Buzz
Many people seek rewards without putting in the effort. This is why so many fail to achieve their dreams of becoming authors or athletes—the daily commitment of writing or training can feel overwhelming. However, some manage to become wealthy, famous, and celebrated by stealing the hard work of others and claiming it as their own.
10. Walter Keane
The iconic paintings featuring big-eyed children that adorn many a grandmother’s wall were actually the creation of Margaret Keane, not her husband, Walter. While Walter gained fame for the artwork, he lived a life marked by excess, alcoholism, and unconventional relationships—though it’s true that he took full credit for Margaret’s work.
In the early 1950s, Margaret struggled to make a living by selling her artwork outside San Francisco’s vibrant beatnik clubs. Eventually, she entered into a relationship with Walter, and they married. For two years, everything seemed fine. Then Margaret discovered that her husband had been passing off her paintings as his own. Although she likely should have left him, Margaret stayed and became Walter’s artistic servant.
As the 1950s transitioned into the 1960s, Walter earned millions from Margaret’s art. He bought a sprawling mansion, socialized with movie stars, and lived a life of opulence. Meanwhile, Margaret was confined to a small room, painting for 16 hours daily. Walter isolated her from the outside world and frequently threatened her with violence. When she tried to leave, he threatened to destroy her life and harm their children.
By 1970, Margaret had reached her breaking point. She left Walter and shared her story with a reporter.
During the bitter legal battle that followed, Walter nearly fulfilled his promise to ruin her. However, a judge ordered them both to paint in the courtroom, which proved Margaret’s allegations. Today, Margaret’s life is being adapted into a biographical film directed by Tim Burton, while her former husband is remembered globally as an abusive villain.
9. Otto Hahn
Otto Hahn, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist credited with discovering nuclear fission, might seem above reproach. However, his landmark discovery was largely due to the contributions of the exiled Jewish physicist Lise Meitner, whose role he publicly denied.
In 1938, Meitner and Hahn were collaborating at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Austria (now known as 'The Otto Hahn Institute'). When the Nazis invaded, Meitner escaped to Sweden in fear for her life. There, she was isolated, cut off from the world, and lacked research tools. Despite this, she continued to support Hahn by corresponding with him, helping interpret results, and offering theories. This was the beginning of a partnership that would elevate Hahn’s career.
By November of that year, Hahn had reached an impasse in his research. He turned to Meitner, who proposed further experiments. This led to the groundbreaking moment of nuclear fission. With Meitner’s insights and prior research, Hahn was able to confirm fission’s feasibility. Yet when he published his findings, Meitner’s name was omitted. Her contributions were ignored by the Nobel committee, and Hahn spent the rest of his life diminishing her role in the discovery.
8. Henry Gauthier-Villars
In 1900, a provocative little novel caused a stir in literary Paris. Allegedly written by a 16-year-old schoolgirl, its content was shockingly daring. The critic Henry Gauthier-Villars (also known as 'Willy') falsely claimed authorship.
The novel was Claudine at School, and the real author was Willy’s first wife, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette. A free-spirited woman from Burgundy, Colette had lived the very life depicted in Claudine. Rather than reveal her as the true writer, Willy chose to steal her work as his own. He locked her away and forced her to churn out one Claudine novel after another, signing them with his name and leading the public to believe he was the genius behind the stories.
Though successful for a time, Willy’s deception couldn’t last. Sixteen years after their marriage, Colette divorced him. She went on to become a celebrated author of numerous novels, while Willy became infamous as her dreadful first husband.
7. Charles Ross
If you lived in Victorian Britain, the name Ally Sloper would be unforgettable. A clumsy, working-class drunk, Sloper was to 19th-century cartoons what Walter White is to modern TV drama. His comical misadventures provided a welcome distraction in a turbulent time and were created by the husband-and-wife duo of Charles Ross and Marie Duval. Or so the official story goes. The truth is, Ross likely had little to do with the character.
While Ross might have contributed the initial idea, nearly everything about Sloper was the creation of his wife. Duval drew most of the comics and transformed the character into a Victorian icon. Meanwhile, Ross took all the credit and was celebrated as the true mastermind behind the work for nearly 150 years. Only in recent years, largely due to the efforts of comics historian David Kunzle, has Duval received the recognition she deserved.
6. Zynga
As creators of FarmVille, ChefVille, and other addictive games ending with 'ville,' Zynga was briefly one of the most popular gaming companies in the world. Under CEO Mark Pincus, they pioneered a strategy of creating captivating, yet often exploitative puzzles... or, more accurately, they blatantly copied the hard work of smaller developers and passed it off as their own.
FarmVille, for instance, was a near-identical replica of Farm Town, with so few variations that SF Weekly called them 'indistinguishable.' Released six months earlier, Farm Town managed to capture only a fraction of the audience (and revenue) of Zynga’s copycat version. A similar scenario unfolded with Cafe World, which, while not as successful as FarmVille, still raked in millions, despite everything about it being stolen from a game called Restaurant City.
These two examples are the most notorious, but Zynga’s history is full of similar incidents. In 2012, they took the NimbleBit game Tiny Tower and rebranded it as Dream Heights. Their imitation was so thorough that they even copied minor game mechanics that had no bearing on gameplay or user experience. A side-by-side comparison of their games with the originals shows just how openly they plagiarized the creators’ work.
