Don't/Can't Believe All You Read
Mister Ed, the TV program of the early 60s, starring Alan Young and a talking horse, is a favorite of Diane's so she has it hooked in each night to be recorded on our TiVo. We sometimes watch and fall asleep to it so they pile up and then we watch several episodes at a time.
This Ozzy rarely watched it during its prime seasons as it is a silly program but has its funny moments. Yesterday while searching the Internet I found a site on Urban Legends, www.snopes.com/ that has the correct skinny on forty categories from autos to war rumors. The idea is that each statement has a dot in front; if red, false, if true, green, yellow or gray means it doesn't have enough evidence or is unproven. In the TV category I found Mister Ed with amazing "facts" - such as of course he wasn't a horse, but a zebra! What! Yeh, as the show was in b&w the striped zebra, Amelia, photographed without the stripes. Zebras are smaller than horses so camera angles helped altho Alan Young was purported to be only 5'4" tall. These seemed difficult to believe and I had Diane read the entire message. She scoffed at the idea as did her sister.
This morning I needed to verify some facts for this post so I went back to this site - it wasn't there! Strange. I went thru those categories I had read without success, so after wasting too much time I went to Cecil Adams' Straight Dope. Two letters/answers about the talking horse (one how they got him to talk, use of peanut butter, and the other on some other subject, but nothing about him being other than a horse named Bamboo Harvester (betcha didn't know that) so to Google and Mr. Ed.
Several sites, none of which mentions a striped beast. Allan "Rocky" Lane did the voice for Mr. Ed and when Mr. Ed had to be put down, another horse, Pumpkin, took his place. One site mentioned that all the male actors had passed on, three from Cancer, one from a stroke. That would include Alan Young, but wait, several other sites, one updated last month, has him still living.
Young was born in England, raised in Canada before coming to the USA. He appeared in several movies, had his own TV show - cunningly named, "The Alan Young Show" - for which he earned an Emmy. After his film/TV career he voiced several cartoons characters.
Forever Young, now 85-years old, if still living. Anyone have any idea where he makes his home?
Still, the snopes site has lotsa interesting stuff, including photos of a small Austrian town with a naughty name where tourists keep stealing the town signs. This Rated X site can't be false.