Napoleon Hill (1883-1970) was a conman who sold the lie that he had interviewed Andrew Carnegie and been commissioned by him to undertake research, a conman who sold the lie that he had associated closely with Ford, Edison and other rich men, a conman who sold the lie that he served in the White House under two administrations, a conman who sold the lie that he had undertaken research into how and why people succeed.
It's all a fraud. Hill never met Carnegie, he never associated with any of the other celebrated industrialists lauded in his writings, he never worked for the White House, his research claims are fantasies.
Napoleon Hill was a fraud and a serial liar - and this is transparently obvious if you ignore the marketing hype and emperor's new clothes veneration which continues to surround him.
Napoleon Hill never was and never will be a man to be celebrated for his intellectual contribution to the world. He was a pathetic, obnoxious little man with delusions of grandeur. His habitual escape into fantasy and lies is not merely morally reprehensible, it betrays his intellectual immaturity and emotional frigidity, if not an underlying psychotic condition.
Bad tempered, petulant, he could charm and manipulate when he needed something, but he alienated most people who worked with him. Self-centred, self-obsessed, self-absorbed, he was unable to handle criticism and showed scant respect for the needs and interests of others.
A serial business failure, a convicted fraud, a philanderer and adulterer who abandoned his family, he was a small-minded man who was convinced he was a genius.
Napoleon Hill sought adulation and veneration, he sought greatness through association with the rich and famous, selling the delusion that he had actually mixed with them and become their friend and confidant.
Hill's ego far exceeded the compass of his abilities. He posed as an original thinker, as "philosopher", as social analyst, yet his thinking involved bolting together a load of familiar themes and questionable ideas from 19th century New Thought literature (with which he was very familiar). Far from being an original thinker, he was simply a plagiarist.
There is NO philosophical content in his published work, merely ramblings and assertions jumbled up in a clumsy, verbose, pretentious writing style which betrays his intellectual shortcomings.
His claims to have undertaken research are threadbare - what little evidence he presents demonstrates only too clearly that he had no research or analytical skills. He simply made spurious claims … and made up numbers. His assertions that he had analysed 500 successful men and women, and 25,000 failures have no basis in fact ... they're just round numbers he throws in to substantiate his lies. I'd see it as fraud, he'd represent it as a marketing lure ... just a piece of hyped-up sales pitch.
Hill's writings are vapid - they're empty and meaningless. They don't inform, they don't make a contribution to knowledge, they simply celebrate Hill - time and again he tells us what a remarkable man he is, time and again he poses, time and again he glories in his own, self-proclaimed "genius".
A crass, absurd, deceitful little man dancing to the tune of his own delusions, Napoleon Hill was - and remains - a charlatan, a conman, a snake oil salesman peddling drivel and pretensions.
And many who continue to promote and sell his writings know full well that he was a conman, that his claims to have met Carnegie, to have worked in the White House, to have associated with Ford and Edison (or any of the other celebrities of his day) are all a tissue of lies and delusions. You have to question the morality of continuing to market Hill’s writings without the inclusion of a disclaimer - "Contains Bull Shit".
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Right, now you know exactly how I feel about Napoleon Hill and the industry which sells his name, perhaps I should explain what I mean by "Napoleon Hill - Notes for a Screenplay"!
In the USA, the character of "Walter Mitty" made the transition from short story to movie. In England, "Billy Liar" went from novel to film. Walter and Billy are fantasists who live in their own delusional worlds.
They are decent, kindly individuals who escape the tedium of everyday life by drifting into fantasy, dreamers who cast themselves in heroic roles - ineffectual men trying to capture some sense of dignity, validity and individuality (not to mention excitement) in the face of the dehumanising, boring routines of their daily working lives.
Walter and Billy are fictional characters.
It's tempting to paint Napoleon Hill as one of the great fantasists of the 20th century, to see his imagined autobiography as a work of fiction … except that we have to question whether or not this ineffectual little man recognised that his fantasies were fairy tales.
Read Hill's writings, and it becomes increasingly obvious that his fantasies were deliberately contrived lies designed to help him manipulate others. At some stage, did they became pathological delusions which he actually believed to be real?
