The actress Joan Crawford started out in silent films under her birth name, Lucille LeSueur, but Sam De Grasse (who appeared with her in 1925’s “Sally, Irene and Mary”) said her name sounded too much like ‘sewer.’ A contest in the fan magazine Movie Weekly became the source of her stage name – although she initially hated it, saying it sounded like ‘crawfish’, the female contestant who entered the name Joan Crawford was awarded $500.