My father is film actor Nick Cravat, who is best known for his appearances alongside Burt Lancaster in the films "The Flame and the Arrow" (1950) and "The Crimson Pirate" (1952). "Cravat" is actually a stage name that my father selected based on a character in a play he had seen and rather liked.

"Cuccia," he told me, was too hard to pronounce (it is Sicilian and correctly pronounced in Italian it sounds like “coo-cha”). Besides, being Italian wasn't terribly popular at the time (in the mid-1930s), so he dropped Cuccia and became known as Nick Cravat.

However, he retained the name Cuccia legally (his full name is Nicholas Cuccia-Cravat) and my older sister and I inherited both names. We preferred "Cravat" as kids (though, it’s certainly not a slam dunk to pronounce either, let me tell you) since Cuccia was mispronounced as "coo-chi" (on purpose, naturally, in grade school…you know) and the embarrassment was more than two little girls could bear. So following the lead of my sister, I went by Tina Cravat and she went by Marcy Cravat. And fortunately, just like that, the teasing stopped.

Later in life, I decided to go by Cuccia, a name that sounded good after I had made it through the awkward childhood years, when everything is embarrassing...