The descriptive notes here are roughly 15 years old...
James Gatz — Mr Jay Gatsby's original name; cited first on this list as a hommage to the wonderful list of names at The Great Gatsby party scene, which — well-known literary fact — Fitzgerald pulled at random from a telephone book. Gatsby, by the way, is number 2 on the legendary top 100 of the 20th century as chosen by DWEMites. Atlas Shrugged is number 1 as chosen by you, the general public. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Anna Livia — Heroine of Finnegans Wake
Theophilus North — Eponymous hero of a wonderful Thornton Wilder novel. Oh, to be in Newport!
Bernard Baruch — the capitalist extraordinaire
Jeremiah Johnson — the Indian killer played by R Redford
Deanna Durbin — operatic rival to Judy Garland
Lois Flagstaff — the mother in the comic strip, Hi and Lois
Bertie Wooster — The employer of the incredible Jeeves, courtesy P.G.Wodehouse (whose nickname was "Plum")
Nick Chopper — The Tin Man of Oz's real name. There's a piece of obscure balogna, if there ever was one. It's in the books, not the movie(s) (and not the original Oz book, either, but in one of the sequels). And yes, there is more than one Oz movie, as well as more than one Oz book
Stuart Little — Too easy
Eric Blore — Wonderful screwball character actor of the 30s
Toshiro Mifune — Star of many a Japanese film, sort of the samurai John Wayne. Fans of the late Kurosawa know him well.
Benjamin Barker — Sweeney Todd's real name, a la Sondheim
Vlad the Impaler — Source of the Dracula legend
J. Fred Muggs — Chimpanzee star of the Today show in the 1950s
Uriah Heep — oily villain of David Copperfield (the book, not the magician)
Joel Cairo — He seeks the stuff that dreams are made of, in The Maltese Falcon
Clare Quilty — Quilty is guilty. From Lolita, another top-of-the-list 20th century book
Becky Sharp — Heroine of Vanity Fair (the book, not the magazine; that heroine was Tina Brown, and she is long gone)
Phoebe Caulfield — Holden's sister, Catcher in the Rye. We will be happy to join in a letter writing campaign to ban Joyce Maynard in all media
Dick Grayson — AKA Boy Wonder, AKA Robin
Harry Lime — The Third Man, and the most wonderful entrance by a character ever in a film, made by Orson Welles (the entrance, not the film)
Tony Buddenbrooks — Favorite feisty character from the Mann novel. Why draw the line at Hans Castorp?
Norman Bates — Motherly motelier
Pete Best — The drummer before Ringo
Butterfly McQueen — the actress playing Prissie who knew nothin' 'bout birthin' babies in GWTW
Sebastian Flyte — Pronounce that first name with four syllables; courtesy of Waugh's Brideshead Revisited
Theron Ware — From the novel containing the damnation of same. Sounds like some sort of plastic storage container
Kaiser Soze — The villain of The Usual Suspects
Peter Quint — "Peter Quint, you devil" — but then again, who really is the devil in The Turn of the Screw?
Zuleika Dobson — The entire male student body of Oxford self-destroyed over Ms. Dobson, who was last seen heading for Cambridge. #59 on the Modern Library list!
Theodore Cleaver — AKA "The Beaver"
Andrew Loog Oldham — Original producer of the Rolling Stones
Hieronymous Bosch — painter of the bizarre
(and hero of Micheal Connelly novels)
Mahatma Kane Jeeves — Writing pseudonym of W. C. Fields (in every movie, he said, there's always somebody turning to the butler and saying, "My hat, my cane, Jeeves")
Luca Brasi — sleeps with the fishes in The Godfather
Jud Fry — Poor Jud is daid, a candle lights his haid, in Oklahoma
Nathan Detroit — Good old reliable Nathan, of Guys and Dolls. Which should be pronounced ghees, like Guy de Maupassant, from the Riviera (i.e., a Nice Guy — this stuff only works if you read with your lips moving).
Egbert Souse — W.C. again, this time a character in The Bank Dick. The correct pronunciation is sue-say
Lemmy Caution — Alphaville private eye
Rufus T. Firefly — Hail, Freedonia! Hail Groucho! Hail Duck Soup!
Rick Blaine — Everybody comes to Rick's. In Casablanca
aRupert Pupkin — The King of Comedy, a close runner-up in denironyms to Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver
Molly Bloom — Leo's wife, Yes I Will Yes, etc — from Ulysses, if you find Finnegans Wake too difficult (see Anna Livia, above), and still want to stick to that top 100
Pierre Bezukhov — He gets the girl in the end (of War and Peace)
Tristram Shandy — Sterne should have lived in the age of the Internet; we'd love to see his web page
N-X 211 — The Ryan airplane that flew from NY to Paris in 1927, piloted by one Charles Augustus Lindbergh
John Galt — Who is John Galt? Why is Atlas shrugging? Why is Les Phillips shrugging?
