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WIKIMAG n. 7 - Giugno 2013
Look-alike
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A
look-alike is a person who closely resembles another person. In
popular Western culture, a look-alike is a person who bears a close
physical resemblance to a
celebrity,
politician or member of
royalty.
Many look-alikes earn a living by making guest appearances at public
events or performing on television or film, playing the person they
resemble. A large variety of celebrity look-alike images can be found
throughout the web, including images placed by professional agencies
that offer their services.
Look-alikes have also figured prominently at least since the 19th
century in
literature, and in the 20th and 21st centuries in
film.
Kjell Elvis (Norway), one of the better-known Elvis look-alikes in
Europe
Live
-
Mikheil Gelovani, a
Georgian actor and
Joseph Stalin look-alike, played the
Soviet leader in propaganda films of the 1930s and 1940s. In
2008, 88-year-old Felix Dadaev, a former dancer and
juggler, disclosed that he had been one of four look-alikes whom
Stalin had employed as decoys to mislead enemies and potential
assassins (there in fact were attempts on Stalin's life — two at
Yalta alone).[1]
- British author
Hugh Thomas claimed (1979) that war criminal
Rudolf Hess, who supposedly committed suicide in
Spandau Prison, was a look-alike. Thomas suggests that Hess’
plane was shot down during his flight over the North Sea in 1941 and
that he was replaced by a double.[2]
Inspired by Thomas' writings, Dutch author At Voorhorst published
his own conclusions concerning Hess’ identity at Spandau in 2011.[3]
- In 1944, shortly before
D-Day,
M. E. Clifton James, who bore a close resemblance to
Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, was sent to
Gibraltar and
North Africa, in order to deceive the Germans about the location
of the upcoming invasion. This story was the subject of a book and
film,
I Was Monty's Double.
-
A notable conspiracy theory that actually is a hoax holds that
Paul McCartney died in 1966 and was replaced by a
Canadian policeman named William Shears Campbell.
- In the 1970s, actor-comedian Richard M. Dixon (born James
LaRoe), look-alike to then-President
Richard Nixon, gained some celebrity, portraying the president
in the films, Richard (1972) and The Faking of the
President (1976). He also appeared in the unreleased
short film
Men of Crisis: The Harvey Wallinger Story.
-
Jeannette Charles has, since the early 1970s, worked as a
look-alike to Britain's
Queen Elizabeth II.
-
Saddam Hussein allegedly employed several
look-alikes for political purposes during his
Iraq
reign. According to a
CBS
60 Minutes segment in late January 2008, Saddam Hussein
denied to an American interrogator that he had employed doubles.
- The BBC
comedy programme
Doubletake made extensive use of look-alikes playing their
doubles in apparently embarrassing situations, seen through
CCTV cameras and amateur video, using distance shots and shaky
camera-work to disguise the true identity of those being filmed. Due
to the nature of this programme and conditions of filming, many of
the world's most authentic lookalikes boycotted the project leaving
the producer to rely on the careful use of soft focus, lighting and
carefully positioned camera angles to make the mainly amateur
lookalikes resemble the characters they portrayed.
-
Armando Iannucci's
Friday Night Armistice (1996–98) featured "the bus of
Dianas", a bus full of
Princess Diana look-alikes which was dispatched to "care" at the
sites of various minor tragedies.
- Since the year 2001, the UK's most successful lookalike has been
Derek Williams ("Svenalike") as
Sven-Goran Eriksson's lookalike/soundalike double who was
selected by The FA as a stand in for Eriksson at VIP receptions and
for Official pre-match Hospitality and has achieved widespread
acclaim and the most extensive TV, film and video exposure of any
celebrity double in recent history.
-
Steve Sires, a look-alike of
Microsoft's
Bill Gates, came to attention when he attempted to trademark
"Microsortof", and subsequently acted in Microsoft commercials. He
became especially famous for his role in the 2002 film,
Nothing So Strange, in which his character makes a speech,
looks up and is assassinated.
