Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, December 13, 1993 TAG: 9312140278
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHLEEN WILSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
``I swear that once I thought I saw Salieri in Corned Beef & Company!'' she said, referring to the composer played by F. Murray Abraham in ``Amadeus.''
They say most of us look like someone. A friend swears she met a guy at the last First Friday's festivities who looked just like - get this - Mel Gibson.
Get real. Right?
But - let's face it - what makes Mel Gibson, John Kennedy Jr., Robert Redford, Iman, Sela Ward and others of such gorgeous ilk special is that the world isn't exactly overrun with people who look like they do.
Most of us get told we look like someone's brother's old girlfriend's sister-in-law.
SPY magazine runs a monthly feature called ``Separated at Birth'' in which photos of well-known people are matched to create fictitious sets of ``twins.''
The secret is in how the photos are paired. Mary Tyler Moore with a huge grin does sort of look like the photo of the Joker from the Batman movie.
Former Mets star Darryl Strawberry does look a little like Dino the dinosaur.
Pia Zadora and Garry Shandling. Mick Jagger and Don Knotts. Michael J. Fox and Hana Mandlikova.
For our own version of Separated at Birth, we scoured the newspaper's photo files - in true SPY style - looking for likely matches.
Once you get into this mode of matching regular folks up with famous twins, you can't stop.
Co-workers started to look like George Will, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Doogie Howser and Mr. Magoo.
A friendly discussion about whether Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Joel Branscom looked a little like quarterback Joe Montana rapidly disintegrated into a ``Does not! Does too!'' spat.
The point isn't that these two people could at all be mistaken for one another. (Surely Mary Tyler Moore isn't bombarded by people asking, ``Hey! Aren't you the Joker from `Batman'''?)
Some didn't work. If we found the right photo, could Warner Dalhouse look like Barney Rubble or Sgt. Carter from ``Gomer Pyle, USMC''?
No. But his smile sure resembles Oliver North's. And we really thought the Rev. Elwood Gallimore looked like Joey Buttafuoco. But we never did find the right photo.
Roanoke lawyer John Lichtenstein looked a lot like George Stephanopoulos when he wore his glasses. Trouble was, we didn't have a photograph of John wearing glasses.
We asked a handful of Roanokers whose photos weren't on file to come in and let us take a picture.
``They'll never do it,'' some speculated.
But, guess what? Good sports that they all were, they did.
Salem architect Hunter Greene even put off getting a badly needed haircut until we could decide whether we were going to pair him with Lyle Lovett.
We never did track down Mel Gibson's twin. But my friend vows he's out there.
We'll keep looking.
by CNB