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Clifford Irving

Clifford Michael Irving (November 5, 1930 – December 19, 2017) was an American novelist and investigative reporter. Although he published 20 novels, he is best known for an "autobiography" allegedly written as told to Irving by billionaire recluse Howard Hughes. The fictional work was to have been published in 1972. After Hughes denounced him and sued the publisher, McGraw-Hill, Irving and his collaborators confessed to the hoax. He was sentenced to 2+12 years in prison, of which he served 17 months.[1]

Clifford Irving
BornClifford Michael Irving
(1930-11-05)November 5, 1930
New York, New York, U.S.
DiedDecember 19, 2017(2017-12-19) (aged 87)
Sarasota, Florida, U.S.
OccupationNovelist, investigative reporter
Alma materCornell University
Years active1956–2015
Spouse
Nina Wilcox
(m. 1952, annulled)

Claire Lydon
(m. 1958; died 1959)

Fay Brooke
(m. 1962; div. 1965)

Edith Sommer
(m. 1967, divorced))

Maureen Earl
(m. 1984; div. 1998)

Julie Schall
(m. 1998)

Irving wrote The Hoax (1981), his account of events surrounding the development and sale of the fake autobiography. The book was adapted as a 2006 biopic of the same name starring Richard Gere as Clifford Irving. He continued to write and published his later books as e-books available via Kindle and Nook.[2]

Early life and writing career

Irving grew up in New York City, the son of Jay Irving, a Collier's cover artist and the creator of the syndicated comic strip Pottsy, and his wife, Dorothy.[3] After graduating in 1947 from Manhattan's selective High School of Music and Art, Irving attended Cornell University. He graduated with honors in English.

Working as a copy boy at The New York Times, Irving wrote his first novel, On a Darkling Plain (1956), published by Putnam.[citation needed]

Irving completed his second novel, The Losers (1958), while traveling in Europe. His third novel, The Valley (1960), is a mythic Western saga, published by McGraw-Hill.[4]

After returning to Ibiza, Irving became friendly with Hungarian art forger Elmyr de Hory. The painter asked him to write a biography, which was published as Fake! (1969). Irving and de Hory are both featured in Orson Welles's film documentary, F for Fake (1974).[5][6]

Personal life

His first wife was Nina Wilcox. Their marriage was annulled in 1952.[7] Later, on the Spanish island of Ibiza, he met an Englishwoman, Claire Lydon; they married in 1958 and moved to California. She died the following year at Big Sur in an automobile accident on May 8, 1959.[8]

In 1962, after a year spent traveling around the world and living in a houseboat in Kashmir, Irving moved back to Ibiza with his third wife, Fay Brooke, an English photographic model, and their newborn son, Josh. This marriage ended in divorce. In 1967, Irving married Swiss/German artist Edith Sommer. They had two sons, John Edmond (aka "Nedsky") and Barnaby.[citation needed] He reportedly had a lengthy affair in the 1970s with the Danish actress and singer Nina van Pallandt.[9]

Irving later married English author Maureen "Moish" Earl. From 1984 to 1998 they lived mainly in the mountain town of San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico.[10]

Irving died of pancreatic cancer in Sarasota, Florida, at the age of 87.[11]

Fake autobiography of Howard Hughes

By 1958, millionaire Howard Hughes had become a recluse. In 1970, in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, Irving met with Richard Suskind, a longtime friend who was an author of children's books. They conceived a scheme to write Hughes's purported "autobiography": Irving and Suskind believed that, because Hughes had completely withdrawn from public life, he would never draw attention by denouncing such a book or filing a lawsuit for libel.

Suskind took on the work of research in news archives. Irving started by enlisting the aid of artist and writer friends on Ibiza in order to create letters in Hughes's own hand, imitating authentic letters they had seen displayed in Newsweek magazine.[8]

Irving contacted his publisher, McGraw-Hill, and said that Hughes had corresponded with him, saying he admired Irving's book about de Hory, and that Hughes had expressed interest in having Irving ghost write the millionaire's autobiography.