- UK
Big Brother contestant
Chantelle Houghton worked briefly and unsuccessfully for a
look-alike agency as a
Paris Hilton look-alike, earning the nickname "Paris
Travelodge". By the time Chantelle Houghton won series 4 of
Celebrity Big Brother, the same agency had already signed up a
professional model who made a more convincing Paris Hilton
look-alike... and who was briefly also offered as a fake
"Chantelle".[4]
- UK
Richard and Judy ran a competition for Little Britain
Lookalikes in 2005. After the live final broadcast on Friday, 28
January 2005, on
Channel Four, two winning contestants, Gavin Pomfret and Stuart
Morrison, formed a Little Britain tribute act called "Littler
Britain."
-
Elvis Presley is said to have sent out look-alikes before he
left his house to distract fans so he could walk in peace.
-
Dolly Parton has stated that she lost a 'Dolly Parton Look-Alike
Contest'.[5]
- In 2008 a friend pointed out to
Bronx native
Louis Ortiz his striking resemblance to
then-presidential-candidate
Barack Obama. Ortiz, initially as a money-making venture, sought
gigs as an Obama
impersonator.
Ryan Murdock is making a documentary film about his experiences,
The Audacity of Louis Ortiz.[6]
Literature
- In
Edgar Allan Poe's short story
"William Wilson" (1839), a man is followed by his double.
-
Alexandre Dumas, père's,
The Man in the Iron Mask (1850—the third part of Dumas'
novel,
The Vicomte de Bragelonne) involves King
Louis XIV of France and the King's
identical twin.
- In
Charles Dickens' novel
A Tale of Two Cities (1859), two characters,
Charles Darnay and
Sydney Carton, bear an uncanny resemblance to one another. At
the close of the novel, Carton sacrifices his life for Darnay—"a
far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done..."
- In
The Woman in White (1859), by
Wilkie Collins, the protagonist meets two women, Anne Catherick
and Laura Fairlie, who strongly resemble one another. The villain of
the story, Count Fosco, uses this resemblance to steal Laura
Fairlie's fortune.
- In
Mark Twain's first
historical fiction (1882), the novel
The Prince and the Pauper,
Prince Edward, son of
Henry VIII of England, and his pauper look-alike, Tom Canty,
trade places.
- In
Anthony Hope's novel
The Prisoner of Zenda (1894), a man
impersonates a king he closely resembles, after the king is
abducted on the eve of his coronation.
-
Bolesław Prus'
historical novel
Pharaoh (1895) features several cases of look-alikes. The
characters include the
Haranian
Phut (aka
the
Chaldean priest Berossus) and his look-alike (chapter 20), and
the
protagonist Ramses and his look-alike and
nemesis, Lykon. Also, chapter 33 makes reference to look-alikes
of an earlier
pharaoh,
Ramses the Great.
-
Georg Kaiser's 1917 play The Coral depicts a powerful
industrialist whose male secretary is his exact double. The
secretary's duties include impersonating his employer at public
functions. Other employees can tell the two men apart only by the
fact that the secretary always wears a coral watch-fob.
- In
Robert Heinlein's novel
Double Star (1956), actor Lawrence Smith is approached to
impersonate prominent politician John Joseph Bonforte, who has been
kidnapped, despite his antipathy toward Bonforte's policies. In
studying the man to perfect his imposture, Smith eventually comes to
admire Bonforte. He continues this performance through an election
and, when Bonforte dies, the subsequent tenure in office as "Supreme
Minister." This story parallels that of the film
Dave, but in this case when the actual politician dies, and
Bonforte's staff begins to suggest shifts in policy contrary to
Bonforte's beliefs, Smith refuses to submit to their desires,
removes them from their positions, and continues in the role for the
rest of his life, in honor of Bonforte's legacy.
- In
Jack Higgins's 1975 novel
The Eagle Has Landed,
Nazi German
paratroopers attempt to abduct British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill from an English village he is visiting. It
subsequently transpires that the actual Churchill had been elsewhere
while a
political decoy visited the village.
- "The Leader and the Damned" (1983) by
Colin Forbes is a
secret history thriller whose plot is based on the assumption
that
Adolf Hitler was assassinated in 1943, a bomb completely
destroying his body. The Nazi hierarchy kept this as a top secret
and got a double to impersonate Hitler, and it was this double who
led Nazi Germany until its final demise in 1945.
- In
Clive Cussler's 1984 novel
Deep Six, a
double is used after the U.S. president is kidnapped by Korean
and Soviet agents.
-
Christopher Priest's novel
The Prestige (1995) features two rival
magicians, one of whom uses his twin brother as a
double in a disappearing-and-reappearing act.
