Demara was a very active and appreciated minister, serving a variety of patients in the hospital. Blackmailed by an inmate who recognizes him from the military jail, Demara once again flees. Demara Sr.'s brother Napoleon Demara Sr. owned many of the theatres in Lawrence, in which Demara Sr. was an active union member. One week later on November 12, 1959, he appeared on an episode of the TV quiz show You Bet Your Life, with Groucho Marx. He joins the Royal Canadian Navy, using the forged credentials of a doctor. You'll, one, have a long haul and two, make an enemy.' The second rule is, if you want power and want to expand, never encroach on anyone else's domain; open up new ones...', Demara referred to it as 'expanding into the power vacuum,' and described as such; 'if you come into a new situation (there's a nice word for it) don't join some other professor's committee and try to make your mark by moving up in that committee. All eyes turned to Demara, the only "surgeon" on board, as it became obvious that several of the casualties would require major surgery or certainly die. Demara had already been considerably overweight during his impersonation of Joseph C. Cyr. 'That way there's no competition, no past standards to measure you by. [citation needed], There are not many facts that have been proven about Demara, only speculation, as there are only a few articles and movies about him that were created during his lifetime. According to his biographer, Demara's past became known and his position untenable when an inmate found a copy of Life with an article about the impostor. Only after he returned to his old tricks and possessed fake credentials could he get another job at a prison in Huntsville, Texas. The Impostors are the player-controlled main antagonists of Among Us. Demara explained it in the following excerpt from his biography:.mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}, '(Demara) had come to two beliefs. Nothing like it. by Legacy Staff February 12, 2014. Demara had various friendships with a wide variety of notable people during his life, including a close relationship with actor Steve McQueen, to whom Demara delivered last rites in November 1980. On November 5, 1959, Demara appeared on the surrealistic game show hosted by Ernie Kovacs, Take a Good Look. Apparently, the removal of a bullet from a wounded man ended up in Canadian newspapers. 0. Due to limited financial resources and his friendships with Cifarelli and Jerry Nilsson, one of the major owners of the hospital, Demara was allowed to live in the hospital until his death, even after illness forced him to stop working for them in 1980. Philosophy behind Demara's impersonations, Learn how and when to remove this template message, "Ferdinand Waldo Demara, 60, an Impostor in Varied Fields", "The Master Imposter: An Incredible Tale", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ferdinand_Waldo_Demara&oldid=981792797, Canadian military personnel of the Korean War, Articles needing additional references from October 2010, All articles needing additional references, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2010, Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WorldCat identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, In "Dear Dad Again", a 1973 episode of the TV series, This page was last edited on 4 October 2020, at 13:07. Demara's impersonations included a naval surgeon[2], a civil engineer, a sheriff's deputy, an assistant prison warden, a doctor of applied psychology, a hospital orderly, a lawyer, a child-care expert, a Benedictine monk, a Trappist monk, an editor, a cancer researcher, and a teacher. After falling in love with a RCN Nursing Sister, Catherine Lacey, he goes to Korea to serve aboard HMCS Cayuga. By this point, Demara's girth was so notable that he could not avoid attracting attention. One was that in any organization there is always a lot of loose, unused power lying about which can be picked up without alienating anyone. One teaching job led to six months in prison. Doppelgangers of the friendly Crewmates found among their group, players who are selected to be Impostors have the task of killing all players that are not them or another Impostor, either through direct murder, a dangerous sabotage that is unable to be stopped, or through incriminating their fellow players. Facebook Twitter Email. [4], After his release he assumed a fake identity and studied law at night at Northeastern University, then joined the Brothers of Christian Instruction in Maine, a Roman Catholic order.[4]. Directed by Robert Mulligan. The FBI captured him, and he served 18 months at the Naval Disciplinary Barracks, San Pedro, California, for desertion. The MASH episode "Dear Dad... Again" included a one time character Captain Adam Casey, likely inspired by Demara's exploits, who performs several surgeries, but turns out not to be a real doctor. The following year, Demara began his new lives by borrowing the name of Anthony Ignolia, an army buddy, and going AWOL. One person reading the reports was the mother of the real Joseph Cyr; her son at the time of "his" service in Korea was actually practicing medicine in Grand Falls, New Brunswick. '[3]:102–103, During Demara's impersonation as Brother John Payne of the Christian Brothers of Instruction (also known as Brothers of Christian Instruction), Demara decided to make the religious teaching order more prominent by founding a college in Alfred, Maine. [4] The film only loosely follows Demara's real-life exploits, and is much lighter in tone than the book on which it is based. He wanted to become an officer, but his lack of education worked against it. Cyr. Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr. (1921 – June 7, 1982) was an American Demara recounted his exploits, and said the $1,000 he earned on the program was going to be donated to the 'Feed and Clothe Fred Demara Fund'.[7]. He then goes and becomes a teacher in New England. The Navy finds out who he really is and intends to hold a court-martial. When Demara's past exploits and infamy were discovered in the late 1970s, he was almost dismissed from the Good Samaritan Hospital of Orange County in Anaheim, California, where he worked as a visiting chaplain. A second book by Crichton, The Rascal and the Road, recounted Demara and Crichton's experiences together as Crichton conducted research for The Great Impostor. The Great Impostor is a 1961 movie based on the true story of an impostor named Ferdinand Waldo Demara.The film is loosely based on Robert Crichton's 1959 biography of the same name, it stars Tony Curtis in the title role, and was directed by Robert Mulligan.The film only loosely follows Demara's real-life exploits, and is much lighter in tone than the book on which it is based. After two more attempts in monasteries, he joined the Navy where he trained as a hospital corpsman. His father, Ferdinand Waldo Demara Sr., was born in Rhode Island and worked in Lawrence's old Theatre District as a motion picture operator. In the early 1960s Demara worked as a counselor at the Union Rescue Mission in downtown Los Angeles. His first ministerial assignment was a pastor of the Cherry Grove Baptist Church in Gaston, Oregon. How can anyone tell you aren't running a top outfit? Hailed as a "miracle doctor," Demara gains publicity that exposes his past. Demara, known locally as 'Fred', was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1921, at 40 Texas Avenue in the lower southwest Tower Hill Neighborhood. He died at Nilsson's home in Anaheim, California. He was the subject of a movie, The Great Impostor, in which he was played by Tony Curtis. 30, 1961, https://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9805E1DD1539EE32A25753C3A9659C946091D6CF, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Great_Impostor&oldid=980291059, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 25 September 2020, at 17:38. That led to his most famous exploit, in which he masqueraded as Cyr, working as a trauma surgeon aboard HMCS Cayuga, a Royal Canadian Navy destroyer, during the Korean War. On a whim, he fakes a set of credentials and becomes a U.S. Marine. ...Suffice it to say that Mr. Curtis, running this gamut of adventures, seriously as well as with a wink, contributes the necessary light touch that makes palatable this derring-do based on factual data. De tekst is beschikbaar onder de licentie. He was very well liked but soon plagued with rumors about his old life, causing him to resign the position. [3]:115–119 The college Demara founded, LaMennais College in Alfred, Maine, began in 1951 (when Demara left); in 1959 it moved to Canton, Ohio, and in 1960, became Walsh College (now Walsh University).[6]. After a while, he is expelled from the monastery, captured and imprisoned in a military brig. "[1], A.H. Weiler, "The Great Impostor" Mar. But the warden inadvertently confides too many details of his own life to Demara, taking a liking to him. He then promptly left the religious order in 1951, when the Christian Brothers of Instruction offended him by not naming him as rector or chancellor of the new college and chose what Demara considered a terrible name for the college. During this financially troubled time, Demara Jr. ran away from home at age 16 to join the Cistercian monks in Rhode Island, where he stayed for several years. In 1967 Demara received a graduate certificate from Multnomah School of the Bible in Portland, Oregon. After ordering personnel to transport these variously injured patients into the ship's operating room and prep them for surgery, Demara disappeared to his room with a textbook on general surgery and proceeded to speed-read the various surgeries he was now forced to perform, including major chest surgery. None of the casualties died as a result of Demara's surgeries. Make your own rules and interpretations. Worried about possible disrepute to the RCN, and his stellar service, he is allowed to leave under a general discharge. Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr. is a versatile man who gets his kicks out of impersonating a marine, a monk, a navy surgeon and a prison warden, eventually getting in trouble with the law for it. When news of the impostor reached the Cayuga, still on duty off Korea, Captain James Plomer at first refused to believe Demara was not a doctor (and not Joseph Cyr). Chief of Staff Philip S. Cifarelli, who had developed a close personal friendship with Demara, personally vouched for him and Demara was allowed to remain as chaplain. When his lie is detected, Demara, facing jail, fakes a suicide and hides out as a Trappist monk. He ends up doing dental work on the ship's captain, then performing operations in a Korean hospital. Demara proceeded on his own, and actually got the college chartered by the state. [5]:80 He did not reach the position he wanted, faked his suicide and borrowed another name, Robert Linton French, and became a religion-oriented psychologist, who taught psychology at Gannon College (now a university) in Erie, Pennsylvania. Early in the Great Depression, Fred's father became financially insolvent, forcing the family to move from the Tower Hill neighborhood to the poorer section in the city. ...Variety, it's been pointed out, is the spice of life, and Demara's life, as presented here, appears to be spicy beyond compare, but the record backs our adventurer fully. [8] He appears briefly in the film as a (genuine) hospital surgeon.