What’s in a name? A lot, it looks like.

I read The Wrap for entertainment news, Hollywood movies and TV stuff. Read and forget – that’s my usual routine. But this Wrap rap http://bit.ly/Z6qPXa did catch my eye instantly. There, we had Sharon Waxman, a former New York Times columnist, waxing eloquently and flinging a provocative challenge at The New York Times: “Hey, New York Times ‘Vows’ Section: Who Cares If ‘The Bride is Keeping Her Name'?”  (For a moment, it made me think of the good ol’ “Hark, who goes there?” routine.) Her bone of contention is the venerable newspaper making it a point to mention without fail in its Vows coverage that all the brides were keeping their respective maiden surnames.

At the height of the Feminist Movement, brides wore their maiden surnames as a badge of honour, you’ll recall. Later on, it became a matter of unstated routine, also a matter of convenience. Women started marrying later and later in life. By then they had kind of got accustomed to their original moniker. Also, career reasons as well as the long legal rigmarole involved in acquiring a new name may prompt the refusal to disturb the status quo.

Waxman’s target, though, seems to be the paper she worked for earlier. She points a finger at their boast about being the first to report same-sex nuptials. She would have preferred if her former employer had included significant details such as a Caucasian woman marrying an Afro-American or human interest tidbits such as the bride having lost 50 pounds of weight on her way to the church podium. And, so forth.

This is 2014. And, in the US of A, this issue is still being discussed. Will wonders never cease to pop up?

M as in ‘mule’. T as in ‘talking’.

And, F as in ‘Francis’. Because that was the name of the smart talking Army mule who used to upstage (after six appearances with Francis, the mule got more fan mail than the actor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_the_Talking_Mule) and land into trouble his GI sidekick, Peter Stirling (Donald O’Connor), in movie after movie. I think I first met Francis in 1952 at the Eros Theatre, opposite the Church Gate Station, just after appearing for my SSC Board examination. It was good fun once you willingly suspended your disbelief which was easy to do after you listened to Francis’s cynical and sardonic smart talk in the screen voice of Chill Willis. The pivot of the comedy was that Francis only spoke to Peter and when Peter followed his advice and acted in a manner beyond his competence, he had to tell his bosses that his source of information was a talking mule. This landed him into a psychoanalyst’s couch for analysis. I was taken aback when I came across a long-faced and solemn 693-word review of the first Francis flick in the New York Times (16 March 1950) by Bosley Crowther via http://www.mrqe.com/lookup?%5EFrancis+the+Talking+Mule (Movie Review Query Engine). I didn’t know Francis inspired such awe among movie critics when he made his debut. BC called 1950 the year of the mule, bitched about “the animal's limited histrionics” and didn’t seem to relish the hypothesis that mule could be superior to man. Famous last words? “In short, we can't say that ‘Francis,’ a Universal-International film, offers comedy of rich and subtle nature. But it holds a few good laughs – especially for mules.” I rest my case.

[Note on New Learning about the Good Ol’ Days: Even in 1950, on the stage at the Paramount, there were live performers: the King Cole Trio, Larry Storch, Johnny Coy and Ray McKinley and his orchestra. Did Francis ask for all those props?]