Nicknames that stuck
QUESTION Many music hall and film stars had amusing names such as Nosmo King, Issy Bonn and Slim Pickens. Where did they come from? What others were there?
SLIM PICKENS was an American rodeo performer and actor, best remembered for his comic roles in the films Dr Strangelove and Blazing Saddles.
Born Louis Burton Lindley, Jr., he grew bored on the family’s dairy farm and began riding broncos and roping steers in his early teens. When his father tried to stop him, Lindley took no notice.
When he once went to compete in a rodeo and was told by the doubtful rodeo manager that there would be ‘ slim pickin’s’ for him, he entered his name as Slim Pickens to prevent his father from discovering he had competed. He won $400 that afternoon.
Elmore Rual Torn Jr — the actor known under his stage name Rip Torn, a family nickname — was born in 1931 in Texas. He achieved acting immortality playing Artie, the tough, former marine producer on The Larry Sanders Show.
The tradition is carried on by Amelia Fiona ‘Minnie’ Driver, the British star of Good Will Hunting, Grosse Pointe Blank and Hunky Dory, who is known by her childhood nickname.
Alice Reeves, Shrewsbury, Shropshire. noSMo KInG’S actual name was Vernon Watson (1886-1952), who is said to have found his stage name after seeing a ‘no Smoking’ notice on a stage door.
Another interesting example is Little Tich, the diminutive music-hall star of the early days of the last century. When he was young, a cause celebre was the Tichborne Claimant, a fraudster who tried to secure a valuable inheritance by claiming he was long lost baronet Roger Tichborne.
Little Tich, real name Harry Relph ( 1867- 1928), had a close physical resemblance to this man, but he was much smaller and so acquired the nickname Little Tich, which he used in his showbusiness career.
This was how any small person became known as a ‘tich’.
Rodney Bennett, Richmond, Surrey.
QUESTION Why is the golem so prominent in Jewish legend?
THE golem is a clay creature that has been magically brought to life. The legend inspired such tales as Frankenstein, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Gustav Meyrink’s novel, The Golem. The latter was turned into Paul Wegener’s expressionist film The Golem (1920), where the golem is a brutish creature whose powers are all too easily turned to destructive ends. That’s the golem’s popular image today, and, as such, it has featured in many modern fantasy novels, notably in Terry Pratchett’s books. In mystical Jewish culture (such as K Kabbalah), it stems from the idea that a righteous person, possessed of es esoteric wisdom, could create an ar artificial human being out of inorganic m matter and thus imitate the Divine. T The term ‘golem’ appears in Psalms 139:16 and in Talmudic literature to refer to an embryonic or incomplete substance — connoting the unfinished human being b before God’s eyes. Some medieval readers of Sefer
Ye Yetzirah (The Book of Creation), one of Ju Judaism’s earliest mystical texts, un understood the work to have practical as w well as theoretical implications.
I In a commentary to that text, Rabbi El El’azar of Worms (1165–1230), enumerated i instructions for the actual creation of a golem. The Kabbalistic writings of Avraham Abulafia (born 1240) of Spain and the so-called Pseudo-Sa’adyah — a 13th-century text of French Jewish origin — also offer instruction.
The idea of the golem later became entwined with folklore. Tales of mystical rabbis creating life from dust were popular in the 18th century, often warning of the dangers of such human hubris when the power of lifeforce goes astray, often with tragic results.
The classic narrative of the golem tells of how Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague ( known as the Maharal, 1525- 1609) creates a golem to defend the Jewish community from anti-Semitic attacks. But eventually, the golem grows fearsome and violent, and Rabbi Loew is forced to destroy it.