The Great Impostor

The Great Impostor is a 1961 American comedy-drama film based on the story of an impostor named Ferdinand Waldo Demara. 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 generally follows Demara's real-life exploits, and is much lighter in tone than the book on which it is based. Plot As he is arrested by the state police on an island in New England, a man born as Ferdinand Waldo Demara, but known by many other identities, recalls the events that brought him to this point. Demara quit high school as a boy and joined the U.S. Army. He wanted to become an officer, but his lack of a high school diploma prevented it. On a whim, he fakes a set of credentials and becomes a U.S. Marine. When his lie is detected, Demara, facing military jail time, fakes his suicide and hides out in a monastery, applying to become a Trappist monk. In spite of his best efforts, he is asked to return to the regular world. He is eventually identified as a wanted Marine and imprisoned in a military prison. There, on the eve of being released early for good behavior, Demara inveigles the warden to describe the details of his life to him. Once free, he steals the warden's identity and lands a job as the aide to the warden of a large Texas penitentiary, where he takes up with the man's daughter, Eulalie, after she pursues him. When a new inmate that he knew in military prison recognizes him in the Texas penitentiary, Demara is threatened by blackmail and once again flees. He joins the Royal Canadian Navy, using the forged credentials of a doctor. After falling in love with an RCN nurse, Catherine Lacey, Demara is assigned to a destroyer as the ship's doctor bound for the war in Korea. He is immediately pressed into performing a tooth extraction on the ship's captain. In Korean waters, he treats nineteen South Korean battle casualties, including three that need immediate surgery. The soldiers survive, and he is hailed as a hero. On shore, he sets up a hospital for the local Koreans and treats all who need help.