Once again we delve into Hollywood name changes, this time with née Rita MacKay, who had a pretty good name to work with, we’d say, but changed it to Rita Gam and achieved stardom. We may put together a list one day of the most interesting showbiz name changes—Diana Fluck to Diana Dors, Archibald Leach to Cary Grant, Willis Van Schaack to Lili St. Cyr, Ingeborg Klinkerfuss to Kaaren Verne, et al. We kind of just made a list there, didn’t we? Well, a longer list. Or maybe that notion will go into the giant bin of forgotten ideas for posts never brought to fruition.
The point is, in Hollywood it can help to have a catchy name. It isn’t an absolute rule, but without a cool handle some aspirants feel hobbled right from the jump. Gam jumped into television to start, managed to fit in some movies, but was more of a small screen star, appearing in shows like Mannix, The Jackie Gleason Show, and The Rockford Files. Despite a pretty extensive résumé we can’t recall seeing her in anything except the classic detective drama Klute. We’ll watch that again, because it’s good, and we’ll see what else we can dig up. These shots were made to promote the 1954 drama Night People. Gam and her gams will return.
