Bill's Bulletin Board
By Bill Rea

Myths are all around us.

Don't worry. Just because we all believe in the reality of certain things doesn't mean our existence necessarily has to hinge on them. Sometimes, they are simply the basis of a good story, and are thought to add something to such story.

Certain events in history are filled with certain myths.

As many of you may know, I'm something of a casual Titanic buff, and for the last year or so, I have been a member of the Titanic Historical Society. One of the stories that has circulated over the years since the great ship went down is that the brave musicians (all lost in the disaster) met their deaths playing the hymn Nearer My God to Thee.

Not so, in my humble opinion (I can't personally be any more assertive since I wasn't there - neither of my parents had been born by that point), backed up by the views of a number of experts, despite the spin that Hollywood might have tried to put on the event.

James Cameron may have had some guy play the tune on his violin while Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio got their clothes back on, but I don't think it happened in real life. The 1953 version of the same story not only had the hymn being played in the ship's final moments, but hundreds of people standing on the slanting decks, singing away. Now I don't know about all of you, but if I was on a sinking ship and likely a couple of minutes away from freezing to death, I doubt a community sing-along would be high on my list of things to do. But I guess that's why no one has ever made a movie about me. Give them time.

There are other myths that have become almost part of our culture.

This issue dawned on me a couple of weeks ago when a woman in King sent me an e-mail, in which she used the old catch line for the TV series Dragnet; "Just the facts, ma'am."

I had read once that line was a myth. Jack Webb, who played the role of Sergeant Joe Friday (in my mind, the only actor who could be wooden in his delivery and get away with it) never said those words. used to watch Dragnet a lot as a kid, and up until about a year ago, it could be seen in syndication in these parts, and I don't recall ever hearing that line, although lot of people quote it. Since then, I have found a Web site that confirmed it was never used in the TV series. There were a couple of movies with Webb based on the Dragnet story. One of them was in black and white and featured what was probably the worst filmed fist-fight scene it has ever been my misfortune to watch. I've only seen that one once, and it was more than 20 years ago. I understand there was also a radio version of the show, so it's possible the line was used in some other version. But not by Webb on TV with Harry Morgan standing at his side.

In some ways, these myths are basic to our culture, or elementary.

"Elementary, my dear Watson," is the commonly quoted phrase. Not!

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, never wrote those words. I ought to know. I lost a trivia match one night because I was too stubborn in my insistence that he had. In fact, I later found the words in print, but it was in an abridged children's version, from which I was introduced to the famous sleuth when I was a little kid, so it wasn't something that Doyle himself wrote.

The movies are great vehicles for getting people off track with wrong ideas about lines that were spoken. There was actually an item devoted to this topic in The Book of Lists 3, published in 1983, listing lines which people have come to commonly believe were spoken, but in fact never were.

Johnny Weismuller apparently never said "Me Tarzan, you Jane," at least according to the book. I sort of have to accept the accuracy of that, having never seen a Tarzan movie (I watched the TV show in the '60s a lot - I think it came on just before Star Trek)

James Cagney never called anyone a "dirty rat." Again, I'll trust the Book of Lists to be accurate on this one. I think I've only seen one of his movies, and while it does sound like something he might say, he evidently did not.

It also seems that Cary Grant never said, "Judy, Judy, Judy" in the movies, although who knows what he did or said in real life. Imitators apparently just like to use the line to show they can do an accent like his. I've been guilty of that too (no, I will not demonstrate).

Humphrey Bogart never said, "Play it again, Sam," and having seen Casablanca several times (best movie in history, as far as I'm concerned), I'll never argue the point. Again, I think it's a good line for imitators, and I have dabbled with it too. I frankly think my Bogie is bit better than my Cary Grant, which is saying a lot less than you'll ever know.

Now I don't want to ruin any illusions of fantasies that some people might want to cling to. There's really no harm in believing that Cagney called someone or everyone a "dirty rat." And Sherlock Holmes is not going to go after anyone for misquoting him. And if any of you guys out there want to tell someone named Sam to play something again, I just hope your Bogie routine is better than mine.

That's not false modesty or carelessness of opinion. It's just the facts . . . ma'am.