OK, this is it!
The last word on "Three Men and a Baby"!Don't call anymore, don't write anymore - it's driving me crazy.
I've watched the dadgum movie a dozen times - in fact, I've never been as prepared for a sequel as I will be when "Three Men and a Little Lady" opens in November.
In addition I've heard from angry people who feel I've deflated a perfectly good ghost story, indignant people who feel I've made them look foolish to their formerly gullible friends and nervy people who've had the audacity to call and have me read the story to them since they don't take the Deseret News.
This is the third column in a row on this subject - and believe me I had no intention of writing a trilogy when the story first appeared. So to speak.
So, before the surprise explanation that will once and for all put an end to any and all speculation, a quick recap, including variations on the tale, which goes:
Disney/Touchstone rented an apartment/townhouse/condo in New York/Chicago/New Orleans from a married couple/separated couple/divorced couple whose son/adopted son/infant daughter died of a lingering illness/committed suicide/was murdered there.
The parents refused to see the film/never got around to seeing the film/somehow kept missing the film in its theatrical release but three years later rented the video/were shown the video by a friend/relative and noticed the figure of a boy in the background of the scene where Celeste Holm, as Ted Danson's mother, visits him in his apartment. And by golly, the figure was their dead child.
The parents then went on "60 Minutes"/"20/20"/"Donahue" and showed photos of their child, comparing the image in the movie.
Well, as revealed a couple of weeks ago, the major debunking factor is that there was no apartment/townhouse/condo. The apartment in the movie was actually a movie set built on a Toronto soundstage.
OK, so it's not a ghost. So who or what is it?
The theory when this first came to light was that a young boy wandered onto the set and, noticing he was in camera range and froze in front of the window so as not to be noticed.
Now, I'll admit my television screen isn't the largest available. And I have the film on videotape, which is somewhat blurry, rather than the sharper image available on laserdisc or 35mm film. So I am going to retract my theory that it is a young boy in jeans and a T-shirt.
So, since many people out there have better home viewing equipment and since the majority of my mail and phone calls from the past few weeks agree on one particular theory, I'm going to suggest that it is probably so and hope this urban legend bites the dust once at last.
Are you ready?
The "boy in the window" is actually the Ted Danson standee - a not-quite-life-sized cardboard cutout of Danson himself. You can see it in Danson's bedroom early in the film and again toward the end.
No, it's not a ghost.
No, it's not a publicity stunt by Disney three years after the film's release.
No, it's not director Leonard Nimoy's nephew who begged to be in the movie.
Yes, local video stores are eternally grateful to whoever started this silly rumor.
And, if nowhere else, "Three Men and a Little Lady" is sure to be a monster hit in Utah.
End of story.
Now, about that ghostly vision in the background of a scene in "Pee-wee's Big Adventure". . . .
- QUOTE OF THE WEEK: Toshiro Mifune, veteran Japanese actor best known in this country for his samurai roles in "The Seven Samurai," "Yojimbo" and "Rashomon," among countless others, asked by Glenn Lovell (Knight-Ridder) his opinion of the American remakes of those movies as Westerns - "The Magnificent Seven," "A Fistful of Dollars" and "The Outrage," respectively:
"I haven't seen any of them. I don't have time to see them. I heard about the `Seven Samurai' remake. The Clint Eastwood picture (`Dollars') was made illegally, you know."