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Famous names confer mixed blessings
What’s in a name? UD’s own James Brown, a campus custodian, says his famous moniker got him into a star-studded casino show. Howard Johnson never stayed at a Howard Johnson UD’s Howard Johnson, professor of black American studies, said his parents knew they were giving him a famous name, but not the one you’d think. “I was born in Jamaica. Of course, my poor parents would not have had any reference to the name Howard Johnson at all. My middle name is Delano, named for Franklin Delano Roosevelt.’’ When Johnson came to the U.S. in 1972, he noted the ubiquitous orange-roofed Howard Johnson’s with 28 flavors of ice cream. His famous name became a conversational gambit in the U.S. “ I always say, ‘I wish I had his millions.’” UD’s Howard Johnson said. He’s never actually stayed in a Howard Johnson motel, but he said he likes their fried clams. Ashley Olsen on campus—But no Mary Kate When UD’s Ashley Olsen was a high school freshman, her friends told everyone she was a second cousin to the Olsen twins of TV sitcom “Full House” fame, and the whole school believed it. Now Olsen is a college freshman, and the celebrity Olsen twins’ fans have stretched from “Nick at Nite” nostalgia buffs to those who are closely following the duo’s careers as they become adults. “I know that they’re now admired by people young and old,’’ UD’s Olsen said. “Somehow they seemed to grow up so much faster than I did.” Bob Barker—never won anything Bob Barker, director of UD’s MBA program, still remembers shocking his friends’ moms when, at age 12 or 13, he called their homes and said, “This is Bob Barker calling.’’ “The name was so prominent to radio listeners that the mother would answer the phone and she would go ballistic,’’ Barker recalled. Bob Barker, now famous for hosting TV’s “Price Is Right,” then hosted a radio show where he’d phone homes and ask whoever answered to match wits with a person in the studio to win prizes. Decades later, UD’s Barker still has a recognizable name because Hollywood’s Barker is host of the longest-running game show in television history. He has been in show business so long that the sound stage where Elvis Presley first appeared with Ed Sullivan is named in Barker’s honor. When a receptionist at Comcast recently phoned an office to say that Bob Barker was getting on the elevator and would be arriving soon, a large group of employees gathered near the elevator to get a look at him. Barker has been told to “come on down” so many times that now he turns the tables. “People can’t resist saying it,’’ he said. “So, I often will beat them to it. They’re disappointed because they want to say it.’’ Despite his Hollywood counterpart’s predilection for giving away prizes, Barker said he’s never won anything—not a sweepstakes, a contest or even a door prize. Edwards still running here in Delaware UD's Jon Edwards does his running on the tennis courts. The sophomore engineering student hails from Maryland, not North Carolina as the presidential hopeful U.S. Sen. John Edwards. His famous name has still garnered attention this year though. When tennis team captain Ari Zweig introduced the UD lineup at matches, he’d refer to Edwards and his doubles partner Philip Wayne as "Jon Edwards and his running mate, Philip Wayne.'' "Also, I've been introduced as ‘Jon Edwards, and if you like his volleys, wait until you hear about his health-care plan,’” Edwards said. James Dean drives an SUV Hollywood’s James Dean became a legend when he died driving his Porsche Spyder with Elizabeth Taylor’s phone number in his little black book. Having the legend’s name was a plus for James Dean Jr., now a UD English professor, when he was a teenager, but later it turned into a minus for the author whose titles include “Medieval English Political Writings.’’ To be taken seriously, he added his middle initial to his papers and became James M. Dean. “Particularly in scholarly or academic circles, they assume you can’t be a serious scholar if you have a name like that,’’ he said.
“In junior high, it attracted girls who were just hoping that somehow I would be like the actor, which, of course, I wasn’t at all,’’ he said, laughing. “I tried to affect a brooding look.’’ In high school, he ran for class treasurer with the slogan “Rebel With a Cause.’’ He won. He probably got the vote of his best friend, Tom Jones. No kidding. Dean said his famous name has always gotten notice—whether he’s applying for a loan or buying a new car. He actually has two famous names. Which one people recognize first tells him where they are coming from faster than a GPS device. Dean’s name is one-part James Dean, ill-fated actor, and one-part Jimmy Dean, pure pork sausage salesman. People rarely notice both. “My name can go two ways,’’ he said. “It almost divides along class lines. The people who know Jimmy Dean, the folksinger, and his pure pork sausages, they’ll say, ‘Jimmy Dean! Hey, Jimmy Dean.’ And they’ll give me a southern accent with that. But others, including modern-day students, they know James Dean, the actor. “The people who know Jimmy Dean don’t know James Dean, and the people who know James Dean don’t know Jimmy Dean,” he said. For the record, he has seen a James Dean movie, but he’s never tried a Jimmy Dean sausage. His sons are Will and Matt, no Jameses. Dean drives a Subaru Forester, not a Porsche. But, he said he wants to drive a Miata. Name’s the same as ‘80s starlet UD’s Heather Thomas had never even heard of the Hollywood’s Heather Thomas until a junior high substitute teacher asked her if anyone ever teased her about her name. Hollywood’s Thomas was voted US Magazine’s favorite female newcomer in 1982 — a year before UD’s Thomas was born. “I don’t think people in my age group really know who she was,’’ the history major said. Casino welcomes James Brown’s faux grandson to star gala UD custodian James J. Brown III grimaced when he saw soul singer James Brown’s picture pop up in the newspaper after the musician was arrested on domestic violence charges in January. “The other James Brown has a habit of getting arrested,” UD’s Brown said. “When they showed him on the news with his hair all wrecked and in his pajamas or something, I thought, ‘Oh boy. Here we go again.’” Brown doesn’t protest too much about the arrest hubbub because being mistaken for the grandson of the godfather of soul has opened doors for him—literally. “I have done so many things because of this name,’’ he said. “I got into a VIP casino show in Atlantic City because they thought he was my grandfather. I guess we do sort of look alike in a sense. Not to be a joker or arrogant, but I’m a fairly good-looking guy, and my demeanor helps. Because I’m a well-spoken person, they thought he was my grandfather. I just used it, and it worked.” He wound up sitting next to Della Reese. Brown said the fact that he shared a famous name didn’t sink in until he reached junior high although his name is doubly famous. In addition to the singer-songwriter, he shares a moniker with running back turned Hollywood actor Jim Brown. “One minute I’d be the grandson of the godfather of soul, and the next minute I’d be the offspring of Jim Brown,’’ he said. “When I played sports, I’d be like Jim Brown, and when I was in a band, they’d announce, ‘On rhythm guitar, Mr. James Brown’ and everybody’d say ‘Like whattt?’’’ At his first job after community college in a K-Mart warehouse, Brown said he was an instant hit because his supervisors liked calling his name over the warehouse public address system. “To this day, I can call back to that warehouse and say my name and people remember me,’’ he said. When ‘The Gap’ was more than a clothing story John Dean, a campus classroom technology technician, fended off newspaper reporters back in 1973 when his namesake was at the center of the U.S. Senate Watergate hearings.
Like the real Watergate principals, UD’s Dean said he usually had no comment. Edward Norton doesn’t go to Edward Norton movies UD’s Ed Norton works full-time, attends school, commutes and has a family, so he doesn’t see his namesake’s movies unless they’re on video or TV. He said he doesn’t get too much reaction to either of his namesakes—the Ed Norton character comic Art Carney played on TV’s classic “Honeymooners’’ or the current thriller hero by the same name. “I remember a newspaper picture with Edward Norton and Ben Affleck playing cards in Monte Carlo around the time he was dating Courtney Love. A friend cut out a picture of me and put it in the paper as if it were me playing cards,’’ Norton said. James Baldwin writing computer code James Baldwin, a computer programmer enrolled in continuing education courses at the University, goes by Jim, so people usually comment on his famous literary name only when he fills out official documents. He said the folks at the department of motor vehicles never fail to notice. “Throughout my life, many people have commented on it,’’ he said. “I’m white and, you know, James Baldwin the author was black. I think some people kind of find that amusing.’’ UD’s Baldwin recommends the other Baldwin’s books. Rick James abandons rock amps for library quiet zone Richard James says his contemporaries aren’t familiar with ‘80s pop culture so they don’t think of him as Rick James, the hard-living ‘80s songwriter whose wedding was postponed when his bride-to-be was arrested on shoplifting charges. “I think that the infamous Rick James is now sufficiently obscure that name recognition isn’t a problem,’’ UD’s James said. “While there is the occasional Superfreak comment aimed my way, it’s not like my name is Saddam or anything like that. Joe Kennedy encounters international goodwill UD’s Joe Kennedy, aptly an international relations major, said most people don’t link him with President John F. Kennedy’s famous father, who died in 1969. A notable exception was his visit to an Irish pub where the locals perked up when they heard the Kennedy family patriarch’s name. “People were like, ‘Wow. Joe Kennedy. Joe Kennedy. Oh, Kennedy, let me buy you a pint. ‘It was awesome,’’ he recalled. Mary Martin played in ‘South Pacific’ UD’s Mary Martin appeared in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical “South Pacific”—but it was on a high school stage in Indiana. Martin, UD’s assistant provost for graduate studies, was Mary Struve then. Martin is her married name. When she married, she didn’t anticipate the flood of recognition she’d get from sharing a name with the late Mary Martin, who starred in such Broadway musicals as “South Pacific,” “Peter Pan” and “The Sound of Music,” was the real-life mother of Larry Hagman, who played bad guy J.R. Ewing on the ‘80s prime-time soap “Dallas.” “Every day that someone calls me whom I’ve never spoken to before and I say my name is Mary Martin, before the conversation begins, they ask me about my name,’’ Martin said. “It’s just all the time. They’ll kid me, ‘Are you the real Mary Martin?’ It makes it really easy for me because people remember my name.’’ When “Dallas” was in prime time, callers would ask her, “Did you really raise J.R. to be the sort of guy he is?” Martin said having a famous name has been fun and a great icebreaker. There was just one time when it tripped her up—on her first day at UD in 1988. She went out to lunch with the person who hired her and met Bob Barker along the way. Then, later that afternoon, she met a woman named Betty White on campus. “I thought, ‘What kind of place have I come to,’’’ Martin said. Photos by Kathy Atkinson To learn how to subscribe to UDaily, click here. |
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