Actors, writers, and directors often face creative changes completely out of their control – think of all the storylines actors flat-out refused to film, or that one time a powerful play about the Cuban revolution turned into Dirty Dancing 2.
Often, that means cast and crew are left with their names attached to a project they might not have felt in full control over.
For instance, Peter Sagal, the Cuban revolution playwright, is credited as a writer on the Dirty Dancing sequel, despite saying there’s “not a single line of dialogue in that movie” that he wrote.
In this case, he seems OK with the credit. But what do directors do when they no longer want their names associated with a film?
Apparently, some turned to an alias: Allen Smithee, often “misspelled” as Alan Smithee.
Allen became a way of distancing directors from films they lost control over.
Don Siegel, the first person to use the name, said in his autobiography: “When I refused to take directing credit for the film [Death of a Gunfighter, in which he had limited say] as did Bob Totten, the Directors’ Guild made up a pseudonym for Totten and myself: ‘Allen Smithee’”.
Snopes said that for decades, directors had to apply to the Directors Guild of America to use it.
They had to prove “to the Guild’s satisfaction” that they really did have the creative reins yanked away from them, the 2001 book Directed By Allen Smithee added.
“Allen Smithee” has been used from 1969 onwards and has dozens of credits to his name.
He has even been nominated for awards, per his IMdB page, though one of the three nominations is for a “Razzie” award, which are designed to celebrate the worst of Hollywood’s movie outputs.
After the late ’90s, the Director’s Guild wanted to introduce a successor to Allen as they felt his name was getting too much attention. They made up “Thomas Lee” for this purpose.
But it didn’t seem to last, with unhappy auteurs attaching Allen’s name to films as late as 2025.
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