Load swf into emtpy mc on startup

Why in the world won’t this work? I have an empty MC on the stage and nothing else. On the empty MC (named “clip”) I have:

onClipEvent(load){
this.loadMovie("myexternal.swf");
}

I’ve also tried _root.clip and yes I’ve quadruple checked instance names etc.

What am I missing? I’ve done this a hundred times and today it doesn’t work? :hair: