Is the story true about George Carlin saving future actress Nancy Allen from crocodiles?

For several years now, a photograph of a child standing in front of a flock of dangerous reptiles has been circulating on the Internet. The photo is accompanied by a story that a future stand-up comedian saved the girl from crocodiles, and she later became a screen star. We checked how correct this description is.

Viral posts claim that the photo was taken in 1956 at the New York Zoo. While little Nancy's parents were distracted, she accidentally fell into the crocodiles' terrarium. Then a young man in military uniform jumped over the fence and saved the girl from a possible reptile attack. The savior was the future comedian, actor and writer George Carlin, who visited the zoo while on leave from service in the Navy. And the rescued girl turned out to be Nancy Allen, who 30 years later played in RoboCop. The artists maintained a relationship until the end of their lives. Nancy encouraged Carlin in every possible way in his struggle with drug addiction, and at the funeral of her savior in 2008, she placed a wreath on his grave with the inscription “From a little girl too stupid to be afraid of crocodiles.”

This story appears on entertainment sites (Fishki.net, "Peekaboo") and on social networks ("VKontakte", "Zen", X). On Facebook, individual posts were typed 2600 And 1300 reposts at the time of writing this analysis.

Let's take a closer look at the details of this story.

In 1956, Carlin really served in the army - although not in the navy, but in aviation. Allen that year turned six years. The girl in the viral photo looks about half her age.

Carlin in his speeches ridiculed religious conservatism and called the territory of cemeteries is “a suitable place for the construction of cheap housing.” According to will comedian who died in 2008, his ashes were dispelled over the sea, so there is no Carlin grave where Allen could lay a wreath. “Verified” could not find any evidence that the comedian and actress knew each other in principle.

The photograph around which the narrative is built can be discover on the Los Angeles Public Library website. It doesn't say when the photo was taken or who is in it, but it does say where it was taken: the California Alligator Farm in Lincoln Heights. Such a farm is really it worked in this Los Angeles area from 1907–1953. For a small fee, anyone could not only look at hundreds of reptiles, but also ride them, wrestle with them and watch them hunt chickens. The guests of the farm were both adults and children.

Together with a caption about Karlina and Allen at the New York Zoo, this photo is distributed mainly in the Russian-language segment of the Internet. “Verified” found only a few English-language publications, but they were also posted either in Russian resources, or Russian-speaking by users.

One of the biggest waves of distribution of this story came in September 2019, when it was posted on the website Fishki.net. The source was indicated publication, which appeared shortly before on the blog “One Stop Story” in “Zen”. This page with 23,000 subscribers is run by a history and social studies teacher and part-time writer Vladimir Sedinkin from Kurgan. In a conversation with Verified, he said that he wrote this story to participate in a competition for fake stories (it was held by a literary website, the name of which Sedinkin found it difficult to remember). According to the terms of the competition, each writer chose an old photograph from the proposed list and composed their text based on it.

To the remark that this story appeared on the Internet in a truncated form until 2019 (the introduction can be found in publications October 2016, and a short version without mentions of celebrities - in posts 2017 And 2018 years), Sedinkin replied that he exhibited it on the first, now deleted, page of “One Stop Story” in “Zen” (the service has been fully operational since June 2017 - Ed.), as well as on the entertainment site “Kanobu”. The writer admitted that until 2019, the full version of the story might not have been widely distributed on the Internet. At the same time, Sedinkin notes that he always puts the tag “story” or “tale” under his works, but this does not prevent them from disagreeing in all seriousness. This does not upset the author - he believes that people always need good, positive stories.

Thus, the story about Karlin, who saved the future actress Allen from crocodiles in the New York zoo, was composed by a Russian author in the second half of the 2010s and is based on a photograph taken at an alligator farm in California.

Cover photo: Los Angeles Public Library

Fake

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