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dick warlock top pic.jpg

The Greatest Showbiz Names In All of Existence

By Rebecca Pahle | Lists | January 29, 2015 |

By Rebecca Pahle | Lists | January 29, 2015 |


Is it feeling cold, not only outside but also in your heart? Has the world got you down? Could you use a little pick-me-up, as winter leads to winter, leads to winter, leads to more fucking winter? Kurt Russell’s regular stunt double—that smiling face up above—was named Dick Warlock. You’re welcome.

(His real name is Richard Anthony Leming, but that is utterly unimportant right now.)

And he wasn’t the only actor/writer/generally categorized Movie Person to be blessed by the naming gods. Join me for a list that’s completely devoid of Banderswazzle Cucumberfest, because he’s everywhere else anyway, and this is my post, and I say so.

If Warlocks aren’t your speed, there’s always Law & Order creator Dick Wolf.

Or how about Burk Sharpless, co-writer of the upcoming Gods of Egypt. We can criticize the fucked up-itude of a movie casting Gerard Butler, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and Geoffrey Rush as Egyptian gods (because Exodus wasn’t bad enough) while also appreciating the Space Mutiny quality of one of its writers.

A veteran of Lionheart with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Shootfighter: Fight to the Death, which I can only assume is a real-life Kickpuncher, the awesomely named Thunderwolf hasn’t been in a movie since 2006’s The Moment After II: The Awakening, and the world is poorer for it.

For the rest of the Warlock family, there’s composer Lance Warlock, whose credits include Chromeskull: Laid to Rest 2, and Billy Warlock, who’s appeared on just about every soap opera ever (and Baywatch!). They’re Dick Warlock’s sons, and they have a sister named Rhonda Warlock, because the world can be a magical place sometimes. Don’t let anyone tell you different.

Imogen Poots should do a reality show with Scoot McNairy and call it Scoot ‘n’ Poots.

I can’t look at the name of voice actor Rodger Bumpass, who has gifted the credits of such shows as SpongeBob SquarePants (Squidward), Invader ZIM (Professor Membrane), Teen Titans Go! (Doctor Light), and something called Disco Beaver from Outer Space, without giggling.

Which writer’s name is more stuffy and British-sounding: P.W. Hopsidor (co-writer of The Stanford Prison Experiment, premiering at this year’s Sundance) or Creighton Rothenberger (Olympus is Falling, The Expendables 3?). I would don a series of ever-more-elaborate hats and explore the world via dirigible with either of them.

Prunella Scales is a real person who’s been in real movies and TV (like Fawlty Towers and Mike Nichols’ Wolf), not a Harry Potter character.

It doesn’t matter what my last name is, or the last name of my hypothetical babypapa. I’m naming my son after Royal Shakespeare Company actor John Shrapnel, and he’ll go on to star in action movies or else he’s getting disowned.

Deep Roy. Sounds like a porn star name. Not a porn star name.

Via IMDb, Greg Pead “legally changed his name to Yahoo Serious in 1980 before his sudden fame,” brought about when he directed the 1988 comedy Young Einstein, wherein Einsten (played by Serious) invents surfing, comes up with the theory of relativity while experimenting on beer, and gets jiggy with Marie Curie (the more—or less, I suppose—seriously named “Odile Le Clezio”).

Please tell me Yahoo at some point hung out with ’60s hippie actress Joy Bang.

Butterfly McQueen was best known for playing Prissy in Gone with the Wind, but she should have been a ’90s R&B one-hit wonder.

Am I hungry, or is it just actor Herb Rice (Apocalypse Now, Rumble Fish)?

The Human Centipede movies may be shit (ba-doom-tiss), but can we all agree that star Dieter Laser has one of the best names that a human has ever been gifted?

But even Dieter—or Burk or Rodger or Butterfly or Deep or any of the Warlocks—cannot hold a candle to what is unquestionably the greatest showbiz name, that of actor Clement von Franckenstein, full name Clement George Freiherr von und zu Franckenstein. It’s Frahnk-ehn-STEEN!