Decades ago, as a fledging (broke) New York stage actress, I had the good fortune to be befriended by the film producer Robert Chartoff (“Raging Bull,” “The Right Stuff,” “Rocky’s I—VI”). We met on the basis of our identical surnames, but traced our ancestry back to different origins. It seemed our names were accidentally namesake bastardizations of different, multi-syllabic and multi-Slavic monikers of yore, carelessly abbreviated by uncreative Ellis Island officiates.
Having the same name (although it came from different sources) and feeling like we were kin, felt almost like the miraculous time my malfunctioning checking account was so out of balance, it somehow came out balanced to the penny. Even a broken clock is correct twice a day. How fortunate for me, who’d been thrilled when Robert first put our name in lights and on the big screen with “They Shoot Horses Don’t They.”