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Archived Articles | 06 Feb 2002 | EWR

I've been thinking about changing my name. Other people have done it. You probably know the whole list. Judy Garland started out as Frances Gumm. Marilyn Monroe was Norma Jean Baker. John Wayne was Marion Morrison. Cary Grant was Archibald Leach. Roy Rogers started out as Leonard Slye. Michael Micklewhite was told by his agent that if he was serious about becoming a movie star, he had to find a better name for himself. Michael, in a panic, racking his brains, sitting in Leicester Square, surrounded by movie theatres, noticed that one of them was showing THE CAINE MUTINY COURT MARTIAL and that's how Michael Micklewhite became Michael Caine. When Elia Kazan was offered a career in Hollywood, he was told that he should change his last name to Cézanne. When Kazan pointed out that there already was a well-known painter named Cézanne he was told, "Listen, you just go and make a few pictures and they'll forget all about this other guy." Some people are lucky, some are not. James (Jimmy) Stewart started out as James Stewart. A few years later, another James Stewart, a film actor in England, was told to change his name, because there already was a James Stewart in the Actor's Guild. That's how Stewart Granger was born. Then there is Issur Danielovitch, who changed his name to Kirk Douglas. His son, Michael Douglas, kept the name. Both of them were in Toronto last week, promoting Kirk's latest book, MY STROKE OF LUCK. It was quite moving. You may have seen it in the news. Kirk, much older than he used to be but still full of fight, was making jokes about the fact that he can't talk as well as he could before his stroke. Michael, apparently, told him at one point that he should keep working with his speech therapist and then, when Kirk got better, they would make a movie together, a movie where Kirk plays an old man who has had a stroke. Kirk, according to Kirk, then said to his son, Michael, "No, no. You work with my speech therapist until you can talk like me and then we'll make the movie." Michael, who is as tough in the movies as his father used to be, had to work very hard to keep from crying before he finally managed to say, "I'm proud of the old man." I once asked a well-known Estonian lawyer in Toronto, if he had ever considered running for political office. He laughed. "With a name like mine? Forget it." Is he right? Would his name prevent him from getting elected in Canada? We may never know, because Estonians with Estonian names do not, as a rule, run for political office. So, am I thinking about changing my name because I am considering a career in politics? Or am I thinking about becoming a movie star? Frankly, I'm not flatly opposed to either possiblity but I doubt that I will be getting calls from Ottawa or Hollywood in the near future. In the meantime, the reason I'm shopping around for a name right now is because I would like to start writing a column under an assumed name that tells the reader where I'm coming from. Let me Explain. There was, for example, a columnist who called himself 'Cassandra'. Dictionaries describe Cassandara as 'one that predicts misfortune or disaster' and an 'unregarded prophet'. Cassandra, originally, is the name that Homer gave to the daughter of Priam and Hecuba. Cassandra was beautiful and Apollo taught her the secrets of prophesy, but when she rejected his advances, he laid a curse upon her so that her prophesies would never be believed. As a result, when Cassandra told everyone that the Grecian gift horse would result in the destruction of Troy, no one believed her and Troy was destroyed. The columnist who called himself 'Cassandra', was a man whom I've met and I can tell you that he was not particularly good-looking. But he was respected and believed when he warned his readers that if they did not watch out, misfortune and disaster would get them. Now, we have just had the first serious snowstorm of the winter in the Greater Toronto Area and, as all residents of the G.T.A. know, the next day the Cassandras known as Weathermen and Weatherwomen, were busy showing everyone satellite maps, according to which there was going to be a Friday storm right on the heels of the Thursday storm. Well, the Cassandras were wrong. But the reality is that most Cassandras have a pretty good act. If they predict stormy weather and it comes, everyone says, "Thank you, I'm glad you warned us!" If they predict gloom and doom and it does not come, everyone says, "Thank goodness, you were wrong." Cassandras only get into trouble when they tell you that things are going to be fine and they turn out to be not so fine. It follows, therefore, that if I want to stay out of trouble then I should find myself a name like Cassandra and issue weekly warnings about all the trouble ahead. Because there is something about future that turns people into Believers of Dire Predictions. It's called The Fear of the Unknown. Think about Eric Blair, who changed his name to Orwell, and who wrote '1984'. He should have called it Gloom and Doom. The same thing is true of Aldous Huxley's BRAVE NEW WORLD. Full of gloom, I tell you. And what do you think Arthur Köstler's DARKNESS AT NOON is all about? Gloom and Doom! The latest contribution to a gloomy view of the future is John Updike's TOWARD THE END OF TIME. You want to get depressed, get the book. It not only tells you all the things that will go wrong with your body if you live long enough, it also tells you how miserable your life is going to be after the Next Great War that will come between China and the United States. Then there are the filmmakers like Ingmar Bergman. With the exception of 'Smiles in a Summer Night', his success is basically rooted in the presentation of a totally gloomy, Swedish view of the world. Mind you, if you read his very well written biography, THE MAGIC LANTERN, you will find, first, that Ingmar loves life and he has never, not even for a moment, considered suicide and, second, that Ingmar's tragic, worldweary way of looking at the world 'through a glass darkly' has been very helpful to him whenever he set out to impress the ladies he was Many of Ingmar's followers are now out there, making 'film noir' imitations and impressing their followers with their tragic, Worldweary Misbeliefs - everyone has a 'dark side', and predictable happy endings are not as realistic as predictable unhappy endings, where everyone ends up hollow-eyed and miserable. So do I want to be a Cassandra or not? Not quite. It's a case-by-case thing. Where there is clear and present danger - if there is poison in the drinking water and if there is a chance that a storm is on the way - I believe that people should be warned right away. But when the outcome of things depends on how we want things to turn out, then I think we should be warned against all the miserable doomsayers who demoralize and depress people with their 'realistic' and 'believable' gloomy versions of the future. It does not matter if these people are sincere because their fears have convinced them that life, instead of getting better, is going to get worse, or if they are cynical and manipulative and very good at deliberately generating fear in others so that they can profit from it somehow. What matters is that the world is not going to be a better place if people stop believing that it can be. The world I believe in is a world where people are happy and nice and friendly and unselfish and sincere and kind and just and honest and tolerant. I also believe in Oscar Hammerstein II who said, among other things, 'You gotta have a dream. If you don't have a dream, how you going to make the dream come true?' I know that dreams seldom come true if they are unrealistic. The column I want to write, therefore, will look at various dreams - theories of the future - in order to determine the extent to which they are well thought-out and the extent to which they can be implemented and made to work by people who are prepared to work hard for the common good. As I said earlier, the name I want to assume, will be a name like Cassandra - a name that tells the readers that the basic aim of the column is to examine all problems in a way that is life-affirming, steadfast, rigorous and unbendingly positive. Any suggestions? Ain Söödor