>>>First, a big thank you to John for supplying Lt. Columbo's first name to me and Laura Lee Hobbs. That girl was driving me crazy to find out his name and now that is a mystery that has finally been solved.
I was never a big Columbo fan, but I can say with certainty that Columbo's first name was never given in any episode of that show. Let me guess: somebody told you it was Philip, right? How do I know, you ask? Back in the early 1970s, a man named Fred Worth wrote trivia books. Every so often, he would deliberately include an incorrect answer, as a way to catch plagiarists who might try to copy from his work without authorization. This trick is nothing new; map makers and encyclopedia publishers have done this for years -- but I digress. Anyway, he made up the name "Philip" Columbo out of thin air. A few years later, the board game Trivial Pursuit was introduced, and sure enough, one of the game cards said Columbo's first name was Philip. Mr Worth did some more checking, and it turns out that a huge number of the questions in the game (about one-third) were copied directly from his trivia books, typos and all. He sued the game manufacturer, but lost. The judge said one cannot copyright facts, only the way they are presented, and that a board game was substantially different from a book. For further reading on classic TV characters with incomplete names (Gilligan's Island, Get Smart, Quincy, etc.): http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/nonames.asp --Paul _______________________________________________ WBMUTBB mailing list [email protected] http://mail.wbmutbb.com/mailman/listinfo/wbmutbb_wbmutbb.com http://www.mayberry.com/tagsrwc/wbmutbb/
