Does Your Name Make Your Day?
Linda (Darnell) Susan (Hayward) Knight always hated her name, because in class there were at least three girls with the very same name. So, much to her Dad’s opposition, she decided to change the spelling of her name to Lynda. After all, if she was going to be a famous fashion designer, her name had to be slightly cool or have an edgy spelling.
She was so enamoured of the way her name looked now that she began sending away for free stuff. Every day after school she would walk across the street, march into the Post Office, and open up the family’s mail box. Her father would not touch the mail addressed to Lynda because he thought she was being ridiculous.
Most days, the box was full of the many free travel brochures she had requested; all addressed to someone named Lynda not Linda. She decided that once she got out of school, she would travel the world designing for the rich and famous, so she really needed this incoming travel information.
Lynda entered contests daily by the loads, all with her newly made up name. She won a pen on the Canadian TV show, “Razzle Dazzle,” hosted by Alan Hamel and a talking turtle named Howard. She loved Howard and he read her winning story aloud on the air, and then carefully spelled out her name as L y n d a.
One day, while reading Seventeen magazine, she saw that a movie studio was having a contest seeking someone to play a part in the upcoming film, “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter”. The movie was to be based on the Carson McCullers novel of the same name, which she absolutely loved and had read many times. Lynda had long blonde hair and was in her anorexic stage, weighing approximately 105 pounds, and of course, she had a great name now. She read the instructions over and over and thought she would be perfect for the movie.
One day, a letter from Seventeen magazine arrived in Box 35 and Lynda opened it with glee. To her complete misery it said that yes, she could have been a contender, but sadly she was Canadian and the contest was only open to US citizens. Lynda became very upset as she had been denied the chance simply because she lived on the wrong side of the border. Had they not seen the way her name was spelled?
In that time and in that particular space, Lynda thought her whole world had ended, but years down the road, she was relieved. You see, the part went to someone named Sondra Locke. Sondra, being a skinny blonde, ended up shacking up with the co-star in her next film called “The Outlaw Josey Wales”. His name was Clint Eastwood.
Sondra and Clint had a nasty relationship that ended up so badly, she wrote a book called “The Good the Bad and the Very Ugly.” If Lynda had gotten that part and ended up with Clint, she felt he would have made her change her name back pronto. Clint was a pronto sort of man.
Eventually Sondra ended up leaving Hollywood so no doubt Lynda would have made the same decision. Yes, Lynda would have returned home miserable and gone back to her old name, as nothing is forever is it?
As Clint might have said; “that would not have made Lynda’s day.” No, not made her day indeed because young hearts always run free, no matter how they spell their names.
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