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TV characters with real-life celebrity names

I

ixnay

I'll start, inspired in part by the thread on the recent appearance of Jackie Gleason on the Bio. Channel.

The short-lived CBS comedy Busting Loose (1977) starred Adam Arkin as shoe salesman Lenny Markowitz. Lenny's girlfriend (played by Louise Williams) was named... Jackie Gleason ("no relation, or resemblance, to [*the* Jackie Gleason]", according to Brooks and Marsh [2003 ed.]).

More recently there was the action cartoon series Totally Spies!, produced in France, set in Los Angeles, airing in the U.S. at one time on ABC Family and later Cartoon Network but currently OTA, and about three teenage Charlie's Angels types whose boss (very conspicuous, unlike Charlie), was named... Jerry Lewis.

Your turn.

ixnay
 
Would people who either played themselves or at least used their own names for their characters count? That would include Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Jerry Seinfeld, Drew Carey, and George Lopez.
 
I had the thought that in Jack Benny's case a big part of the cast used their own names, including his wife Mary Livingstone, Don Wilson, and Dennis Day. Others who didn't use their real names were Eddie Anderson (Rochester), and people like Mel Blanc and Frank Nelson who played various characters.

And I almost forgot Ozzie and Harriet, and David and Rick Nelson on their show as well.
 
anotherguy said:
I had the thought that in Jack Benny's case a big part of the cast used their own names, including his wife Mary Livingstone
Click to expand...
...actually, Mrs. Jack Benny's birth name was Sayde Marks; "Mary Livingstone" was the name of the character that was developed for her once Jack brought her onto the show. It proved so popular that Sayde had her name legally changed to Mary Livingstone a few years after she started playing the character. An actor originally named Byron Barr did the same thing; in fact, just before Pearl Harbor, there were two actors in Hollywood named Byron Barr, one at Warner Brothers and the other at Paramount. The one at Warners appeared under that name in the 1942 picture The Gay Sisters. In order to avoid confusion with the unrelated Paramount actor, who himself had begun to use the name Byron S. Barr, the Warners actor decided to adopt the name of his character in The Gay Sisters: Gig Young...

...in addition to all this, I distinctly recall there was a character on The Tony Randall Show, a mid-'70s CBS sitcom about a Philadelphia judge, named Mario Lanza; the Operatic tenor of the '40s and '50s named Mario Lanza had also been from Philadelphia, IIRC...
 
Ultimajock said:
anotherguy said:
I had the thought that in Jack Benny's case a big part of the cast used their own names, including his wife Mary Livingstone
Click to expand...
...actually, Mrs. Jack Benny's birth name was Sayde Marks; "Mary Livingstone" was the name of the character that was developed for her once Jack brought her onto the show. It proved so popular that Sayde had her name legally changed to Mary Livingstone a few years after she started playing the character. An actor originally named Byron Barr did the same thing; in fact, just before Pearl Harbor, there were two actors in Hollywood named Byron Barr, one at Warner Brothers and the other at Paramount. The one at Warners appeared under that name in the 1942 picture The Gay Sisters. In order to avoid confusion with the unrelated Paramount actor, who himself had begun to use the name Byron S. Barr, the Warners actor decided to adopt the name of his character in The Gay Sisters: Gig Young...

...in addition to all this, I distinctly recall there was a character on The Tony Randall Show, a mid-'70s CBS sitcom about a Philadelphia judge, named Mario Lanza; the Operatic tenor of the '40s and '50s named Mario Lanza had also been from Philadelphia, IIRC...
Click to expand...

"Mary Benny's" birth name was Sadie Marx, the last spelled the same as her famous cousins - Leonard, Arthur, Julius, Milton and Herbert. They also worked in comedy. Did pretty well in vaudeville and on Broadway. Made a few movies. One of them hosted a quiz show.
 