The McGraw-Hill editors invited Irving to New York, where the publishers drafted contracts among Hughes, Irving, and the company, with Irving and his friends forging Hughes' signatures. McGraw-Hill paid an advance of US$100,000, with an additional US$400,000 to be paid to Hughes; Irving later bargained the sum up to US$765,000. McGraw-Hill paid by checks made out to "H. R. Hughes", which Irving's Swiss wife Edith deposited to a Swiss bank account which she had opened under the name of "Helga R. Hughes".[12]

The investigation

Learning of the planned book, representatives of Hughes' companies expressed doubts about its authenticity. Frank McCulloch, known for years as the last journalist to interview Hughes, had received an angry call from someone claiming to be Hughes, but after he read the Irving manuscript, became convinced that it was genuine.[13]

McGraw-Hill and Life magazine, which had paid to publish excerpts of the book, continued to support Irving. Osborn Associates, a firm of handwriting experts, further declared the writing samples were authentic. While Irving had to submit to a lie-detector test, this indicated inconsistencies but no lies.[14]

On January 7, 1972, Hughes arranged a telephone conference with seven journalists, whose end of the conversation was televised: in this conference, Hughes claimed that he had never even met Irving, much less corresponded with him.[15][16] Irving claimed the voice on the phone was an imposter, but it subsequently became clear that Irving was the fraud.[13]

Hughes' lawyer, Chester Davis, immediately filed suit against McGraw-Hill, Life, Clifford Irving, and Dell Publications, while Swiss authorities investigated the "Helga R. Hughes" bank account: the Irvings by this time had returned to their home on the Balearic island of Ibiza. After the Swiss bank identified Edith Irving as the depositor of the funds, the hoax was revealed.

Confession and trial

The Irvings confessed on January 28, 1972. They and Suskind were indicted for "conspiracy to defraud through use of the mails" and pleaded guilty on June 16. Irving spent 17 months in prison. He voluntarily returned the US$765,000 advance to his publishers. Edith, a.k.a. "Helga", served prison sentences in the United States and in Switzerland.[17]

Film

In July 2005, filming began in Puerto Rico and New York on The Hoax, starring Richard Gere as Irving, Alfred Molina as Suskind, and Marcia Gay Harden as Edith. On March 6, 2007, Hyperion reissued Clifford Irving's The Hoax in a movie tie-in edition. The film, directed by Swedish filmmaker Lasse Hallström, opened on April 6, 2007, with a DVD release following on October 16. The majority of reviews were favorable.[citation needed]

Irving characterized the film as a clichéd distortion of the story and "a hoax about a hoax". He described the film's portrayals of Suskind, Edith Irving and himself as "absurd even more than inaccurate". He noted that the film was not true to his account, adding events that had not taken place.[18] As the author of the source book, Irving is credited as a writer for the film, but he had himself removed from credit as technical adviser.

In spring 2012, the movie rights to Irving's nonfiction book, Fake!, were optioned by Steve Golin and Anonymous Content LLP.[citation needed] Irving was commissioned to write a screenplay for the movie. In 2015, Anonymous Content's option for the book's dramatic rights expired.

Later life

In 2012 Irving formatted and placed 12 of his books, including one unpublished novel, for sale on Kindle and Nook. In 2014 he added six books to the total, including his prison journal. Sales were brisk. Irving was open about it, and offered the text of the hoax autobiography for sale in book form. In May 2014 Irving launched his official website, cliffordirving.com.

In November 2014 the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas announced that they had acquired all of Irving's literary and personal papers. The archive includes material from more than 50 years, from 1954 to 2012. Among the trove is Irving's correspondence with lawyers, publishers, colleagues and friends such as Graham Greene, Robert Graves and Irwin Shaw, his personal diaries and prison journals, many manuscript drafts, legal documents from lawsuits and from his 1972 bankruptcy, portions of his Howard Hughes manuscript and extensive handwritten notes and musings. It fills 20 boxes in the research center archive.

"Clifford Irving is an important writer who has lived a colorful and controversial life, which has been a major source of inspiration for much of his literary work", said Don Carleton, executive director at the Briscoe Center. "I'm delighted that his papers are now available to enrich scholarship here at the university."

