Mere urban legend that Richard Rodgers placed ads urging people not to buy the Marcels' "Blue Moon"?
Although Wikipedia says Richard Rodgers took out full-page ads urging people not to buy the Marcels' version of "Full Moon," the article cited, by Marv Goldberg, contains an update in which Goldberg states he can't find any such ads and that Rodgers' wife Dorothy said in a 1982 Billboard interview that he loved the Marcels' version. In half an hour on Google I'm seeing the story of the ads repeated but no citations, no identification of where the ads appeared (though some specify "UK trade papers"), copy-cat wording in the claim (the word "urging," for instance), and no quoted text from the ads. Also, the claims are all posted after Goldberg's original 2006 posting. Good reasons to be skeptical.
Speaking of blue moons and debunkery: According to two pieces in Sky & Telescope, the phrase "blue moon," meaning "rare or improbable occurrence," goes back 400 years, but the supposed derivation from "second full moon of the month," based on a misreading of a Maine almanac, only comes into existence in 1946 and doesn't become widespread until the 1980s.
Click to viewSpeaking of blue moons and debunkery: According to two pieces in Sky & Telescope, the phrase "blue moon," meaning "rare or improbable occurrence," goes back 400 years, but the supposed derivation from "second full moon of the month," based on a misreading of a Maine almanac, only comes into existence in 1946 and doesn't become widespread until the 1980s.