5. Bob Kane
We’ve told you before about how Batman creator Bob Kane was so useless that he nearly sank the character before the comic even started. It was only thanks to his chance hiring of creative genius Bill Finger as writer that Batman isn’t now known as “Birdman.” But Finger’s contributions went a lot further than that. Kane stole all the credit for Finger’s work and refused to give him so much as a penny.
Although he came up with Batman’s backstory, villains (including the Joker), design, and gadgets, Finger died unacknowledged and utterly broke. So dire were his finances that his family couldn’t even afford a proper funeral. By contrast, Bob Kane became a multimillionaire lauded around the world for giving us the first morally complex superhero.
Kane did eventually acknowledge Finger’s contribution—in 1989, when Finger was already 15 years dead, and Kane didn’t have to give him any money. Even then, Kane underplayed Finger’s role. To this day, all Batman films, comics, games, and merchandise go out with the words “created by Bob Kane.” Bill Finger’s name is conspicuously absent.
4. Jimmy Page
Despite being hailed as one of the most innovative rock bands of all time, Led Zeppelin wasn't exactly a beacon of originality. The remaining band members are currently involved in a court case to determine whether they plagiarized their iconic hit, “Stairway to Heaven,” and it seems that the outcome could very well be “yes.” Fans of music have pointed out numerous other instances where the band allegedly borrowed from other artists.
The Music Times, for example, published an article listing at least seven songs that the band might have stolen from other musicians. In 2010, American folk artist James Holmes sued Jimmy Page, claiming he had stolen the song “Dazed and Confused” from him following a 1967 performance they both did. Various websites have compiled dozens of tracks that likely had their origins elsewhere.
Page continues to dismiss such claims as “ridiculous,” describing himself as “pretty damn original.”
3. Bertolt Brecht
Widely regarded as the pioneer of modern theater, Brecht’s plays and poetry are still revered today. Musicals like The Threepenny Opera are performed globally and have even influenced writers such as Alan Moore. However, a closer look at his career suggests that Brecht was, at best, a fraud. At worst, he was a manipulative individual who coerced others into creating his most famous works.
In a 1994 biography, Brecht expert John Fuegi revealed that the playwright had a tendency to romance literary women and then claim their work as his own. The most troubling case was that of Margaret Steffin, who became infatuated with Brecht when she was very young. Fuegi suggested that Steffin was responsible for eight of Brecht’s plays, along with at least one novel and numerous poems. He estimated that Brecht contributed only 10 percent to these works. When Hitler’s rise forced Brecht to flee Europe, he abandoned Steffin, leaving her to die in a tuberculosis ward, while also stealing her family’s inheritance.
This would be damning enough, but further evidence reveals that Brecht coerced at least three other women into stepping into Steffin’s role, showing them the same lack of respect. He also continuously exploited his songwriting partner on Threepenny Opera, taking all the credit and withholding earnings. Even the esteemed poet W.H. Auden was convinced to contribute to Brecht’s screenplays without payment or recognition.
Even more infuriating, the few ghostwriters who escaped Brecht’s exploitation found themselves unable to publish their work under their own names, as editors assumed they were just copying Brecht’s style.
2. F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald, an icon of American literature, is often considered one of the greatest authors to have ever lived. Besides his masterpiece The Great Gatsby, he wrote numerous short stories and may have even influenced one of football’s most significant tactical changes. Yet there’s evidence suggesting that a substantial portion of his work originated from his wife Zelda’s contributions.
Fitzgerald often modeled his characters on Zelda, even weaving elements of her personal life into his novels. But it went beyond simple inspiration. During the writing of his first novel, Fitzgerald directly copied lines from Zelda’s love letters and passed them off as dialogue for his characters. By the time they were living in Paris, he was frequently rifling through her diaries for phrases and ideas to use.
When the New York Herald Tribune asked Zelda to review The Beautiful and the Damned, she found entire passages that were unmistakably her own. Biographer Kendall Taylor noted that Zelda’s influence on the novel was so profound, she could easily be considered a co-author.
However, not everyone agrees with this perspective. Some argue that while Fitzgerald may have borrowed from Zelda, it was his brilliance that connected those words to the plot and made readers care about the characters. Nevertheless, an acknowledgment of her contributions would have been deserved.
1. Antony Hewish
Jocelyn Bell Burnell is one of the most extraordinary individuals to have ever lived. At just 24 years old in 1967, she played a key role in building a radio telescope at Cambridge University in England. Soon after, she used it to discover pulsars, challenging everything we thought we knew about supernova explosions. This groundbreaking discovery earned a Nobel Prize in Physics—for her supervisor, Antony Hewish.
Despite her pivotal role in the discovery, Hewish took home the Nobel Prize in 1974, though he graciously shared it with Martin Ryle, a person who, like Hewish, was not Jocelyn Bell Burnell.
At the time, junior assistants, particularly women, were not expected to make such monumental discoveries. The prevailing attitude in the scientific community was that if a young, low-ranking individual achieved something remarkable, it was the supervisor’s prerogative to claim the credit. Hewish had no issue with this convention.
Although Jocelyn Bell Burnell was denied the Nobel Prize, she is now widely recognized as the true discoverer of pulsars.
