THE HYPE DISTURBIN' LEGENDS MUPPETS FAT? MONROE GAY? NO, WAIT A MINUTE ...

Now I know you've heard this before, but stories are worth repeating until we get them right - or at least until we get them the way we like them. This exchange takes place between two newspapermen at the end of John Ford's classic western ``The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance'':

``You're not going to use the story, Mr. Scott?''

``This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.''

Now film critic Richard Roeper (you know, one-half of that thumbs-up-or-down team) has written ``Hollywood Urban Legends'' (New Page Books; $18.99) trying to tell us the truth behind those lovely entertainment myths we've all come to cherish.

Hey, this guy is based in Chicago, and that isn't the West; so what does he know?

Well, let's just look at what he's trying to foist off here. One chapter is titled ``Bert and Ernie Are Gay and Dead.'' We didn't know that puppets or Muppets had sexual preferences. And as for being alive, isn't that Pinocchio? OK, apparently there are some people who think Bert and Ernie are gay. It was a persistent enough rumor that PBS' Children's Television Workshop (now called Sesame Street Workshop) released a statement in 1993 asserting that the pair ``do not portray a gay couple.'' Glad we got that straightened out. Roeper points out that the myth probably arose from a piece of satire written by journalist Kurt Anderson that some people took to be true.

Some of the other urban legends that Roeper tries to clear up are Humphrey Bogart being the model for the Gerber baby, Mama Cass choking to death on a ham sandwich, Stones guitarist Keith Richards replenishing his blood supply with transfusions and Phyllis Diller being Susan Lucci's mom. (Huh?)

There's a whole chapter on James Dean and the curse that some believe followed him and those around him. Dean, Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood, co-stars in ``Rebel without a Cause,'' all dead - the first by car crash, the second murdered, the third drowned. (What's keeping Dennis Hopper alive then?) Roeper, however, doesn't see anything sinister behind this; just the same old coincidence explanation.

And then there's a chapter on that other icon of the '50s, Marilyn Monroe. Before there were these wafer-thin actresses and models to write anorexia and bulimia stories about, there were women with curves. But some people today think that means fat. (There's a quote from Elizabeth Hurley to the effect that she would ``die'' if she were as fat as Monroe.) Here's what Roeper writes:

``This much we know about Monroe. she was 5' 5 1/2'' tall, and she usually weighed between 120 and 135. Her bust was in the 36''-37'' range, her waist was usually listed as 22''-23,'' her hips at 35'' to 37.'' And she wore a size 36-D bra.''

There are probably a lot of women (not to mention their husbands and boyfriends) who wish they were fat like that. Roeper goes on to point out that in all the research, he did he couldn't find a ``single frame of film in which MM is truly zaftig.''

So, here are your choices if you buy the book: Read it and have nothing to talk about at parties; read it and tell everybody the so-called truth (which they'll probably hate you for); or read it and ignore all the boring reality. This is the West, after all, and we like our legends.

(This item was said to have been written by Rob Lowman. Rumor has it he's descended from Cleopatra and Napoleon and had an affair with Mata Hari in a previous life.)

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Photo:

(1) no caption (``Hollywood Urban Legends'')

(2) no caption (Gerber Baby)

(3) no caption (Humphrey Bogart)

(4) no caption (Phyllis Diller)

(5) no caption (Bert and Ernie)