What's in a name?

MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer once said that the idea of a star being born was "bushwah". During Hollywood's studio era, stars were not born but created. The studios signed actors and actresses who looked good and then they would work from there. "All I ever looked for was a face", said Mayer. "If someone looked good to me, I'd have him tested. If a person looked good on film, if he photographed well, we could do the rest."

The first step to creating a star often was changing the actor's name. Sometimes actors got to keep their name, provided they were born with a catchy name like Errol Flynn, Clark Gable or Ava Gardner. In some cases, actors already had a new name before coming to Hollywood— for instance, Ruby Stevens chose the more sophisticated name Barbara Stanwyck while she was still performing on Broadway, and Issur Danielovitch changed his name to Kirk Douglas, feeling his real name was too Jewish for Hollywood. Quite often, however, it was the studios that gave the potential stars new names, and not always with the actor's input or consent. Names that didn't fit the physical image of the actor had to be changed, thus elegant men like Spangler Arlington Brugh and Archibald Leach were given more elegant (and easier to remember) names, resp. Robert Taylor and Cary Grant, and a big guy like Marion Morrison got the sturdier name John Wayne. Also, foreign names were often replaced with American names — e.g. Lucile Vasconsellos Langhanke and Margarita Carmen Cansino became resp. Mary Astor and Rita Hayworth. 

A special story is that of Lucille Fay Le Sueur, in the 1920s one of MGM's potential new stars. In the spring of 1925, feeling her last name was too hard to remember and sounded too much like "sewer", MGM decided to hold a contest to pick a new name for Lucille. In the fan magazine Movie Weekly, people were asked to come up with suitable screen names and the person to submit the winning name would be awarded $500 (and the next ten best names $50 each). "Joan Arden" came out the winner, but since there was somebody working at MGM with the same name*, Lucille had to settle for the runner-up, "Joan Crawford". Initially, Lucille hated her new name. She wanted her first name to be prounounced "Jo-Anne" and her last name reminded her of "crawfish". In time, the name grew on her and she later said she liked the security that came with it.

*This was MGM's version of the story. Another version is that there was nobody named "Joan Arden" but that the winning name had been submitted by two or three people. This meant that MGM had to pay the prize multiple times and they didn't think the young starlet was worth it.

Above and below: articles that appeared in Movies Weekly in April 1925 [source]. In September of that year, the magazine would announce that "Joan Crawford" was the winning name. 

Someone who also underwent the name-change was Phylis Walker, which brings me to today's correspondence. In 1941, producer David Selznick was casting his upcoming film Claudia (1943) and Phylis, having just signed a seven-year contract with Selznick, was one of the candidates to audition for the female lead (which eventually went to Dorothy McGuire). Finding Phylis Walker "a particularly undistiguished name" — born Phylis Lee Isley, the young actress was then married to actor Robert Walker — Selznick wrote to Whitney Bolton, his Director of Advertising and Publicity, asking him to come up with a new name. Selznick's two memos to Bolton are seen below, the second also addressed to Selznick's assistant Kay Brown. In January 1942, Phylis Walker was renamed Jennifer Jones and Selznick would subsequently groom her to stardom (ánd also marry her in 1949).

September 10, 1941

To: Mr. Bolton

I would like to get a new name for Phylis Walker. I had a talk with her and she is not averse to a change. Normally I don't think names very important, but I do think Phylis Walker a particularly undistinguished name, and it has the additional drawback of being awfully similar to Phyllis Thaxter, which is doubly bad because of Thaxter being in Claudia [on the stage], which Walker may do, and because of the fact that Thaxter may soon be in pictures.

I don't want anything too fancy, and I would like to get at least a first name that isn't also carried by a dozen other girls in Hollywood. I would appreciate suggestions.

DOS

___________

January 8, 1942

To: Miss Brown, Mr. Bolton

Where the hell is that new name for Phylis Walker?

Personally, I would like to decide on Jennifer and get a one-syllable last name that has some rhythm to it and that is easy to remember. I think the best synthetic name in pictures that has been recently created is Veronica Lake.

DOS

Source: Memo from David O. Selznick (1972); selected and edited by Rudy Behlmer.

Jennifer Jones flanked by then-husband Robert Walker (left) and David Selznick on the set of Since You Went Away (1944).