Photo by Cynthia Larsen

A visit to Santa Moniker

By Ed Goldman

Hollywood is a lot like us in one respect: It runs out of given names—and even surnames.  

Let’s start with us. How many guys do you know named James (or Jim), Charles (or Charlie or Chuck), Robert (or Robbie or Bob), Michael (or Mike), William (or Bill or Billy or Willy), Richard (or Rich or Rick or Ricky or Dicky), Joseph (or Joe or Joey) or David (or Davey or Dave)?

How many women in your orbit go by the name Jennifer (Jen or Jenny), Susan (or Sue or Susie) or Elizabeth (Eliza, Liz, Beth, Liza, Lizzie or Betty)? 

I’ve known (or known of) three guys named John Roberts (one’s the guy who heads up the U.S. Supreme Court, but I’ve tried not to hold that against him). 

My own given name Edward can convert to the nicknames Ed, Eddie, Edward, Ward, Ned and even Ted (as in the late Senator Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy). 

How many families do you know named Jones, Johnson, Williams, Brown, Smith, Black, White, and Anderson?

Yet when it comes to name redundancy, there’s no business like show business. In an irreverent tribute to this dearth-of-creativity, the humorist Jack Douglas dedicated one of his books “To Barry and Ella Fitzgerald.” Barry was a white Irish actor, Ella a legendary Black vocalist. They might have been married but not to each other.  

Bringing that a little more up to date, you probably never saw these pairings on an A-List party invite:

• Tina and Ted Turner; 
• Diane and Michael Keaton; 
• Michelle Williams (the actor) and Michelle Williams (the singer); 
• Michael Douglas (actor-producer) and Mike Douglas (talk-show host). You may as well toss Michael Keaton into this mix because his real name is also Michael Douglas;

• KISS rocker Gene Simmons and much-kissed movie star Jean Simmons; 

• Moviemakers Mel Brooks and Albert Brooks—though Mel’s real surname is Kaminsky and Albert’s real name is (wait for it) Albert Einstein. I think Albert the moviemaker should have kept his original name—unless he became a mathematician, which would have messed around with people’s expectations when he was introduced at a comedy club or university lecture; 

• Carly, Paul and Neil Simon (the first two are singer-songwriters from New York City, the third a famous playwright from the same place);  

• Steve McQueen (the late white movie star) and Steve McQueen (the punctual Black movie director); 

• Jane Seymour (actor, born 1951) and Jane Seymour (Queen of England, born 1508); 

• Will Smith (Black actor who managed to win the Academy Award for Best Actor and deck Black comic Chris Rock at the same Oscars ceremony) and Kevin Smith (white director who won’t be winning any Oscars in most of our lifetimes unless the Academy creates an award for Most Pretentious Filmmaker );  

• Steve and Keanu Reeves (one played a god named Hercules and one played a nerd named Neo). Then there were Christopher Reeve, who played Superman in the movies and George Reeves (with an s), who played him on television;

• Holly Hunter won an Oscar for Best Actress in “The Piano” and Jeffrey Hunter got to play the Son of God in “King of Kings.” Then there was Tab Hunter, whose best-reviewed film may well be “Lust in the Dust”;