In Creativity Now, I discuss the ‘imposter
syndrome’—that feeling that at any minute the world may discover that we’re
actually not qualified or not talented. That’s just our fear coming to the
fore, but there have been some amazing imposters for real. Here are a few of my favourites:
Frank Abagnale, who was played by Leonardo
diCaprio in the film, “Catch Me If You Can.” He started when he was only 16 and
posed as an airline pilot, a lawyer, a prison inspector, a doctor, and passed
bad checks worth more than $2.5 million in a period of five years. He escaped
from custody multiple times, once posing as an FBI agent.
He was released after serving less than
five years and became a consultant to the FBI. He also runs his own fraud
consultancy company—which has made him a millionaire again, this time
legitimately.
Abagnale may have been inspired by
Ferdinand (“Fred”)Waldo Demara, who posed as (among other things) a surgeon and
actually performed quite a few operations on a Royal Canadian destroyer during
the Korean War. None of his work was fatal to the patients. Apparently he had a photographic memory
and a very high IQ, and by simply reading about the surgical procedures was
able to perform them. But he was using the identify of a real doctor, whose
mother read a newspaper account of one of these operations and knew her son was
in Korea at the time. That led to his exposure, although the Canadian Navy
didn’t press charges.
Demara didn’t use his deceptions to make a
lot of money, just to get jobs for which he wasn’t qualified. In his later
life, he became a hospital chaplain. Robert Crichton wrote a book about
Demara’s life, called “The Great Imposter,” which was turned into a film
starring Tony Curtis. Demara died in 1982.
Another fraudster who inspired a movie was
David Hampton. The film (first a play) was “Six Degrees of Separation,” by John
Guare. Hampton’s main con was pretending to be the son of actor Sidney Poitier.
In that guise he got free meals and convinced a number of celebrities to give
him money or let him stay with them. The victims included Melanie Griffith,
Calvin Klein, and Gary Sinese.
A jail term failed to reform Hampton and he
took on various other identities. He also tried to sue Guare for $100 million
dollars for “stealing” the story of his life. The suit was dismissed. Hampton
died in 2003 at the age of 39, of AIDS -related complications.
Our final imposter claimed a spiritual
pedigree. Born Cyril Henry Hoskin, he took on the name Tuesday Lobsang Rampa
and wrote a book called “The Third Eye.” It told how he had grown up in a
monastery in Tibet after being sent there at the age of seven, and how having a
hold drilled in his skill gave him the power of clairvoyance. It became a
world-wide best-seller.
However, a private eye found out that Rampa
had never been to Tibet. Confronted with this fact, Rampa changed his story. He
said he’d been up in a tree, trying to photograph an owl, and fell down. When
he came to, the soul of the original Lobsang Rampa transmigrated into his body. Despite being exposed, he continued to
write another 18 books, including “Living With The Lama,” which he said was
dictated to him by his cat. He left Great Britain and settled in Canada, where
he died in 1981. He still has fans who defend his stories (if you're one of them, don't write to me, you could be right.)