Question: I have submitted this question to a lot of columns but have never received an answer. Yet I know that this program existed. I'd like to purchase it for myself (and — oh, yeah — the grandchildren). Can you help? My question is: Shirley Temple hosted a show that reenacted fairy tales. It was shown on Saturday nights. She would end the show with this song: "Dreams are made for children, and a dream is a fairy tale...."
Answer: It did indeed exist, Regi. Shirley Temple's Storybook started off as a run of ABC specials in 1958 but began airing more regularly the following year and then moved to NBC the next year as The Shirley Temple Show, a regular weekly series that went off the air in 1961.
The best news of all: Episodes featuring productions of Babes in To
read more
Medium
SurfaceYou know, this show keeps striving to emulate Spielberg, but this week, I couldn't get the darker side of Walt Disney out of my head. For starters, the entire plotline, which finds Dr. Laura and Crazy-Eyed Rich stranded at the bottom of the ocean, had me constantly making up highly inappropriate lyrics for "Under the Sea" — you remember that calypso confection from The Little Mermaid that effectively ruined the bulk of 1990. (A brief example of my handiwork: "The oxygen's always greener in somebody else's tank; if Lake Bell dies in this episode, maybe they
read more
Naughty, naughty!: Aladdin
Question: In the Disney movie Aladdin, there's a scene in which Aladdin is on Jasmin's balcony, and when you turn the volume up, you can hear him say, "Take off your clothes...." What's the true story behind this big oops?
Answer: The true story is that it isn't true. This persistent rumor has been winging its way around the Internet ever since the movie was released in 1992. Similar stories about a minister with a visible erection in The Little Mermaid (1989) and a dust cloud in The Lion King (1994) that spells out the word "SEX" have proved equally durable. Animators are notorious pranksters, and of the three rumors, I find the one about The Lion King least unbelievable, if only because having been told that the letters are there, it's hard not to see them. But I immediately have to qualify that statement by pointin
read more
