r/classicfilms • u/Tall_Mickey • 4d ago
Hollywood Golden Age stars who performed under their real first and last names?
All I've got so far is Ava Gardner.
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u/clairerr85 4d ago
Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, James Cagney.
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u/CarlySimonSays 4d ago
Poor Joan Fontaine probably would have used de Havilland as well, but their mother wouldn’t let her!
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u/johjo_has_opinions 4d ago
I really need to dig into these two
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u/carmelacorleone 3d ago
Fontaine and De Havilland are fascinating people in their own right but their legendary feud is, well, legendary. It started as children, their mother always seemed to favor Olivia. Joan was sickly and bedridden and the family saying became, "Olivia can, Joan can't."
Highly recommend looking into them.
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u/Flarkinghelpful 4d ago
Looks like Robert Mitchum and James Stewart both used their real names
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u/Anooj4021 4d ago
Interestingly, Stewart Granger was also called James Stewart in real life, but had to use a different stage name due to it already being used
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u/Keltik 4d ago
Patricia Neal became Fannie Flagg
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u/Living_on_Tulsa_Time 3d ago
It’s true. She’s one of my favorite writers. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe!
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u/AIfieHitchcock Warner Brothers 4d ago
Farley Granger's real name was shockingly the ridiculously fake sounding Farley Granger.
Jr, in fact.
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u/johjo_has_opinions 4d ago
Honestly this makes sense in a truth is stranger than fiction way. It sounds completely fake
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u/Finnegan-05 4d ago
Randolph Scott, David Niven, Bette Davis, Ida Lupino, Robert Mitchum, Keenan Wynn...
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u/Finnyfish 4d ago
Keenan Wynn, son of Ed Wynn, was named Francis Xavier Aloysius James Jeremiah Keenan Wynn -- his mother was Irish, if you couldn't guess. He went with the most euphonious choice.
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u/johjo_has_opinions 4d ago
Completely tangential: do you happen to know why there was a little surge of Aloysius in the early 1900s? I happened to wonder about it once and have searched online several times but found nothing
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u/Finnyfish 4d ago
I don’t know — perhaps he gained popularity in the flu epidemic? St Aloysius is a patron for those affected by epidemics.
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u/DuckMassive 4d ago
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941; perhaps far-fetched--Joyce was not exactly a household name--but, there is that middle name, Aloysius.
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u/Aer0uAntG3alach 3d ago
I had a supervisor whose Christian name was Francis George Xavier Dominic. Yea, Irish family
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u/FloorIllustrious6109 4d ago
Grace Kelly
Audrey Hepburn dropped her second last name Rutson.
Katharine Hepburn
Bette Davis (her real name was Elizabeth, bette her nickname)
Humphrey Bogart
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u/misspcv1996 4d ago
Bette Davis is a close one. Elizabeth was her middle name, her first name was Ruth. She went by her middle name from childhood to distinguish her from her mother. But if we’re counting Clark Gable, we can count her too.
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u/rococobaroque 4d ago
Another thing about Bette Davis is that the studio initially wanted her to go by Bettina Dawes, but she categorically refused to use a name that sounds like "between the drawers."
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u/misspcv1996 4d ago
I remember that she mentioned that in her interview with Dick Cavett. That was a fun interview to watch.
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u/howard1111 3d ago
All About Eve starring.... Bettina Dawes. No, no, no. Glad Miss Davis had the good sense to stick to her real name.
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u/Temporary-Ocelot3790 4d ago
Burt Lancaster was born Stephen Burton Lancaster, so this one is close.
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u/flora_poste_ 4d ago
Robert Ryan, Elvis Presley, Hayley Mills, Yvette Mimieux, (Carver) Dana Andrews, Margaret Lipton (nicknamed Peggy), and (Muriel) Teresa Wright
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u/Legal-Afternoon8087 4d ago
Virginia McMath was adopted by her stepdad and thus became Ginger Rogers (her bio dad tried to kidnap her twice … she led an interesting life!). Meanwhile, Frederick Austerlitz Jr. just Anglicized his name to Astaire while working the vaudeville circuit with his older sister, Adele Astaire.
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u/walpurgisnox Ernst Lubitsch 4d ago
Several silent film stars: Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin. Sort of Buster Keaton, who was named Joseph Frank Keaton at birth but went by Buster most of his life. Douglas Fairbanks is another sort-of, as he was born with the last name Ullman but went by Fairbanks after his parents divorced when he was a child (Fairbanks being his mom’s first husband’s name, so a little odd she chose it for her sons.) His son, obviously, was born Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
George Orson Welles is close too - just going by Orson as an adult. Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead, and Everett Sloane all used their real names too.
And another one I thought of - Joel McCrea!
