Here's something I've never heard before: the 1946 Peter Lorre film THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS began life with a much more subtle title. It's detailed below in an excerpt from a Dec. 24, 1946, gossip column published by The Newark Advocate American Tribune:
RKO has junked what we thought was one of the year's best movie titles. ''Build My Gallows High," because the Gallup poll boys turned in a report that it left movie fans cold. The picture's new title is "Out of the Past."
Well, anyway, it's not as bad as -a title-changing brainstorm at Warner Bros, where an original story "Concerto for the Left Hand" will be released soon as "The Beast With Five Fingers."