I've read Hill's published writings. They are turgid pieces of prose, verbose, self-indulgent, self-reverential. They are far from original – he plagiarises a number of 19th century writers and pastes together some of their (questionable) ideas and claims in order to present himself as an intellectual and man of science.
Hill's greatest delusion was that he was a 'philosopher' – I suspect he actually believed this. He was, in fact, simply a con man.
So who was the real Napoleon Hill, and why is he worthy of a screenplay?
Hill is worthy of research, worthy of a screenplay, worthy of a range of magazine articles not because he has any relevance as a thinker, but because he’s been able to sell so many lies. Hill's story has to make you sit back and ask, "How can anyone continue to sell the message that he worked for the White House or met Carnegie when these are clearly lies? Why are the lies not pointed out every time a book or a website carries his name?"
Napoleon Hill has been marketed and the Internet used to dupe millions into believing he had something to contribute. It's an exercise in exposing the emperor's new clothes for what they are. And it really is about the emperor's new clothes. There are over 16 million references to Hill on the Internet - I haven't looked at them all, but I'll lay odds very few challenge the accepted account, few will question his claims to a meeting with Carnegie or to working in the White House.
It's the emperor's new clothes - if everyone else is singing the praises of the outfit the emperor is supposed to be wearing, you don't want to be the first to point out he's actually naked. You don't want to be the first to demonstrate that it's all a con.
I live in Scotland - I'm not going to visit the USA anytime soon. But, hidden in newspaper archives, in libraries, in court and police records, etc., there must be evidence of the real Napoleon Hill. Exposing his lies and fraud in the USA could make a name for a number of journalists - ironic, given Hill’s claim to have interviewed Carnegie as a "young special investigator"!
Hill served at least one prison sentence for fraud - I suspect there may have been others. He may also have been admitted to hospital for treatment for psychosis - although, I admit, that's speculative on my part (his writings suggest that he did have psychotic episodes). And, given his delusions / false claims about working in the White House, would the FBI have looked at him? Are records accessible?
Hill claims that he lectured to thousands - one of the few occasions where he actually lists a place and date (Canton, Ohio - July, 1926), he also reveals that there were only a dozen people at his meeting. That's the reality. Hill was a salesman, selling his correspondence course. He was delivering a sales pitch in back rooms and sitting rooms. He claims "hundreds of thousands of people heard this lecture" - he was talking to groups of a dozen or less. This was no evangelical meeting proclaiming a new philosophy to crowded halls of worshippers - he was selling a correspondence course.
He wasn't delivering a message of hope to humanity as he claims, he wasn’t "invited to go on a countrywide speaking tour", he was selling a product … and he was enjoying being centre stage, being allowed to perform for a crowd. It's an ego trip … albeit it a commercial one. It's an ego trip. Hill transforms a squalid little job (conning people out of money to sign up for his course), into something worthy. He really does present himself as some evangelist offering salvation through the breadth of his personal vision and claim to unique insights.
And, don't ignore the fact that Hill was also looking for women. He abandoned his wife and family to disappear lecturing for months at a time. He makes it quite clear that he was on the lookout for sex when he was "lecturing", looking to seduce some ambitious waitress or bored secretary.
And the evidence will be there - in the classified ads of scores of local newspapers, advertising Hill's "lecture" and his correspondence course. Where did he speak, what sort of audience turned up? Who bought his correspondence course (his businesses went broke with such frequency, I suspect a lot of people buying his course were simply sold a bunch of manuals, but no correspondence, no 'course')? It would be interesting to see what some keen young journalism student could dig up.
Scope for a screenplay, then? No benign, Walter Mitty character here, but a dark, malicious creature ready to exploit others. A seedy little man - think Dustin Hoffman in 'Midnight Cowboy', only better dressed, more urbane ... and more predatory. No Billy Liar getting lost in romantic, heroic images to ease his boredom, but the cynical manipulation of others to secure advantage - I can see Hill chatting up women with his claims to having worked in the White House or to being a confidant of Henry Ford, etc. Was that where his inspiration for the fraudulent claims was first conceived and refined, as a seduction script over a bottle of bourbon in a series of hotel rooms?
There’s a screenplay in there, and there are any number of exposés open to an energetic researcher.
So, allow me to serve up some ideas - and a few more questions - by deconstructing Hill’s 'official' biography.
Next - Napoleon Hill - A Life in Lies 3
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