
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