The Great Ripley
You need not have read a word of Patricia Highsmith to know that the name “Ripley” has come to mean “fraud”, “impostor”, “pretender”, anyone who pretends to be something he is not (And have we not all, at one time or another, done exactly that?), and on occasion, “murdering sociopath”. Andrew Cunanan was a Ripley–a man who faked his history, fooled a lot of people, went on a killing spree, and ensured his posthumous notoriety by killing an international celebrity.
Some years ago I attempted to use “Ripley” to describe a particularly inept individual who had risen to a position of influence by appealing to the gullible. I was immediately reprimanded by my friend Bernard-Henri Not Levy. “By calling him Ripley you not only insult Patricia Highsmith, but all who have adapted the Ripley novels for film, including Rene Clement, Alain Delon. . .”
“You’re right,” I said, “It flatters the clueless twit.”
“Lilliana Cavani, John Malkovich, Wim Wenders, Dennis Hopper. . .”
“Yes, I was wrong.”
“Anthony Minghella, Matt Damon, and Alfred Hitchcock as well, since Strangers On A Train was based on a Highsmith. . .”
“Alright, alright, I’ll call him Wipley.”
Recently I read an old profile by Alva Johnston about a famous Ripley, a man raised in New York City orphanages who managed to convince the American upper-class that he’d attended Eton, Oxford, Cambridge, Heidelberg, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. He claimed to be first cousin or half-brother to the last Czar of Russia, and the son of the man–or the man himself–who killed Rasputin. He conned a lot of people, but was so charming and amusing that they not only forgave him, they gave him more money. During lean seasons, as he waited for the latest newspaper exposes to be forgotten, he would do menial jobs, stow away on trains and ocean liners, sleep in subways. He was arrested many times for writing bad cheques, but never did much jail time, and in any case the wardens and prisoners would treat him like royalty. He went by the name of Prince Michael Alexandrovitch Dmitry Obolensky Romanoff, and he discovered that people wanted to be fooled.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
May 19th, 2008 at 03:03
If you ask me, The Greatest Ripley of them all is somebody whose name I won’t even dare say (no, not Voldemort). TGR once said: “I got a lot of Ph.D.-types and smart people around me who come into the Oval Office and say, ‘Mr. President, here’s what’s on my mind.’ And I listen carefully to their advice. But having gathered the advice, I decide, you know, I say, ‘This is what we’re going to do.’ And it’s ‘Yes, sir, Mr. President.’ And then we get after it, implement policy.”
May 19th, 2008 at 22:39
Incredible I just saw a French movie last night on TV5 missed the beginning but the main character was exactly doing a Ripley. Albert Ddhousses made believe he had been the WW2 resistance fighter and was actually made an officer in the French army.
Only by gleaning information from the radio and newspaper.
Otherwise most politicians seem to Ripley often,