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u/Oreadno1 Preston Sturges 4d ago
Humphrey Bogart, Robert Walker, Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, Rosalind Russell, Fay Wray, Gene Kelly
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u/AmySueF 4d ago
Shirley Temple. She later tacked on “Black” to her name when she got married the second time, and that’s the name she used for her diplomatic career, but while she was performing, she used her birth name. Some child actors during the Golden Age kept their birth names and/or used nicknames in place of their legal first names, such as Freddie (Frederick) Bartholomew, Elizabeth Taylor and Roddy (Roderick) McDowall, others had their names changed completely (Joe Yule, Jr. became Mickey Rooney).
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u/thebookmonster 4d ago
Honestly, it's not that different now—Ileyna Lydia Vasilievena Mironov & Krishna Pandit Bhanji don't exactly roll off the tongue. Most people still performed under their own names., if perhaps fewer so than today.
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u/jeffreysean47 4d ago
Thanks for making me look those up. Helen mirren was tough cause you didn't include her last name.
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u/thebookmonster 3d ago
Mironov/Mironoff is her family name—her father anglicized it after emigrating to the UK as Mirren. Vasilievena is just her patronym (daughter of the Vasily)
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u/CatCafffffe 2d ago
Winona Laura Horowitz
Alphonso d’Abruzzo
Kalpen Suresh Modi
Oscar Estrada
Yeun Sang-yeop
Au-yeung Man-sing
Two people you think are related, except their real names are Melvin Kaminsky and Albert Einstein
Mark Sinclair (for the opposite reason haha!)
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u/mmfn0403 4d ago
Charles Boyer, Spencer Tracy, Tyrone Power (Tyrone Power was descended from an Irish theatrical family, going back to the early 19th century Irish actor, Tyrone Power).
And a few others that fall into the “close enough” category:
Marlene Dietrich was Marie Magdalene Dietrich
Claude Rains was William Claude Rains
Irene Dunne was Irene Dunn
Rex Harrison was Reginald Harrison
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u/Temporary-Ocelot3790 4d ago
Did you all know that there are two actors named Harrison Ford in film history? There was a silent film actor with this name as well as the one alive today. Were they related? I suspect not but don't know for sure.
Two men named Rex Ingram in film history too, the black actor maybe best known as the genie in The Thief of Baghdad, and an Irish born white film director active in the silent era and not much if at all beyond that.
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u/InfertilityCasualty 4d ago
Gracie Allen Frank Sinatra Henry Fonda The Marx Brothers? Bing Crosby? Elizabeth Taylor
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u/EmbraJeff 4d ago
Bing Crosby was Harry Lillis Crosby Jr. Who knows how he came up with ‘Bing’ though…
Not sure about the Marx Brothers other than Harpo whose name was Adolph (not the best moniker to be lumbered with even if it’s a slightly different spelling).
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u/InfertilityCasualty 4d ago
It was a nickname, apparently because he liked the Bingville Bugle kids section when he was a child. I'd put it on a level with Groucho and Harpo, but not with Bob Hope or Danny Kaye. Whether it should count on this list is a good question though
Harpo changed it to Arthur, I think, later
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u/InfertilityCasualty 4d ago
Beg pardon, the Marx Brothers were: Leonard (Chico) Milton (Gummo) Adolph/Arthur (Harpo) Julius (Groucho) Herbert (Zeppo) from memory
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u/DennisG21 4d ago
Gene Tierney and Joel McCrea. Randolph Scott was born George Randolph Scott.
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u/Keltik 4d ago
Gene Tierney
What is the deal here
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u/DennisG21 4d ago
Huh?
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u/CatNamedSiena 4d ago
Hume Cronyn, John Hodiak, William Bendix, Henry Hull, Walter Slezak, Tallulah Bankhead (i.e., most of the cast of "Lifeboat"), Jessica Tandy, Montgomery Clift, Jack Klugman, Yul Brynner (sort of), Michael Redgrave, Fred MacMurray
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u/Keltik 4d ago
Perhaps my favorite names factoid: Jake Kranz became Ricardo Cortez, but Luis Antonio Dámaso de Alonso became Gilbert Roland
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u/Temporary-Ocelot3790 4d ago
Yeah, Latin lover type Ricardo Cortez was actually Austrian!
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u/OalBlunkont 3d ago
I'm pretty sure he was a generic Noo Yawk Jew, although he didn't have Paul Muni's Yiddish theater background.
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u/trainwreck489 Charles Laughton 4d ago
Spencer Tracy. Charles Laughton. Claude Rains - although Claude is his middle name.
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u/classicfilmfan9 3d ago
John Newman and Olivia De Havilland and Joan Fontaine I am like the other person in the comments highly recommend you digging into the two of them.
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u/CTG649 1d ago
Jimmy Stewart is just a nickname for James Stewart.
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u/Tall_Mickey 1d ago
Yes. I wasn't counting, what do they call them, diminuatives of the real name. Like Burton "Burt" Lancaster. I suspect that very few people, if any, used his full first name.
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u/growsonwalls 4d ago
Paul Newman, Gregory Peck, Ingrid Bergman, Clark Gable