Josie Iselin said that after Inger Elliott found Mr. On his way out he asked to borrow money so he could send them flowers.'' But he told her not to worry, that it was Malcolm Forbes's nephew, who had gotten locked out of his place. ''The next morning she knocked on his door and found him in bed with a scruffy young man. ''He went to my parents' house and before going to sleep asked my mom to wake him early so he could go jogging,'' he said. Elliott's son, Alec McCabe, remembered what they had told him about David Poitier. Osborn and Inger Elliott were out of the country this week and could not be reached. But when he identified himself as Sidney Poitier's son, no one suspected he could be anyone else.'' Maybe it was the strength of his persona. Stammers, now employed by an electrical construction company in New York, recalled: ''Three local news stations came to cover the casting. Hampton said he was on campus to cast extras for the film version of ''Dreamgirls'' that his father was directing. Stammers said, introduced by another student as Sidney Poitier's son. Hampton found the Iselins and the Elliotts by stealing the address book of Robert Stammers, a student at Connecticut College, who had attended Andover with both couples' children. Both couples invited him to their homes, where he dined with them, borrowed money and spent the night. He said that he had been mugged, that his money and thesis - on the criminal justice system - had been taken, and that he needed a place to stay until his father arrived in town at the Pierre Hotel the next day. Hampton telephoned both couples -on successive nights - and told them that his name was David Poitier and that he was a college friend of their children. Among the families he duped, besides the Elliotts, were their friends John Jay Iselin, who was then the president of Channel 13, and his wife, Lea, a lawyer.
Hampton that others acknowledge his chosen identity. Though theft was apparently a motive, it seemed to have been equally important to Mr. 18, 1983, 19-year-old David Hampton was arrested in Manhattan for posing as Sidney Poitier's son in order to gain access to the homes of certain New Yorkers. I bought Sidney Poitier's autobiography at the Strand and just did it.'' I had lost touch with the incident, but suddenly, I somehow felt I had to write about it. ''Two good friends of mine, Osborn Elliott - who was then the dean of the Columbia School of Journalism - and his wife, Inger, visited me and said, 'Have we got a story for you!' It turned out that they were among those taken in by David Poitier's scam. ''I had been in England when it happened,'' he said. Guare wrote the play last summer, after discovering some forgotten newspaper clippings about Mr. Audiences leave wondering where the facts stop and Mr. Hampton's life never made it to the stage (where he is portrayed by James McDaniel). Some of his story is the basis for ''Six Degrees of Separation,'' the new play by John Guare that opened to critical acclaim last week at the Mitzi E. Calling himself David Poitier, he turned his fantasy into a shocking hoax that touched the lives of many prominent New Yorkers and landed him in prison. Someone who would finally understand him.ĭavid Hampton, growing up in Buffalo, chose Sidney Poitier.īut unlike other boys, Mr.
That he was meant instead to be the child of someone infinitely more suitable - a king, a president, a movie star. It's every boy's dream - that his mean, old, ordinary parents really aren't his at all.