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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 music urban legends featured so far.

MUSIC URBAN LEGEND: “We’ve Only Just Begun” was originally a song for a bank commercial.

Paul Williams was one of the most prominent songwriters of the 1970s when it came to pop music. Many generations of Muppet fans will remember his “Rainbow Connection.”

But all different types of pop music fans would enjoy Williams work, which included songs for a number of varied artists like Three Dog Night, the Carpenters and Barbra Streisand.

One of his most notable songs was a hit for the Carpenters, the love song “We’ve Only Just Begun.”

Amusingly enough, though, the song began life as a song for a BANK COMMERCIAL!
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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: Tom Selleck could have filmed Raiders of the Lost Ark AND done Magnum P.I.

It’s well known that Tom Selleck was forced to pass up the film Raiders of the Lost Ark…

where he had won the role of Indiana Jones (here’s Selleck as Indy)…

because CBS had an option for Selleck to do a new television series called Magnum P.I.

The really big problem for Selleck was how the timing worked out – CBS, naturally, would have had no problem having Selleck star in the picture under normal circumstances. Who wouldn’t want the star of their upcoming series to be the lead in a major motion picture? It’s great publicity.

The problem was that Magnum P.I. was developed for a specific purpose – to make use of the sets and production equipment left in Hawaii from the filming of the long-running series Hawaii 5-0.

Therefore, since that series was still filming until the beginning of 1980, CBS could not film Magnum P.I. any earlier than early 1980, which directly conflicted with the March 1980 filming schedule for Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Thus, CBS told Selleck he could not do the film.

That’s fairly weak, but what’s a bit less well known is that there was a turn of events that made the loss even worse than it first was for Selleck…
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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: X-Files and Picket Fences almost had a crossover episode until the network squashed it at the last minute.

In 1994, X-Files and Picket Fences decided to have a crossover episode.

Picket Fences was a critically acclaimed drama on CBS at 10:00 pm on Friday nights, which was created by David E. Kelley.

The show was set in a quirky town in Wisconsin.

Well, the X-Files (created by Chris Carter), which aired at 9pm on Friday nights on FOX, was about a pair of FBI agents who investigate the paranormal, and since they are often traveling to random parts of the country, it made sense for Agents Mulder and Scully to head to Wisconsin.

So the two TV series, who both shared a production company (20th Century Fox Television), decided to have a crossover.

At 9pm, Mulder and Scully would come to a small town in Wisconsin investigating some paranormal stuff involving cows, and at 10pm, the story would continue across the dial on Picket Fences, where I believe Agent Mulder would make an appearance in the town (I can’t say for sure because of what happened before the episode was actually made) of Rome, Wisconsin, which is where Picket Fences was set.

However, before the episodes were ready to go, CBS found out and they were displeased. Read the rest of this entry »

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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: Dan Haggerty lost his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame because of a well-publicized drug bust.

Dan Haggerty is best known for his work on the 1974 film, The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams, where Haggerty played a man wrongly accused of murder who flees to the wilderness and becomes a sort of “mountain man.”

The series launched a popular TV series of the same name and Haggerty became a popular television star.

However, Haggerty had some rough patches in his life off of the screen.

In 1984, he was convicted of possession of cocaine in a highly-publicized drug bust.

When that news is combined with the fact that Dan Haggerty is the only celebrity (to date, at least) who has had their star removed from the Hollywood Walk of Fame, it naturally has led to people telling some variation of “Dan Haggerty got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame removed because of a drug bust.”
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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: There is an X-Rated Director’s Cut of the film Scarface.

One of the best things about the endless re-releases of classic films on to DVD and Blu-Ray is that it gives film studios more and more opportunities to include new bonus content with the films. It used to be that a “bonus” on a DVD of a film was that it included the option to select a particular scene (I own a couple of DVDs that predate that “bonus” content and it is utterly bizarre to watch a DVD that just goes right to the movie when you put it into the DVD player).

When it comes to Brian De Palma’s 1983 classic gangster film, Scarface, though, something fans would love to see is the so-called “X-Rated Director’s Cut” of the film, as Scarface is notorious for originally receiving an X Rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) before being released with an R Rating. Reader Frank W. specifically wrote in asking if such a cut exists. The answer might surprise you, as the story behind how De Palma dealt with his X rating is quite surprising.
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about nursery rhymes and whether they are true or false.

NURSERY RHYME URBAN LEGEND: Airline passengers sued Southwest Airlines over the usage of a nursery rhyme by a flight attendant.

Few children’s rhymes have as rough a history as the simple “counting” rhyme, “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.”

The most popular version of the rhyme goes:

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,
Catch a tiger by the toe.
If he hollers let him go,
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.

With the rhyme designed to “randomly” count out one person, for purposes of determining who goes first, who is “it,” etc.

However, years ago, a particularly American take on the rhyme was quite popular (up until the late 19th Century, it was the most popular version of the rhyme in the United States), and in this version, instead of the word “tiger,” a common racial epithet for black people was used.

Some versions of the rhyme went even further, with stuff like:

If he won’t work then let him go;
Skidum, skidee, skidoo.

In any event, because of the history with the rhyme, some black people have a real problem with the rhyme, no matter the current lyrics.

