FBI LAB REPORTS ON THE DIRTY LYRICS OF LOUIE LOUIE MAY 17 1965

ON THIS DAY: Based on outcry from parents who bought into what may have started as an idle rumor, the FBI launched a formal investigation in 1964 into the supposedly pornographic lyrics of the song “Louie, Louie.” That investigation finally neared its conclusion on this day in 1965, when the FBI Laboratory declared the lyrics of “Louie Louie” to be officially unintelligible.

No one will ever know who started the rumor that “Louie Louie” was dirty. As written by Richard Berry in 1955, the lyrics revolve around a sailor from the Caribbean lamenting to a bartender named Louie about missing his far-away love.

As recorded in crummy conditions and in a single take by the Kingsmen in 1963, lyrics like “A fine little girl, she wait for me…” came out sounding like “A phlg mlmrl hlurl, duh vvvr me” Perhaps it was some clever middle-schooler who started the rumor by trying to convince a classmate that those lyrics contained some words that are as unprintable today as they were back in 1963.

You can find song lyrics, review, synopsis, description, 

script and media files on AllMusicals.com

Whatever the case, the story spread like wildfire, until the United States Department of Justice began receiving letters like the one addressed to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and dated January 30, 1964. “Who do you turn to when your teenage daughter buys and brings home pornographic or obscene materials being sold…in every City, Village, and Record shop in this Nation?” that letter began, before going on to make the specific assertion that the lyrics of “Louie Louie” were “so filthy that I can-not enclose them in this letter.” READ MORE  HISTORY.COM

THE MONOPOLISTS: OBSESSION FURY AND SCANDAL BEHIND THE MONOPOLY GAME

The Monopolists reveals the unknown story of how Monopoly came into existence, the reinvention of its history by Parker Brothers and multiple media outlets, the lost female originator of the game, and one man's lifelong obsession to tell the true story about the game's questionable origins.

Most think it was invented by an unemployed Pennsylvanian who sold his game to Parker Brothers during the Great Depression in 1935 and lived happily--and richly--ever after. That story, however, is not exactly true.

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The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal 

Behind the World's Favorite Board Game

Ralph Anspach, a professor fighting to sell his Anti-Monopoly board game decades later, unearthed the real story, which traces back to Abraham Lincoln, the Quakers, and a forgotten feminist named Lizzie Magie who invented her nearly identical Landlord's Game more than thirty years before Parker Brothers sold their version of Monopoly.

Her game--underpinned by morals that were the exact opposite of what Monopoly represents today--was embraced by a constellation of left-wingers from the Progressive Era through the Great Depression, including members of Franklin Roosevelt's famed Brain Trust.

A fascinating social history of corporate greed that illuminates the cutthroat nature of American business over the last century, The Monopolists reads like the best detective fiction, told through Monopoly's real-life winners and losers.

ANNIE OAKLEY: FALSE REPORTS OF SCANDAL

When a burlesque performer was arrested for stealing to support her cocaine addiction, she said her name was Annie Oakley. William Randolph Hearst published the sensational story in 1903 of the famous washed up, drug-addicted Annie Oakley, which was then picked up by many other newspapers.
 

The real Annie Oakley, who had very carefully avoided any blight against her reputation was horrified and infuriated. She filed, and won, 55 libel suits against the various papers, one of the largest such actions in US history.

False Reports of Scandal
Annie had left Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show at the end of its 1901 season, and although she did some acting, Oakley looked forward to a quieter existence. That hope was shattered on August 11, 1903, by two Chicago newspapers belonging to publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst. Hearst, who controlled America's first national media chain, was famous for a lurid style of reporting called "yellow journalism."



His papers had drummed up support for the Spanish-American War, and they regularly featured sensational headlines such as "Startling Confession of Wholesale Murderer Who Begs to be Hanged." The August piece about Oakley was cut from the same cloth: "Famous Woman Crack Shot ... Steals to Secure Cocaine,"

National Women's History Museum