Perry White — Clark Kent's old boss
Ringo Kid — John Wayne's breakthrough part in Stagecoach
Paspartout — The manservant who went around the world in 80 days. It's also a French pun (so go learn French, since we're not going to explain it to you, since you didn't think much of Nice Guy, above)
Ub Iwerks — early animation pioneer, off-again, on-again with W. E. Disney
Grover Whelan — the man behind the 1939 N.Y. World's Fair, among other things
Antoine Doinel — the French nouveau vague again, this time a la Francois Truffaut
Charles L. Dodgson — the Reverend, AKA Lewis Carroll
Blanche Morton — neighbor of George Burns and Gracie Allen
Molly Brown — Unsinkable
Putney Swope — Who would vote for this man? Robert Downey, Sr.directed the eponymous film. Yes, Virginia, for every wayward Jr. there is a Sr.
Merkin Muffley — President of the United States, in Dr. Strangelove
Marion Davies — Inamorata of Wm. Randolph Hearst
C. K. Dexter Haven — first husband of the heroine of The Philadelphia Story
THX 1138 — Hero of the G. Lucas film, played by Robt Duvall; now reduced to a tradename for a sound system, also from G. Lucas
Sally Hemings — Possible Thomas Jefferson slave mistress, although it's hard to imagine Mr. Jefferson's televised Grand Jury testimony, him being such a mumbler and all
Jean Valjean — Un mis (Whoa — three French refs now. This is getting serious)
Polly Peachum — She'll marry anybody, including Macheath! In Three Penny Opera
Carmen Miranda — the woman in the tutti-fruitti hat — a hotsy-totsy Brazilian actress
Umberto Eco — Sign, sign, everywhere a sign — Italian semiologist
Emma Bovary — I am Emma, said Flaubert. Which I guess makes us Buglaroni.
Fala — FDR's dog
Leonard McCoy — Bones, Original Star Trek
Archie Goodwin — Nero Wolfe's amanuensis
Tex Ritter — "Blood on the Saddle" singer, John's father, "Please Don't Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin'"
King Oliver — New Orleans blues man who gave Pops (L. Armstrong) one of his first gigs
Bennett Cerf — Random House publisher, creator of the Modern Library, home of, yep, the 100
Ed Norton — Ralph Kramden's foil on The Honeymooners. Or young actor who should have changed his name after watching The Honeymooners.
Stella Kowalski — Stanley's wife at the end of the desire streetcar line
Billie Burke — Wife of Flo Ziegfeld, Good Witch of the North (and, apparently, the South), Mrs. Cosmo Topper
Nora Charles — Mrs. Nick, in pursuit of The Thin Man
Beau Geste — Another epohym, given a Viking's funeral
Marilyn Manson — Celine Dion's alterego. Have you ever seen the two of them together?
Gaylord Ravenal — Riverboat gambler, Magnolia's husband (Showboat's comin'!)
John Worthing — A man who knows the importance of being earnest
Roy Cohn — Lawyer for Tailgunner Joe McCarthy
Mabel Mercer — Legendary cabaret singer
Maynard G. Krebs — Dobie Gillis beatnik (the G. stands for Walter)
Lara Croft — Nostrumite's cyber-pinup girl
Isaak Walton — The Compleat Angler author
Edward Everett Horton — cf. Eric Blore, but throw in Rocky and Bullwinkle voicing
Amanda Wingfield — Hi, Mom. How's the glass menagerie?
HAL 9000 — I know that you and Frank are planning to disconnect me. Or, open the pod door, Hal. Subtract 6999 if you still don't get it.
Glencora Palliser — Lady Glen. What's not to love? How could Trollope kill her off between novels?
Merrill Stubing — Captain of the original Love Boat
Esther Smith — The girl next door, who we'll be meeting in St. Louis
Rt. Hon. Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B. — The monarch of the sea, the ruler of the queen's navy, in that infernal nonsense Pinafore
Fred C. Dobbs — Badges? We don't have to show you any stinkin' badges! Bogart's role in Treasure of Sierra Madre
Peachy Carnehan — Friend of the man who would be king
Julius Marx — AKA Groucho, suspected Communist according to recently released FBI files
George C. & Thurgood & John & Penny & Garry — The Marshall family: One general, two judges, two director/actor types
Charles Sherwood Stratton — AKA General Tom Thumb
Harry von Zell — George and Gracie again, this time their TV announcer
Rocket J. Squirrel — AKA Rocky the Squirrel
Basil Fawlty — A towering presence, at least on PBS
Sancho Panza — Don Quixote's amanuensis
Melanie Wilkes — She got Ashley, Scarlett got everyone else, in GWTW
Mortimer Snerd — Country cousin to Charles McCarthy (and, presumably, Candace Bergen)
Edward Fairfax Vere — God bless 'im, he hanged Billy Budd
Truman Burbank — Another gimme. Cue the sun!
Marcia Brady — Still the cutest of the bunch
Sylvia Poggioli — The NPR reporter you always switch the dial from
Natty Bumppo — Go read your Leatherstocking Tales (if you can abide the literary sins of James Fennimore Cooper)
Kunta Kinte — The root ancestor of Alex Haley
Eustace Tilley — Monocled mascot of the New Yorker
Jules O'Shaughnessy — The one person in America who is definitely not the Nostrumite
No comments:
Post a Comment