So keep that in mind when you hear that a pair of black passengers were boarding a Southwest Airlines flight in 2001 (on Southwest, the passengers pick their own seats), when a flight attendant told them either:
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about nursery rhymes and whether they are true or false.

NURSERY RHYME URBAN LEGEND: There actually was a Mary who had a little lamb.

Like I noted in the last nursery rhyme urban legend, for almost all nursery rhymes we really don’t know the origin of the rhyme.

In the case of “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” we appear to know a little bit more than others.

Here’s the rhyme (the adapted version that was set to music in the 1830s)…

Mary had a little lamb,
little lamb, little lamb,
Mary had a little lamb,
whose fleece was white as snow.
And everywhere that Mary went,
Mary went, Mary went,
and everywhere that Mary went,
the lamb was sure to go.

It followed her to school one day
school one day, school one day,
It followed her to school one day,
which was against the rules.
It made the children laugh and play,
laugh and play, laugh and play,
it made the children laugh and play
to see a lamb at school.

And so the teacher turned it out,
turned it out, turned it out,
And so the teacher turned it out,
but still it lingered near,
And waited patiently about,
patiently about, patiently about,
And waited patiently about
till Mary did appear.

“Why does the lamb love Mary so?”
Love Mary so? Love Mary so?
“Why does the lamb love Mary so,”
the eager children cry.
“Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know.”
The lamb, you know, the lamb, you know,
“Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know,”
the teacher did reply.

So, WAS there a real Mary?
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about nursery rhymes and whether they are true or false.

NURSERY RHYME URBAN LEGEND: Humpty Dumpty was named after a cannon.

A lot of the fun with nursery rhymes for adults is trying to figure out the meaning behind these children’s rhymes. Since the origins of almost all of them have been lost to the ages for centuries, a “best guess” is all we really can do for most of them, and in a lot of cases, said “best guesses” really can be quite a stretch (“You see, ___ stands for _____, so when he says ____, he really means ____” – stuff like that).

One such stretch is with the famous story of Humpty Dumpty.

As the tale goes:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses,
And all the king’s men,
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

Interestingly enough, it seems likely that the initial usage of the song was as a riddle. You know, sort of like the one about “Henry” being discovered in a pool of water and broken glass having drowned, and you’re supposed to figure out that Henry is a goldfish. It appears that the same was here originally, that you were supposed to figure out WHY Humpty Dumpty couldn’t be put back together – because he’s an egg, not a human!

In any event, one popular “origin” of the rhyme comes down to these alternate lyrics to the tale…

In Sixteen Hundred and Forty-Eight
When England suffered the pains of state
The Roundheads lay siege to Colchester town
Where the king’s men still fought for the crown
There One-Eyed Thompson stood on the wall
A gunner of deadliest aim of all
From St. Mary’s Tower his cannon he fired
Humpty-Dumpty was its name
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall…

Thus the story is that in 1648, a Royalist cannon in Colchester used during the English Civil War was perched on a wall and was knocked down, and all of the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t get “Humpty Dumpty” back together again.

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: A dealer raising his price for professional wrestling footage led to the making of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.

In 1984, Malik B. Ali and Waleed B. Ali hired a young film student, John McNaughton, to direct a documentary about gangsters in the 1930s.

The documentary was called Dealers in Death: Murder and Mayhem in America, and it was narrated by the classic film star Broderick Crawford.

You can watch Dealers in Death for free on hulu.com! Just click here to watch it.

The film was a minor success (it made money, at the very least), so the Ali brothers figured McNaughton could do another movie for them. This time, they decided on a documentary about professional wrestling in Chicago in the early 20th Century.

The brothers knew a man who was willing to sell a lot of now public domain footage of early professional wrestling.

However, when the deal was just about to be completed, the man asked for a lot more money (I believe double the original asking price, but I could be wrong). The Ali brothers backed out of the deal. What happened next changed a number of careers!
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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: Does every Saturday Night Live sketch set backstage since Seth Meyers became the head writer of SNL feature a llama, a showgirl and Abraham Lincoln?

A few months ago, in the penultimate episode of Saturday Night Live‘s 38th season, former SNL castmember Kristen Wiig returned to host the show.

In her opening monologue, she sang a version of The Pointer Sisters’ “I’m So Excited” about how excited she was to be back at her old stomping grounds. The joke behind the song is that she is singing about how everything is really familiar to her, but as we follow her backstage, she clearly has forgotten everything about her time on the show, including where her dressing room was and the names of all of her former castmates. When she goes to her old dressing room (really a janitor’s closet, where guest stars Maya Rudolph and Jonah Hill are seen making out), there is a llama right next to her.

Later, she runs into an actor dressed as Abraham Lincoln talking to a pair of showgirls (she confuses him for Daniel Day-Lewis).

Pretty weird, right? However, earlier that season, during the Christmas episode hosted by Martin Short (another former SNL castmember), Short also went backstage during a musical routine involving the fact that Christmas is the “randiest time of the year.” He, too, encountered showgirls (while talking to Kristen Wiig, oddly enough, who was making a cameo)….

and then a llama and an actor dressed as Abraham Lincoln.

So is it somehow true that every time a sketch is set backstage on SNL that Lincoln, a llama and showgirls are present?
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