Free The Man in the Rockefeller Suit by Mark Seal

sponsors on his immigration papers. He used them once again, without their knowledge or consent, as his permanent address in California, although he never paid more than brief visits to their home.
    They almost didn’t recognize him when he showed up. His hair, once long and cut in the popular shag style of the day, was short and businesslike, and his clothing, which had evoked the 1970s American hippie style, was now strictly Ivy League. But there was something still missing in his transformation, his dream of becoming a player in the film industry, he told Elmer and Jean. He needed a better name. Sitting in the Kellns’ living room, he began leafing through the San Bernardino telephone book, searching for a new name for himself.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with your own name?” asked Jean, but Elmer understood completely. Chris was going to work in Hollywood, where adopted names are commonplace, where a Bernard Schwartz can become Tony Curtis, and where the only thing that separates falsehood from fairy tale is the extent of one’s success.
    â€œNobody in the movie business uses their own name!” Elmer admonished his wife. As he later explained, “You have to remember you are in California, where changing your name is not illegal. Many people have aliases. I used to be academic dean at the university and I used to order students’ diplomas. If a student came in just before graduation and says, ‘This is how I want my diploma to read,’ that was how his diploma read for the rest his life when he would be practicing dentistry. Many of them were Asian students. I particularly remember someone’s last name was Duc, but they didn’t want to be known as Dr. Duc, so they were allowed to change their name. This is legal in California, so I thought nothing of him picking a new name.”
    â€œToo German,” Chris said dismissively of his real name as he leafed through the phone book, looking for one that would set him apart from the pack.
    When he couldn’t find a name he liked in the phone book, he began to tick off those of people he knew. Returning in his mind to Berlin, Connecticut, he recalled the teacher of his dreams, Joan Chichester, a class adviser who taught science and biology. She was blond and beautiful, in an almost British sort of way, and the young Gerhartsreiter had had a crush on her. Ed Savio told me so, even though Joan Chichester herself said she had no recollection of the young man. “It’s a horrible thing to say,” she told me. “I’m older, but I don’t think it’s senility. I was the class adviser and probably had him in class. He was just not outstanding to me at the time. I really don’t have anything to add. You’ve told me everything I know about him.”
    â€œOh, she’s so fantastic!” Chris Gerhart had often told Ed Savio. In addition to her striking looks and intelligence, she had the perfect name: Chichester, which Chris pronounced Chee- chester. It was so beautifully British, especially when paired with an august first name, like Christopher.
    He suddenly had it: Christopher Chichester! And to gild the lily a bit, he threw in a fancy middle name: Mountbatten. Christopher Mountbatten Chichester. Elmer and Jean couldn’t help but smile. It was brilliant, and seemingly harmless, and they were happy for him. Their young German friend was ready for Hollywood! He had come so far since that day the couple met him, a soaking wet hitchhiker on the side of the highway in Germany. Since then he had clearly learned how to flatter and acquiesce, when to speak and when to remain silent, and how to work the American system.
    In Hollywood, they all knew, reinvention was a way of life. But Christopher Mountbatten Chichester decided not to base his new life in Los Angeles. That would be too “on the nose,” to use the screenwriters’ term for too obvious, too predictable. Instead, he would launch