Also, David Bowie was originally David Jones, but changed his name to avoid confusion with the Monkees’ Davy Jones. Singer-pianist Ray Charles Robinson dropped his last name because boxer Sugar Ray Robinson was already quite famous.
For those of us too old to know who any of the Beastie Boys are, James Arness from Gunsmoke is the brother of Peter Graves from Mission: Impossible. I believe Peter changed his last name for the same reason Nicholas Cage did.
Then there were 4 generations of Wynn’s in show business. Fred Wynn was the first, a vaudeville comic, whose sone Ed did some moves and TV – he might best be remembered from Mary Poppins as the man who laughed so much he floated in the air – who had a son named Keenan who also did a lot of movies, most notably Dr. Strangelove as Bat Guano, and who had a son named Tracy Keenan Wynn who wrote a few movies.
And through her father, Tony Curtis, she’s the half-sister of the twins who played Adam on BEWITCHED. They were the result of one of Tony’s one-night stands and were given up for adoption; when they found their birth mother she confirmed their paternity. One look at them does away with any need for DNA testing.
Gary Gilmore claimed to be the illegitimate son of Harry Houdini; his grandmother said she had an affair with him while working the same Vaudeville circuit. She did work the circuit though there’s no evidence Houdini had a child with her or anybody else. (Some biographers even speculate that, though married for many years, he may have died a virgin.)
John Carradine claimed to be the illegitimate son of Buffalo Bill Cody. OTOH, he drank a lot and embellished constantly, though his theatrical family did cross paths with Cody a good bit.
Shirley Booth (Hazel) was a descendant of Junius Brutus Booth, father of Edwin and John Wilkes, though she was through a daughter.
Pat Boone and Richard Boone are both descendants of Daniel Boone. Jack Cole, who played the sometimes gay/sometimes straight son on DYNASTY, is a descendant of Benjamin Franklin. Grant Goodeve from 8 IS ENOUGH is a descendant of Ulysses S. Grant. The imdb claims that Robert Duvall is a descendant of Robert E. Lee but I’ve never read that anywhere else.
Jules Asner is, of course, the daughter-in-law of Ed Asner. Juliette Lewis is the daughter of Geoffrey Lewis, one of the most ubiquitous “oh, that’s what’s his name…” characters out there. Danny Masterson (Hyde on THAT 70s SHOW) is the brother of Chris Masterson (Francis on MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE). The Mastersons, like the Lewis’s, are Scientologists.
Peter White, long-time veteran of the Philadelphia Flyers minor league system and one of the AHL’s all-time leading scorers, is the son-in-law of hockey hall of famer and Flyers GM Bobby Clarke.
Atlanta Braves star Gary Sheffield is the nephew of former Mets pitcher Dwight Gooden.