The Debunker: Ken Jennings vs. Sweet Myths, Part 4
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Every Tuesday on the Woot blog, writer and professional ex- Jeopardy! contestant Ken Jennings puts on his Debunker hat and takes at aim much-believed morsels of information that feel so true… but are really all wrong. This month, to celebrate Halloween and the inevitable candy-gorging orgy (gorgy?) that ensues, Ken will debunk four myths about sweets and desserts of all kinds. These treats, it turns out, are full of tricks.
Sweet Myth #4: Shirley Temple Sang About a Boat Called the “Good Ship Lollipop.”
It was her trademark song, first warbled on-screen in the 1934 movie Bright Eyes: Shirley Temple’s “On the Good Ship Lollipop.” Written by ace Hollywood composer Richard A. Whiting, whose other hits included “Ain’t We Got Fun” and “Hooray for Hollywood,” “Lollipop” recounts a trip to a magical candy land “where bonbons play on the sunny beach of Peppermint Bay.” It’s become a childhood classic, inevitably illustrated with a candy-bedecked clipper ship under full sail. It’s been tap-danced to by tens of thousands of uncoordinated toddlers dressed in sailor suits.
But if you think the Lollipop was an oceangoing ship, you’re the real sucker. The song’s opening lyrics are perfectly clear:
“I’ve thrown away my toys / Even my drum and trains / I want to make some noise / With real live aeroplanes / Some day I’m going to fly / I’ll be a pilot too / And when I do, how would you / Like to be my crew?”
So the “good ship Lollipop” isn’t a ship at all! It’s an airplane. When Shirley Temple debuted the song in Bright Eyes, she even sang it aboard a DC-2 taxiing on an airport tarmac. Her fellow American Airlines passengers are charmed as she marches down the aisle, and start passing her around the cabin. If Shirley tried that trick today, she’d be tased by an air marshal faster than you could say “Peppermint Bay.”
Quick Quiz: Whose biggest hit to date is the song “Lollipop,” off his 2008 record Tha Carter III?
Ken Jennings is the author of Brainiac, Ken Jennings’s Trivia Almanac, and the forthcoming Maphead. He’s also the proud owner of an underwhelming Bag o’ Crap. Follow him at ken-jennings.com or on Twitter as @KenJennings.
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