- In
Neil Gaiman's novel
Coraline (2002) the heroine meets up with improved
look-alikes of her parents and all her neighbors when she enters the
Other Mother's world.
Film
-
Charles Dickens' novel
A Tale of Two Cities (see "Literature," above) has been
produced as
three film versions between 1911 and 1958, as well as television
and stage adaptations.
-
Anthony Hope's novel
The Prisoner of Zenda (see "Literature", above) has been the
basis for
many film and stage adaptations, the first film version being in
1913; the best-known film version is
John Cromwell's
1937 film.
-
Mark Twain's novel
The Prince and the Pauper (see "Literature," above) has been
the basis for
many film and stage adaptations, the earliest film version being
in 1920.
-
Alexandre Dumas, père's,
The Man in the Iron Mask (see "Literature," above) has been
adapted into
eight film versions between 1929 and 1998.
- The 1932 musical film
The Phantom President depicts a man who is eminently
qualified to be President of the United States but who is unlikely
to be elected because he is dull and lacks charisma. Fortunately, he
has an exact double: a patent-medicine salesman and vaudeville
hoofer who is a charismatic campaigner but has no actual political
qualifications. The film cynically suggests that most American
voters would prefer the latter to the former. Both roles are played
by legendary song-and-dance man
George M. Cohan. Although a weak movie, The Phantom President
is historically significant as the only film record of Cohan's
song-and-dance performance.
- The 1940 comedy
The Great Dictator was
Charlie Chaplin's first
talkie and his most commercially successful film. Chaplin plays
both "Adenoid Hynkel" (a
satirized
Adolf Hitler) and a
Jewish barber who is Hynkel's spitting image. The barber
eventually replaces Hynkel, who has been arrested after having been
mistaken for the barber. On nation-wide radio the barber,
impersonating the dictator, declares an end to
anti-semitism and a return to democracy.
- In
The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler (1943), by
James P. Hogan,
Hitler's double (Ludwig
Donath) becomes the target of an assassination.
- In
The Square Peg (1958)
Norman Wisdom plays road repairer Norman Pitkin, who is called
up for the army and sent to Nazi-occupied France, and Pitkin's exact
double General Schreiber.
- In
The Scapegoat (1959),
Alec Guinness plays both a French aristocrat and the English
schoolteacher who is maneuvered into taking his place so the
Frenchman can have an alibi for a murder.
- In the
James Bond film
Thunderball (1965), French
NATO
pilot François Derval is murdered by Angelo, a
SPECTRE henchman who has been surgically altered to match
Derval's appearance. Angelo then takes Derval's place aboard, and
seizes, a NATO plane loaded with two
atom bombs.
-
Pharaoh (1966), directed by
Jerzy Kawalerowicz, is adapted from
Bolesław Prus'
historical novel
Pharaoh (see "Literature",
above).
-
Love and Death — 1975
Woody Allen satire on 19th-century Russian novels, set during
the 1812
French invasion of Russia. A coward, Boris Grushenko (Allen),
and his wife Sonja (Diane Keaton) decide to assassinate Emperor
Napoleon Bonaparte. A double of the Emperor is killed, and
Allen's character is executed.
- In
The Eagle Has Landed (1976), based on
Jack Higgins's novel, German paratroopers attempt in 1943 to
abduct Prime Minister
Winston Churchill from an English village. It is revealed that
it is actually a
political decoy who visits the village and is assassinated.
- In
Foul Play (1978), starring
Goldie Hawn and
Chevy Chase, the twin of an American
archbishop kills the archbishop, impersonates him, and plots to
assassinate a fictitious
Pope Pius XIII.
- In
Akira Kurosawa's
Kagemusha (1980), the warlord
Takeda Shingen (1521–73) is sometimes impersonated by his
brother Nobukado. Nobukado saves a thief who is to be executed,
because the man bears an astonishing resemblance to Shingen. The
thief becomes a kagemusha (shadow warrior) and learns the
role of
Daimyo
Shingen, who is subsequently killed by an enemy sniper. The false
identity of the kagemusha is revealed when he is unable to
ride Lord Shingen's favorite horse; but in the final
battle at Nagashino the kagemusha accepts his role and
fights as the last man holding the banner of the Takeda clan.
