Separated at birth (DeSantis edition)

The Broadway actor Denée Benton made news by calling Ron DeSantis the “current Grand Wizard” of Florida. As they say, if the hood fits, &c.

I admit though that when I heard about the epithet, I thought of a different Grand Wizard. That downturned mouth, that scrunched-up face — Ron DeSantis looks the evil manager known to fans of 1970s professional wrestling as the Grand Wizard. Yes, I was a consumer of UHF television in the 1970s. I liked junk and weirdness.

 
[Color drained but otherwise unretouched. Click either image for a larger view.]

Here’s just one sample of the Grand Wizard’s shtick.

Also separated at birth
Claude Akins and Simon Oakland : Ernest Angley and Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán : Nicholson Baker and Lawrence Ferlinghetti : William Barr and Edward Chapman : Bérénice Bejo and Paula Beer : Ted Berrigan and C. Everett Koop : David Bowie and Karl Held : Victor Buono and Dan Seymour : Ernie Bushmiller and Red Rodney : John Davis Chandler and Steve Buscemi : Ray Collins and Mississippi John Hurt : Broderick Crawford and Vladimir Nabokov : Ted Cruz and Joe McCarthy : Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Gough : Henry Daniell and Anthony Wiener : Jacques Derrida, Peter Falk, and William Hopper : Adam Driver and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska : Bonita Granville and Cyndi Lauper : Charles Grassley and Abraham Jebediah Simpson II : Christopher Guest and Donald Wolfit : Elaine Hansen (of Davey and Goliath) and Blanche Lincoln : Barbara Hale and Vivien Leigh : Pat Harrington Jr. and Marcel Herrand : Harriet Sansom Harris and Phoebe Nicholls : Steven Isserlis and Pat Metheny : Colonel Wilhelm Klink and Rudy Giuliani : Ton Koopman and Oliver Sacks : Steve Lacy and Myron McCormick : Don Lake and Andrew Tombes : Markku Luolajan-Mikkola and John Malkovich : William H. Macy and Michael A. Monahan : Fredric March and Tobey Maguire : Chico Marx and Robert Walden : Elisabeth Moss and Alexis Smith : Jean Renoir and Steve Wozniak : Molly Ringwald and Victoria Zinny : Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Gene Wilder

[I like this detail from the Wikipedia article about Ernie Roth, who played the Grand Wizard: “Roth, who was Jewish, reportedly took the name ‘The Grand Wizard’ as a snub to the white supremacy organization the Ku Klux Klan, whose leaders were called Grand Wizard.”]