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August 2001, Week 4

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Sat, 25 Aug 2001 17:37:05 +1000
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mpomeran wrote:

> Readers might be interested to know that in the arcane
> business of motion picture scripting and copyrighting, it is
> not only an aspiring actor who is forbidden by law to take
> on an "already-owned" name [...]  One of the people (I was going to say
> "ironically
> enough" but there were so many of them, I suspect, there's
> no real irony here) who had this kind of trouble routinely
> was, you guessed it, Alfred Hitchcock.

Murray is talking of naming characters from real life.  (I'd love to hear an
instance or two, Murray.)

Slightly off-topic, then, but have I told this anecdote here before?

Apparently the great Irish director, Rex Ingram, whose films were beloved by
David Lean, and others, was born Rex Hitchcock.  One day in the 1920s, the young
Alfred Hitchcock, just starting out in movies, met Rex Ingram/Hitchcock (no
relation).  'My boy', the great man said, 'I advise you to change your surname,
like I did.  You'll never get anywhere with the one you've got.'

The anecdote was told to me by Leslie Shepard in Dublin, who had been an
associate of the noted film historian Liam O'Leary.

- Ken Mogg.
http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin

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