- In a feature-length episode of the British
sitcom,
Only Fools and Horses, entitled "Miami Twice," Derek is
mistaken for a
Mafia don who is his spitting image, and he is used by the Mafia
in an attempt to fake the don's assassination (though several tries
fail). The likeness is so uncanny that even Derek's brother Rodney
is tricked. Both Derek and the don are played by
David Jason.
-
Paul Mazursky's film
Moon over Parador (1988), in which a man who is filming in a
fictional country in
Latin America called Parador, is forced to play the role of the
country's late president, whom he closely resembles.
-
Dead Ringers, a 1988
psychological
horror film, features
Jeremy Irons in the dual role of two identical-twin
gynecologists.
- In
Roberto Benigni's
Johnny Stecchino (1991), the main character is passed off
for a snitch hiding from the mob.
-
Gary Ross' film
Dave (1993), in which an
impersonator is hired by the
president's Chief of Staff as a temporary
decoy.
- In
Ringo Lam's
Maximum Risk (1996),
Jean-Claude Van Damme is a French policeman who discovers that a
man who has been killed by the
Russian Mafia was his look-alike twin brother that he never knew
he had. Tracing the dead brother's footsteps, the protagonist
inadvertently "inherits" the brother's predicaments and girlfriend.
- The 2002 film
Bubba Ho-Tep starred
Bruce Campbell in the role of an elderly
Elvis Presley who had traded places with an
Elvis impersonator named Sebastian Haff (also played by
Campbell) and now lives in a
nursing home.
- "Sherlock
Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking", a 2004
BBC TV film directed by
Simon Cellan Jones from an original story by
Alan Cubitt, features the sleuth, played by
Rupert Everett, tracking down a killer of aristocratic young
women.
Holmes' suspect seems to have airtight
alibis—until
the detective deduces that the culprit has a confederate: an
identical twin.
- The 2005 film
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith features actor
Wayne Pygram, who, in the film, looks remarkably like
Peter Cushing. Through stock footage, the film's producers
wanted Cushing to reprise his role of
Grand Moff Tarkin from
Star Wars. However, the footage was deemed unusable.
-
The Prestige (2006), directed by
Christopher Nolan, and adapted from
the novel by
Christopher Priest, in which two rival magicians employ
doubles in their astonishing disappearing-reappearing acts.
- The film
Goal! 3 is set during the 2006 soccer
World Cup and features convincing look-alike doubles including
Derek Williams[7]
for
Sven-Goran Eriksson,
Frank Lampard and others who blend the transition from
archive footage of the tournament with the fictional action
depicted.
- In
Vantage Point (2008), a decoy helps protect the president
from a possible assassination threat — and is shot. The film claims
that "doubles have been used since
Reagan."
- In an episode of
The Simpsons, Homer is banned from drinking at Moe's tavern.
Then a man, who appears to be Homer in a very bad disguise, enters
Moe's tavern but is savagely beaten and kicked out. The real Homer
then walks up to the unconscious man's body and remarks, "This man
is my exact double!"
-
The Devil's Double (2011) dramatised
Latif Yahia's claims to have been
Uday Hussein's double.
- Korean film
Masquerade (2012)
Television
Video Games
- In
Final Fantasy VIII,
SeeD mercenaries and
Forest Owls resistance fighters devise a complicated plan to
kidnap the president of Galbadia
Vinzer Deling, which includes switching the presidential train
wagon from its tracks and replacing it with a mockup. Deling
foresees the plan and sends a
shapeshifter monster to take his place, who attacks the game
protagonists. The monster is ultimately killed, but the plan's
failure forces the Forest Owls into hiding.
- In
Metal Gear Solid, former drill instructor and advisor to the
game's protagonist
Solid Snake
McDonnell Benedict Miller, better known by his nickname
Master Miller is murdered before the game main events and
replaced by main antagonist
Liquid Snake in disguise. Liquid, as Master Miller, tricks Solid
Snake into unknowingly do his bidding. The plot is discovered by
Colonel
Roy Campbell and his staff, who track Miller's communications
and find out they are coming from Shadow Moses Island after the real
Master Miller's corpse is found dead in his cabin.
- In
Call of Duty: Black Ops the first mission consists in
assassinating Fidel Castro. The player succeeds, but at the end, it
is revealed that the Fidel Castro he killed was actually a body
double.
See also
Notes
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