Name-Dropping Takes Center Stage

Charles E. Probst saved his money the old-fashioned way: He skipped town and left no forwarding address.

But now he is being publicly flayed for his thrift, and that is plain unfair. Because he only gave the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza some hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of his promised $2 million, it was announced last week that his name will be stripped from the main theater at the city’s crown jewel.

No longer will grown men bravely sit through the entire performance of “Cats” at the Charles E. Probst Center for the Performing Arts. Until a more generous donor springs from the wings, patrons will sink into the plush seats of what will temporarily be called the Civic Auditorium but might as well be called the Your Name Here Center for the Performing Arts. That is too bad.

The Probst name could be a big-time benefit for Thousand Oaks. So what if he had a little problem with follow-through? The man still gave the center a small fortune he could otherwise have spent on, say, jade bowling balls for the lanes in his basement.

Besides, his name would lend the theater an intrigue that money can’t buy. Generations from now, old-timers in the lobby would weave tales about Probst that would hold the intermission crowds rapt.

“Yep, he was a reclusive, elusive, mysterious jillionaire,” some graybeard would intone, tearing off a chew of red licorice. “Yep, they say he had a house with 300 rooms and its own rain forest and sacks of gold in the kitchen and a bathtub with real swans in it. But he was with us for such a short time. Oh, Charlie, we hardly knew ye . . . .”

For long-term charisma, a scalawag beats an upstanding citizen every time. How many homeowners would brag about their house being on the site of an insurance agency way back when? Still, purists will demand that the broken promise be avenged.

There are many humane alternatives. Instead of removing Probst’s entire name, officials can strip away half of it, giving us The Charles Center for the Performing Arts. There is something fine about that. The Charles River flows by Harvard; in the 1940s, Nick and Nora Charles solved many a murder as they sipped martinis.

Inevitably, the bean counters will complain that this solution brings in not one more dime. They will point to the money that public agencies have made by selling naming opportunities to publicity-hungry corporations. Sure, they will admit, the Kwik-Lube Neurosurgery Pavilion might have an awkward ring at first, but people adjust.

Even so, naming facilities after big corporate donors can be risky.

A few such choices are rock-solid. (The Times Plaza--an entryway in the Thousand Oaks arts complex--leaps to mind.)

But every investor knows that today’s hot company can be tomorrow’s dud and that the old reliables can’t always be relied upon. Would Thousand Oaks have had the self-discipline to turn down a colossal gift from, say, the R.J. Reynolds Co.?

How many widows would have had to weep in front of congressional committees before someone realized that The Lincoln Savings & Loan Center for the Performing Arts might not have been such a great name?

Plummeting corporate fortunes would be wonderful for the sign makers but a chronic embarrassment for the city.

There is only one solution: Find donors so committed to the arts in Thousand Oaks that they will create a product using only the letters in the name Charles E. Probst. That way, the plaza finds a dedicated company that will be there for good, and it saves a few bucks on replacing the sign.

Imagine the thrill, then, of attending the debut performance in the . . . Pearl’s Borscht Center for the Performing Arts!

And the city would get to save an “e” for emergencies!

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Steve Chawkins is a Times staff writer.