"Mary Benny's" birth name was Sadie Marx, the last spelled the same as her famous cousins - Leonard, Arthur, Julius, Milton and Herbert. They also worked in comedy. Did pretty well in vaudeville and on Broadway. Made a few movies. One of them hosted a quiz show.
[/quote]...she never spelled her family name Marx. As her Wikipedia and IMDb listings both indicate, it was Marks, Wiki explaining, "Her last name Marrix was Anglicised to Marks when the family arrived in the United States." The Marx Brothers were distant cousins, both biologically and physically -- the Brothers were born and grew up in New York, while Sadie (at least you got *that* part right, thanx) was born in Seattle and grew up in Vancouver...
 
Actually if you get that technical about Mrs. Benny, then you could do it as well with Jack Benny himself (Benjamin Kubelsky) and George Burns (Nathan Birnbaum) since those were their stage names. Did they legally change their names?
 
anotherguy said:
Actually if you get that technical about Mrs. Benny, then you could do it as well with Jack Benny himself (Benjamin Kubelsky) and George Burns (Nathan Birnbaum) since those were their stage names. Did they legally change their names?
Click to expand...
...I believe they did, but they were using those names long before they were on radio...
 
...BTW, there's another performer who took his stage -- and eventually, legal -- name from a Jack Benny Program character, tho one he never played on Benny's radio or TV programs. Interestingly, the name was also once used as a pseudonym by Ricky Nelson on The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet. The name appeared on Benny's radio show as early as the 21 December 1941 Jell-O Program. The later performer's birth name was Jacob Cohen. You know the guy as Rodney Dangerfield...
 
Not sure about the current series, "V" but after the aliens started, they needed to give them human names, so they started naming them names like Abraham Lincoln, George Washington & I'm sure a ton more.
 
anotherguy said:
Would people who either played themselves or at least used their own names for their characters count? That would include Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Jerry Seinfeld, Drew Carey, and George Lopez.
Click to expand...
...and Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Peter Tork and Mike Nesmith on The Monkees...
 
Hilary Duff...an unusual celebrity-sounding name.

I loved the little quickie animated sequences of Hilary voicing her character Lizzie McGuire....a cute and funny family-freindly Disney show before all of the hoopla over Hannah Montana blew it away.
 
...then there's the '70s and '80s kayfabe world of professional wrestling, where ring performers often had the same character names as popular singers (Ray Stevens, Sting) and even an evangelist (Billy Graham)...
 
Maybe a little off-topic for this particular thread, but it always annoyed me when an actor played a character having the same first name as the actor (as though the actor couldn't learn to answer to another name!). Example, Nell Carter on Gimme a Break playing Nell Harper. (Of course, Joey Lawrence would later play "Joey" on the show, but he was only six years old at the time, so I will "give him a break.")
 
Kind of reverse...names used THEN only to used by celebrities now..

Thought not TV but with movies...The other night I was watching an old Blondie & Dagwood movie "Blondie Hits The Jackpot" from the late 40's ( 1949? ). One name that was mentioned when Dagwood had went to work at a construction site was a "Michael Bolton". This pre-dates the singer of the same name by 30 plus years.

Come to think of it wasn't there an episode of Mr. Ed where Wilbur Post ( Alan Young ) had designed a house for a client named..Seth Rogen? I seem to remember it. Of course Mr. Ed was from the early and mid 60's and Seth Rogen the actor wasn't even born until 1982.
 
Not a fan of this show, but I happened across a "Cheers" episode where a character got drunk and said he would marry Jacqueline Bisset in a few days. His trouble was that he didn't even know Bisset, and he made a huge bet on it IIRC....so they went thru a bunch of phone books to find a gal *somewhere* with the name Jacqueline Bisset. They found someone with that name (played by Laurie Walters of "Eight is Enough" fame)...she was single too. I cannot recall how the story ended, but I think that's on-topic.

cd
 
This is a frustrating topic, because there's one on the tip of my tongue that for the life of me I can't remember. Two I can, though: (they're close, anyway)

"Oswald Harvey" from "The Drew Carey Show".

"Michael Bolton" from the movie "Office Space".
 
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