Bibliography

Books

Book contributions

Further reading

References

  1. ^ Kaufman, Michael T. (February 15, 1974). "Irving Is Freed on Parole Here; Says He Owes 'About a Million'". The New York Times.
  2. ^ "Amazon author page Clifford Irving". Amazon. Retrieved 2015-02-03.
  3. ^ Lambiek comic shop and studio in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. "Lambiek Comiclopedia: Jay Irving". Lambiek.net. Retrieved 2014-05-20.
  4. ^ Irving, Clifford (1960). The Valley. McGraw-Hill.
  5. ^ Wallace, Mike (July 2012). "Con Men: Fascinating Profiles of Swindlers and Rogues from the Files of the Most Successful Broadcast in Television History". 60 Minutes.
  6. ^ Jackman, Ian, ed. (November 2007). Con Men: Fascinating Profiles of Swindlers and Rogues from the Files of the ... ISBN 9781416593195. Retrieved 2014-05-20 – via Books.google.com.
  7. ^ "Enter the Baroness Nina". Life. No. 11 February 1972. Time, Inc. 1972. pp. 30–39. ISSN 0024-3019.
  8. ^ a b "The Fabulous Hoax of Clifford Irving". Time, February 21, 1972.
  9. ^ Reed, Christopher (December 21, 2017). "Clifford Irving obituary". The Guardian.
  10. ^ Irving, Clifford Irving (1990). A Trial. Summit Books. p. 331. ISBN 9780671664220.
  11. ^ Grimes, William (December 20, 2017). "Clifford Irving, Author of a Notorious Literary Hoax, Dies at 87". The New York Times.
  12. ^ . Time. February 14, 1972. Archived from the original on October 11, 2007. Retrieved 2014-05-20.
  13. ^ a b Mick Brown (2007-07-28). "You couldn't make it up". The Telegraph. Retrieved 2015-08-06.
  14. ^ Bell, Rachael. . truTV.com. p. 7. Archived from the original on 2009-06-01. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
  15. ^ B. James Gladstone (2013-05-01). The Man Who Seduced Hollywood: The Life and Loves of Greg Bautzer, Tinseltown's Most Powerful Lawyer.
  16. ^ "Creative Day – Fakes, Forgery and PhotoShop Part Two". 2013-09-07. Retrieved 2015-08-06.
  17. ^ "Edith Irving to File for Divorce". Zurich, Switzerland. Associated Press. May 4, 1974.
  18. ^ . 2007-12-24. Archived from the original on December 24, 2007. Retrieved 2014-05-20.

External links

Documentary films

  • Kolarz, Henry (1974). Der Scheck heiligt die Mittel.
Produced for German television. Richard Suskind portrayed himself.
Includes a segment on Irving filmed around the time the Hughes autobiography scandal broke.

