seems to me, that a whole lot of celebrities have changed their names. No surprise their. Bob Dylan rolls off the tongue a lot better than Zimmerman. But is their any list around about this. I say this after just reading Tony Randall’s obit on CNN and his name was Leonard Rosenberg, not such a bad name. But is there a common thread in Hollywood as to how and why their names are changed, or is it just production companies or agents who convince the actors to do it? Cary Grant sounds a little better than Archie Leach!
It seems like a lot of Jewish (or apparently Jewish, judging by the names) actors changed their names to WASPy sounding ones. James Garner is really Baumgardner, for another example.
It’s hard to understand the need for that in an industry where the movers and shakers are mostly Jewish. Of course, part of the reason could be that, up until about 1950, a Jewish name might make people think you spent your career playing stock characters, or telling ethnic jokes, in a Catskill Mountains resort. That might limit the offers you would get if producers didn’t think you could do anything else.
I have no theory regarding Cary Grant/Archibald Leach.
John Cleese used the name Archie Leach as his character name in “A Fish Called Wanda”, but that’s all I know about that.
Of course, the actors’ union Equity does not allow two actors to use the same name. So, actor Michael Douglas had to change his name to Michael Keaton to avoid confusion with Kirk’s son.
Happens in music, too. Some of the tales are of agents and managers (John ‘Cougar’ Mellencamp being the most famous, I’d bet). But sometimes it’s to hide an ethnic name.
I, for one, will miss Faroukh Bulsara until the day I die.
From Grant’s IMDB biography
I think this was a lot more common in the early days of movies, when stars were under contract to specific studios. One of the first things the studio did when recruiting new talent was to give them a name that would appeal to the public. Nowadays there’s more of a tendency to use real names.
The name that always suprised me was Boris Karloff. His real name was William Pratt - so why did they make it MORE ‘ethnic’?
Look at the roles he played. A Frankenstein or Dracula with an Eastern European name would be more believable than “William Pratt.”