Truth and Rumors

The Reality Behind TV's Most Famous Myths

Bill Brioux

• Publisher: Praeger
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9780313084782
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Television

When you first heard it, you couldn't believe it: Jerry Mathers, from TV's Leave It To Beaver, had been killed in Vietnam. Then word came that Abe Vigoda, the actor who played the curmudgeonly cop Fish on Barney Miller, was dead; and that Mikey, who would eat anything as the Life Cereal tyke, had eaten too many Pop Rocks and exploded. Besides exposing us to things we couldn't otherwise believe, television can convince us of things that never actually happened. But how did these outrageous TV legends get started? How did they spread from classrooms to boardrooms across North America and beyond? And, most important, what do these rumors, so quickly transformed into facts and common knowledge, reveal about our relationship to reality through the medium of television? Put in other words, what exactly is it that were doing when were dealing in these fabulous rumors—are we chasing after surprising truths or simply more incredible entertainment? To take one telling example: Jerry Mathers was not actually killed in Vietnam—but the basic sense of this lie wasn't far removed from the emotions factually expressed in the two-page spread of the faces of the dead in Time magazine. In the course of this compelling work—which is supplemented with interviews with many of the people implicated in these rumors—author Bill Brioux exposes the reality behind the many stories that currently circulate in our culture. Through these stories (both true and false), he sheds a revealing light on just what role these rumors play in contemporary society—and what role our society plays in regard to these rumors as well.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 How False Was It? The Show That Spawned the Most Myths: The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
• 2 Can We Talk? Other Famous Talk Show Rumors
• 3 Ward, I’m Worried about the Beaver: TV Rumors Involving Child Stars
• 4 Lucy, You’ve Got Some ‘Splainin’ to Do: A Couple of Persistent I Love Lucy Myths
• 5 Set Phasers for Stun: Some Enterprising Star Trek Legends
• 6 The Naked Truth: They Don’t Call It the “Boob Tube” for Nothing
• 7 A Word from Our Sponsor: Rumors and Myths and Commercials
• 8 Would You Believe… ? Strange Stories from the ’60s
• 9 That ’70s Show: Growing up with The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family
• 10 Monkee Business: Are You a Believer? Check out These Monkee Myths
• 11 Final Jeopardy: Game Show Myths and Rumors
• 12 Too Much Drama: Urban Legends about Drama Series
• 13 Reality: What a Concept: Reality Show Rumors
• 14 So Not Dead: TV Stars Who Supposedly Died but Didn’t
• 15 Didn’t You Used to Be What’s His Name? A Few Cases of Mistaken Identity
• 16 Kids Say the Darndest Things: Rumors about Children’s Shows
• 17 Tall ‘Toon Tales: Urban Myths about Animated Series
• 18 Strikes, Spares, and Misses: TV’s Most Enduring Sports Myths
• 19 This Just In: Urban Myths about Newscasts
• 20 Miscellaneous Myths: Items That Simply Defy Categorization
• 21 Smile When You Say That, Pardner: TV’s Greatest Western Whoppers
• 22 Super Lie: A Rumor That Spread Faster Than a Speeding Bullet
• 23 Stars on Ice: Stars Who Supposedly Died on Television
• Appendix: Law and Order (terms and definitions)
• Index