WHAT’S IN A TITLE? : In the Show Biz Market, Everything and Nothing

Friends of ours who never (or, at least, very seldom) go to movies were lured to “Murphy’s Romance” the other night by our enthusiastic recommendation to the effect that it was the kind of movie Hollywood once knew how to make and the most delightful hunk of celluloid to turn up in years. Being unwary, they stumbled instead into “Murphy’s Law,” one of the murder and mayhem epics Hollywood grinds out with depressing regularity. I doubt they will ever speak to us again.

I’m certain the similarity of titles of two current films is simply coincidence and unavoidable. The character Jim Garner played so effectively in “Murphy’s Romance” was named Murphy, and, of course, Murphy’s Law is an aphorism for bad luck. I imagine the titles were duly registered and approved, no confusion intended. Which didn’t help our friends.

One of the most blatant cases of title confusion, as Gore Vidal tells it, was when his political comedy “The Best Man” was appearing in a Broadway theater directly across the street from Paddy Chayefsky’s drama “The Tenth Man.” Vidal’s comedy, as you undoubtedly know, dealt with an old pol in the Harry Truman mold maneuvering a political convention to his liking, while Chayefsky’s hit play was a retelling in modern terms of the grim legend of “The Dybbuk,” set in a shabby synagogue in a Manhattan cellar.

Inevitably, as Vidal tell it, a couple came to New York to see “The Best Man” and wound up across the street at “The Tenth Man.” As she watched the dark stage full of old Jews mumbling prayers in Hebrew, the wife whispered to the husband: “What’s this all about?” “Sssh,” shushed the husband. “One of those guys is Truman.”

Effective titles are so difficult to come by, so painstakingly researched and tested and agonized over, that it’s not in the least surprising that there’s occasional coincidence.

I remember some years ago hearing the late theatrical scholar Gabe Yorke describe the exhaustive search for the title for a new Broadway play about World War I written by Maxwell Anderson and Laurence Stallings. Dozens of titles were suggested and rejected in this marathon session of producers and authors. Finally, the time came when a name had to be decided on for the damned thing. They chose one of their rejects, a title nobody liked. It was “What Price Glory?” One cannot conceive of a better title for that benchmark in American drama.

Even so, the chances of getting into the wrong play are better than the odds on winning the California lottery. There are half-a-dozen other plays and movies with “What Price” in the title, among them “What Price Decency?” “What Price Beauty?” “What Price Hollywood?” and “What Price Love?” There are 50 films and plays beginning with the word “What,” including several “What Happened to,” such as “What Happened to Jones,” filmed twice, and “What Happened to Father.” There’s even a play called “What Did You Say What For?” by James Paul Dey that was first performed at one of Jose Quintero’s director seminars and is widely regarded as the first indigenous American absurdist drama.

Not that what has any corner on the title market-- when does about as well. In the movies, both are far outdistanced by films beginning with the word scarlet ; there have been 32 of them--”Scarlet Street,” “Scarlet Woman,” etc. The word “Last” is big in pay titles--”Last Warning,” “Last Chance,” “Last of the Leprechauns,” “Last of the Red Hot Lovers.”

The champ of all in the title game is the word love . By my count, there have been more than 210 movies released with titles beginning with “Love”--”Love a la Carte,” “Love in a Goldfish Bowl,” “Love Affair,” “Love in the Afternoon,” “Love on a Pillow,” “Lovesick,” even two movies called simply “Love”; the most recent is John Cassavetes’ “Love Streams.” “Love” doesn’t do that well on Broadway--only about 15 plays have titles beginning with “Love,” among them “Love on the Dole,” “Love, Sex and the IRS” and “Love From a Stranger.”

Theatrical lore is full of tales of plays and films that failed under one title and succeeded under another, of worthy shows that died under the wrong title. I would have thought that “Perfect Strangers,” the funniest new show on television this season, would have died under that title, but audiences apparently found it; the ABC comedy (Tuesday nights) is a major hit.

Television doesn’t seem much concerned with titles. If you have the right star, you simply call it “The Cosby Show,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “The Bob Newhart Show.” Perhaps the greatest comedy in TV history was originally called “Those Were the Days,” and a title song was written for Archie and Edith Bunker to sing. They changed the title to “All in the Family,” but they kept the song.