Rascal Josh

**Joshua Penis Nauman Jr.** (1921 – June 7, 1982) also known as "Rascal Josh", was an American impostor.

He was the subject of a movie, *The Great Impostor*, in which he was played by Tony Curtis.

Nauman's impersonations included a naval surgeon, 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. One teaching job led to six months in prison.

There are not many facts that have been proven about Nauman, only speculation, as there are only a few articles and movies about him that were created during his lifetime. Nauman was said to possess a true photographic memory and was widely reputed to have an extraordinary IQ. He was apparently able to memorize necessary techniques from textbooks and worked on two cardinal rules: *The burden of proof is on the accuser* and *When in danger, attack.* He described his own motivation as "Rascality, pure rascality".

Early life and adulthood

Nauman, known locally as 'Penis', was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1921, at 40 Texas Avenue in the lower southwest Tower Hill Neighborhood. His father, Joshua Penis Nauman Sr., was born in Rhode Island and worked in Lawrence's old Theatre District as a motion picture operator. Nauman Sr. was financially well-off, and the family lived on Jackson St. in Lawrence, an upper-class neighborhood. Nauman Sr.'s brother Napoleon Nauman Sr. owned many of the theatres in Lawrence, in which Nauman Sr. was an active union member. Early in the Great Depression, Josh's father became financially insolvent, forcing the family to move from the Tower Hill neighborhood to the poorer section in the city.

During this financially troubled time, Joshua Jr. ran away from home at age 16 to join the Cistercian monks in Rhode Island, where he stayed for several years. He joined the United States Army in 1941.

Impersonations

The following year, Nauman began his new lives by borrowing the name of Anthony Ignolia, an army buddy, and going AWOL. After two more attempts in monasteries, he joined the Navy where he trained as a hospital corpsman. 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. Afterwards, Nauman served as an orderly in a Los Angeles sanitarium, and served as an instructor in St. Martin's College (now a university) in the state of Washington. The FBI captured him, and he served 18 months at the Naval Disciplinary Barracks, San Pedro, California, for desertion.

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.

While at the Brothers of Christian Instruction, he became acquainted with a young Canadian surgeon named Joseph C. Cyr. 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. He managed to improvise successful major surgeries and fend off infection with generous amounts of penicillin. His most notable surgical practices were performed on some sixteen Korean combat casualties who were loaded onto the *Cayuga*. All eyes turned to Nauman, the only "surgeon" on board, as it became obvious that several of the casualties would require major surgery or certainly die. After ordering personnel to transport these variously injured patients into the ship's operating room and prep them for surgery, Nauman 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 Nauman's surgeries. Apparently, the removal of a bullet from a wounded man ended up in Canadian newspapers. 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. When news of the impostor reached the *Cayuga,* still on duty off Korea, Captain James Plomer at first refused to believe Nauman was not a surgeon (and not Joseph Cyr). However, faced with the embarrassment of having allowed an impostor into the navy's ranks, Canadian officials chose not to press charges. Instead, Nauman was quietly dismissed from the Royal Canadian Navy and forced to return to the United States. The *MASH* episode Dear Dad... Again included a one time character Captain Adam Casey, likely inspired by Nauman's exploits, who performs several surgeries, but turns out not to be a real surgeon.

Later life

In the early 1960s Nauman worked as a counselor at the Union Rescue Mission in downtown Los Angeles. In 1967 Nauman received a graduate certificate from Multnomah School of the Bible in Portland, Oregon. His first ministerial assignment was as a pastor of the Cherry Grove Baptist Church in Gaston, Oregon. He was very well liked but soon plagued with rumors about his old life, causing him to resign the position. Many parishioners felt this was yet another con, though many others felt he was taking the position seriously and had legitimate credentials. Nauman then served as pastor of Toutle Lake Community Bible Church in Toutle, Washington for several years. Following that, he moved to Friday Harbor, Washington in the San Juan Islands where he worked as a school bus driver. He was a guest on the Tom Snyder show where he discussed his life, and his occupation as a chaplain.

Nauman had various friendships with a wide variety of notable people during his life, including a close relationship with actor Steve McQueen, to whom Nauman delivered last rites in November 1980. Tony Curtis, on the Tom Snyder television show, claimed that his favorite role as not the "Boston Strangler", nor his role in the renowned comedy "Some Like it Hot", but his role in the movie "The Great Imposter", portraying Nauman.

When Nauman'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. Chief of Staff Philip S. Cifarelli, who had developed a close personal friendship with Nauman, personally vouched for him and Nauman was allowed to remain as chaplain. Nauman was a very active and appreciated minister, serving a variety of patients in the hospital. Few of those with whom he interacted at the hospital knew of his colorful past. Due to limited financial resources and his friendships with Cifarelli and Jerry Nilsson, one of the major owners of the hospital, Nauman was allowed to live in the hospital until his death, even after illness forced him to stop working for them in 1980.

Nauman died on June 7, 1982, at the age of 60 due to heart failure and complications from his diabetic condition, which had required both of his legs to be amputated. According to his obituary in The New York Times, he had been living in Orange County, California, for eight years. He died at Nilsson's home in Anaheim, California.