clifford, irving, politician, politician, clifford, michael, irving, november, 1930, december, 2017, american, novelist, investigative, reporter, although, published, novels, best, known, autobiography, allegedly, written, told, irving, billionaire, recluse, h. For the politician see Clifford Irving politician Clifford Michael Irving November 5 1930 December 19 2017 was an American novelist and investigative reporter Although he published 20 novels he is best known for an autobiography allegedly written as told to Irving by billionaire recluse Howard Hughes The fictional work was to have been published in 1972 After Hughes denounced him and sued the publisher McGraw Hill Irving and his collaborators confessed to the hoax He was sentenced to 2 1 2 years in prison of which he served 17 months 1 Clifford IrvingBornClifford Michael Irving 1930 11 05 November 5 1930New York New York U S DiedDecember 19 2017 2017 12 19 aged 87 Sarasota Florida U S OccupationNovelist investigative reporterAlma materCornell UniversityYears active1956 2015SpouseNina Wilcox m 1952 annulled wbr Claire Lydon m 1958 died 1959 wbr Fay Brooke m 1962 div 1965 wbr Edith Sommer m 1967 divorced wbr Maureen Earl m 1984 div 1998 wbr Julie Schall m 1998 wbr Irving wrote The Hoax 1981 his account of events surrounding the development and sale of the fake autobiography The book was adapted as a 2006 biopic of the same name starring Richard Gere as Clifford Irving He continued to write and published his later books as e books available via Kindle and Nook 2 Contents 1 Early life and writing career 2 Personal life 3 Fake autobiography of Howard Hughes 3 1 The investigation 3 2 Confession and trial 4 Film 5 Later life 6 Bibliography 7 Further reading 8 References 9 External linksEarly life and writing career EditIrving grew up in New York City the son of Jay Irving a Collier s cover artist and the creator of the syndicated comic strip Pottsy and his wife Dorothy 3 After graduating in 1947 from Manhattan s selective High School of Music and Art Irving attended Cornell University He graduated with honors in English Working as a copy boy at The New York Times Irving wrote his first novel On a Darkling Plain 1956 published by Putnam citation needed Irving completed his second novel The Losers 1958 while traveling in Europe His third novel The Valley 1960 is a mythic Western saga published by McGraw Hill 4 After returning to Ibiza Irving became friendly with Hungarian art forger Elmyr de Hory The painter asked him to write a biography which was published as Fake 1969 Irving and de Hory are both featured in Orson Welles s film documentary F for Fake 1974 5 6 Personal life EditHis first wife was Nina Wilcox Their marriage was annulled in 1952 7 Later on the Spanish island of Ibiza he met an Englishwoman Claire Lydon they married in 1958 and moved to California She died the following year at Big Sur in an automobile accident on May 8 1959 8 In 1962 after a year spent traveling around the world and living in a houseboat in Kashmir Irving moved back to Ibiza with his third wife Fay Brooke an English photographic model and their newborn son Josh This marriage ended in divorce In 1967 Irving married Swiss German artist Edith Sommer They had two sons John Edmond aka Nedsky and Barnaby citation needed He reportedly had a lengthy affair in the 1970s with the Danish actress and singer Nina van Pallandt 9 Irving later married English author Maureen Moish Earl From 1984 to 1998 they lived mainly in the mountain town of San Miguel de Allende Guanajuato Mexico 10 Irving died of pancreatic cancer in Sarasota Florida at the age of 87 11 Fake autobiography of Howard Hughes EditBy 1958 millionaire Howard Hughes had become a recluse In 1970 in Palma de Mallorca Spain Irving met with Richard Suskind a longtime friend who was an author of children s books They conceived a scheme to write Hughes s purported autobiography Irving and Suskind believed that because Hughes had completely withdrawn from public life he would never draw attention by denouncing such a book or filing a lawsuit for libel Suskind took on the work of research in news archives Irving started by enlisting the aid of artist and writer friends on Ibiza in order to create letters in Hughes s own hand imitating authentic letters they had seen displayed in Newsweek magazine 8 Irving contacted his publisher McGraw Hill and said that Hughes had corresponded with him saying he admired Irving s book about de Hory and that Hughes had expressed interest in having Irving ghost write the millionaire s autobiography The McGraw Hill editors invited Irving to New York where the publishers drafted contracts among Hughes Irving and the company with Irving and his friends forging Hughes signatures McGraw Hill paid an advance of US 100 000 with an additional US 400 000 to be paid to Hughes Irving later bargained the sum up to US 765 000 McGraw Hill paid by checks made out to H R Hughes which Irving s Swiss wife Edith deposited to a Swiss bank account which she had opened under the name of Helga R Hughes 12 The investigation Edit Learning of the planned book representatives of Hughes companies expressed doubts about its authenticity Frank McCulloch known for years as the last journalist to interview Hughes had received an angry call from someone claiming to be Hughes but after he read the Irving manuscript became convinced that it was genuine 13 McGraw Hill and Life magazine which had paid to publish excerpts of the book continued to support Irving Osborn Associates a firm of handwriting experts further declared the