|rock, but it could just as easily be any of the other men on this list|
Here are all the Willson dreamboats I could find, ordered by the increasing macho ridiculousness of their names:
- Nicholas Aloysius Adamshock became Nick Adams, which is actually a fairly sensible shortening.
- Gail Shilkles became Craig Stevens — and for the better, I’d say.
- Raymon Lee Cramton became Chad Everett.
- Norman Eugene Walker became Clint Walker.
- Armand Joseph Catalano became the far blander-sounding Guy Williams, though with that name he at least starred in the TV series Zorro and Lost in Space.
- Carmen Orrico is today known as John Saxon, and with that name he’s racked up a few notable horror credits, including A Nightmare on Elm Street, Tenebrae and the original Black Christmas. But according to a few sites, like this one, he narrowly avoided being given the name Rand Saxon.
- Merle Johnson became Troy Donahue. (And, by the way, Donahue along with a Willson creation who didn’t change his name, Doug McClure, are the sources of the name of Simpsons character Troy McClure, who stars in “rained out ballgame”-style B-movies inspired by the the kind of movies the actors on this list appeared in.)
- Francis Timothy McCown became Rory Calhoun, the western star whose name, when entered into the Google search box, calls up that one Simpsons reference rather quickly in the list of frequent searches.
- Robert Ozell Moseley — a man born in a California town whose name, while we’re on the subject, is Pumpkin Center — became Guy Madison. (Madison, by the way is sited in this Salon article as the slab o’ man that inspired the term beefcake.)
- Arthur Andrew Kelm became Tab Hunter, the soda pop who shoots deer.
- Earl Carver became Cal Bolder, which pretty much gets to the hart of Willson’s renaming process.
- James Westmoreland was saddled with the very awkward Rad Fulton, though he later reverted to his original name and continued acting.
- Orison Whipple Hunderford became Ty Hardin, which, yes, sounds like a porn name, and an obvious one at that.
- John Papiro was transformed into the weirdly white power-sounding Race Gentry.
- And, finally, Norman Jay Rambeau was given the name that The Hairpin calls out as the worst (also the best): Dack Rambo. Apparently Willson had run out of one-syllable names that sounded butch enough and had simply decided to make them up. (Dack, by the way, had a twin brother — “TWINS!!!” is what Willson surely said one slow afternoon at the docks — named Orman Ray, whom Willson renamed Dirk Rambo. This other brother died young, however.)
I’d be lying if I said things weren’t different today. Actors get to keep their awkward names, and some are even born with names that sound like the product of a focus group spitballing in an underventilated conference room. (It annoys me to no end that we have a moderately famous person named Channing Tatum now.) One thing I can say for sure: Henry Willson would have loved Heath Ledger.