View Message

Your family story has been a bit garbled, because your great grandfather doesn't seem to have been named after an actor, but rather after a character in a play. Perhaps your great-great-grandmother was fond of an actor who played the character.

---

Claude Melnotte is the hero of a play called The Lady of Lyons by the English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton. You can find information about the play here:

---

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O149-LadyofLyonsThe.html

---

Melnotte does seem to be a real, if rare, French surname.