Unintentional Spelling Errors In Film/TV Credits

Ever notice any? The character played by Nichelle Nichols in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is spelled U-h-u-r-u in the end credits. The character’s name, as ever Trek geek can tell ya, is Uhura.

The late Merritt Butrick’s first name was spelled Merrit on an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The two Trek theatrical films in which he appeared spelled it correctly.

Any more famous examples?

And I’m not looking for intentional stuff like the weird credit spellings used in Dumb and Dumber or stuff like using “2” for “too.”

Sir Rhosis

A Matter of Life and Death, (1946) In the end credits, Bonar Colleano’s name is misspelt Bonor Colleano.

Airplane! (1980) : Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s name is misspelled as “Abdul-Jabaar” in the closing credits.

Angel Heart (1987) : The credit for “Extras Casting” is misspelled without the first T as “Exras Casting”.

Annie Hall (1977) : In the closing credits, Christopher Walken’s name is misspelled “Wlaken.”

Star Wars (1977) Wedge Antilles was credited to Dennis Lawson , rather than Denis.

Rambo III (1988) : In the ending credits, the character of Colonel Trautman is misspelled as “Trauman”.

Magnum Force (1973) : Harry Callahan’s surname is misspelled as “Calahan” in the closing credits.

Earth vs the Spider (1958) : The word “starring” is misspelled (as “starrring”) in the opening credits. (What do you mean you never heard of it?)

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) : In the opening credits, the standard disclaimer about events and characters being fictitious has the word misspelled as “ficticious”

Dr. No (1962) - In the closing credits, John (Quarrel) Kitzmiller’s name is misspelled “John Kitzmuller”.

Catch Me If You Can (2002) : “Saxophone solos” is misspelled as “Saxaphone solos” in the closing credits.

Cat-Women of the Moon (1953) : Composer Elmer Bernstein’s name is misspelled in title credits as “Bernstien”

The Breakfast Club (1985) : In the end credits, “Illinois Film Commission” is misspelled “Illinois Film Comission.”
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) : Fredric March’s name is misspelled as “Frederic” March in the closing credits.

Bang (1995) : Lucy Liu’s name is misspelled “Lui” in the credits.

Total Recall (1990) : (Philip K. Dick) is misspelled as “Phillip” in the credits.

State of the Union (1948) : Katharine Hepburn’s name is misspelled in the opening credits as “Katherine”.

Snatch. (2000) : In the closing credits, “Gypsy kids” is misspelled “Gyspy kids”.

Horror Express (1973) : In the opening credits of the English-language VHS version, Christopher Lee’s name is misspelled as “Cristopher”.

The Haunted Palace (1963) : Edgar Allan Poe’s name is misspelled as “Edgar Allen Poe” twice in the opening credits.

Heavenly Creatures (1994) : In the end credits, Richard Rodgers’ name is misspelled ‘Rogers’ in the citation for the song “You’ll Never Walk Alone”.

How about album credits? When Stevie Ray Vaughan played guitar on David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” album, they spelled it “Vaughn”.

I can’t find which movie it was, but Steven Spielberg’s name was misspelled in the credits of one of his movies.

On a far lesser known example, Cristy Thom’s name was misspelled Christy Thom in Meatballs 4. She later said it was the biggest credit of her acting career and they spelled her name wrong.

The credits of Gone With the Wind switch the actors who play the Tarleton Twins, and spell actress Barbara O’Neil as “Barbara O’Neill”.

The title of DS9 episode “Rules of Acquisition” was originally spelled “Aquisition” but was fixed before rebroadcast.

Not only that, but there is also a credit which states that the film was “base on” a book.

The copyright date in the classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer appears in Roman numerals- MCLXIV. Or 1064 if you translate it.

Been a while since I’ve done Roman numerals, but isn’t that 1164? 1000+100+50+10-1+5?

Either way, still wrong by several centuries…

You’re absolutely right. I made a mistake. The opening credits do read MCLXIV, which translates to 1164.

Slight, but by no means trivial: the film Two Weeks Notice missed out the apostrophe.

Now, why on Earth would you know these errors or even LOOK for them? Just curious.

I didn’t know them, I found them in IMDB. Just search for the word “misspelled” or “misspelt” in the category goofs. Why? I had nothing better to do. It filled a few moments. Didn’t take long.

Hattie McDaniel was frequently billed onscreen (when she was billed!) as “Hattie McDaniels.”

John Cusack is billed as “John Cusak” in Broadcast News and Roadside Prophets.

Slight aside: Years ago, I participated in a science-fiction team trivia contest. One of the categories that day was “übergeek,” and the first question was “Which Star Trek regular’s screen credit was misspelled in the credits of ST6?” None of us had a clue. The judge that had written the question shouted out the answer, adding that they didn’t fix it in the DVD release.

The audience just started quietly chanting, “geek…geek…geek…geek…”

This is a little obscure, but there was an actress named “Brooks Almy.” In one ep of “Hawaii Five-O,” she is credited as “Brooks Almy Brooks.”

In a similar vein, on the cover of the re-issue of the Plasmatics “Beyond the Valley of 1984”, there’s a Parental Advisery

Season 1:Bart the Genius (7G02 for geeks):

Marcia Wallace (aka Mrs Krabappel) is credited as “Marsha Wallace”

Even funnier, “The Simpsons:A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family” (HarperCollins1997) notes this error, yet misspells the misspelling as “Masha”…Gaudere anyone?

~SD

who’s ArchiveGuy?

I had no idea there was a site that tracked that stuff…interesting!

I’m probably going to leave in a chorus of that chant but I maintain it wasn’t an error. Nichelle Nichols has said that the Name Uhura came from a book she and Gene were reading at the time, Uhuru. The word means freedom. Perhaps as the last voyage of the original crew it was a nod to that origin.