writing samples were authentic While Irving had to submit to a lie detector test this indicated inconsistencies but no lies 14 On January 7 1972 Hughes arranged a telephone conference with seven journalists whose end of the conversation was televised in this conference Hughes claimed that he had never even met Irving much less corresponded with him 15 16 Irving claimed the voice on the phone was an imposter but it subsequently became clear that Irving was the fraud 13 Hughes lawyer Chester Davis immediately filed suit against McGraw Hill Life Clifford Irving and Dell Publications while Swiss authorities investigated the Helga R Hughes bank account the Irvings by this time had returned to their home on the Balearic island of Ibiza After the Swiss bank identified Edith Irving as the depositor of the funds the hoax was revealed Confession and trial Edit The Irvings confessed on January 28 1972 They and Suskind were indicted for conspiracy to defraud through use of the mails and pleaded guilty on June 16 Irving spent 17 months in prison He voluntarily returned the US 765 000 advance to his publishers Edith a k a Helga served prison sentences in the United States and in Switzerland 17 Film EditMain article The Hoax In July 2005 filming began in Puerto Rico and New York on The Hoax starring Richard Gere as Irving Alfred Molina as Suskind and Marcia Gay Harden as Edith On March 6 2007 Hyperion reissued Clifford Irving s The Hoax in a movie tie in edition The film directed by Swedish filmmaker Lasse Hallstrom opened on April 6 2007 with a DVD release following on October 16 The majority of reviews were favorable citation needed Irving characterized the film as a cliched distortion of the story and a hoax about a hoax He described the film s portrayals of Suskind Edith Irving and himself as absurd even more than inaccurate He noted that the film was not true to his account adding events that had not taken place 18 As the author of the source book Irving is credited as a writer for the film but he had himself removed from credit as technical adviser In spring 2012 the movie rights to Irving s nonfiction book Fake were optioned by Steve Golin and Anonymous Content LLP citation needed Irving was commissioned to write a screenplay for the movie In 2015 Anonymous Content s option for the book s dramatic rights expired Later life EditThis section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Clifford Irving news newspapers books scholar JSTOR June 2022 Learn how and when to remove this template message In 2012 Irving formatted and placed 12 of his books including one unpublished novel for sale on Kindle and Nook In 2014 he added six books to the total including his prison journal Sales were brisk Irving was open about it and offered the text of the hoax autobiography for sale in book form In May 2014 Irving launched his official website cliffordirving com In November 2014 the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas announced that they had acquired all of Irving s literary and personal papers The archive includes material from more than 50 years from 1954 to 2012 Among the trove is Irving s correspondence with lawyers publishers colleagues and friends such as Graham Greene Robert Graves and Irwin Shaw his personal diaries and prison journals many manuscript drafts legal documents from lawsuits and from his 1972 bankruptcy portions of his Howard Hughes manuscript and extensive handwritten notes and musings It fills 20 boxes in the research center archive Clifford Irving is an important writer who has lived a colorful and controversial life which has been a major source of inspiration for much of his literary work said Don Carleton executive director at the Briscoe Center I m delighted that his papers are now available to enrich scholarship here at the university Bibliography EditBooks On a Darkling Plain 1956 also published in Canada as The Quick and the Loving The Losers 1958 The Valley 1960 The 38th Floor 1965 The Battle of Jerusalem 1967 Spy 1968 Fake The Story of Elmyr de Hory The Greatest Art Forger of Our Time 1969 Autobiography of Howard Hughes 1971 Project Octavio The Story of the Howard Hughes Hoax 1972 with Richard Suskind The Death Freak 1976 The Sleeping Spy 1979 The Hoax 1981 Tom Mix and Pancho Villa 1981 The Angel of Zin 1983 Trial 1987 Daddy s Girl The Campbell Murder Case A True Tale of Vengeance Betrayal and Texas Justice 1988 Final Argument 1990 The Spring 1995 Boy on Trial 2004 Clifford Irving s Prison Journal aka Jailing 2012 Bloomberg Discovers America 2012 Book contributions History s Most Brazen Fakers Hamilton Charles Great Forgers and Famous Fakes The Manuscript Forgers of America and How They Duped the Experts New York Crown Publishers 1980 pp 166 171 Further reading EditBell Rachael A Wild Idea CrimeLibrary com Davies Martin Bibliomaniacs Corner Clifford Irving Enciclopedia d Eivissa i Formentera 1995 Archived from the original Fay Stephen and Lewis Chester Magnus Linklater Hoax The Inside Story of the Howard Hughes Clifford Irving Affair New York Viking Press 1972 Irving says this book is mostly fiction citation needed Graves Ralph The Hughes Affair starring Clifford Irving Life February 4 1972 pp 32 33 Herzog Brad The Real Thing Cornell Alumni Magazine Vol 109 No 5 March April 2007 pp 54 59 Magnusson Magnus Fakes Forgers amp Phoneys Famous Scams and Scamps Edinburgh Mainstream 2007 Phelan James The Clifford Irving Hoax Scandals Scamps and Scoundrels The Casebook of an investigative Reporter New York Random House 1982 pp 3 39 Streissguth Thomas Clifford Irving The Writer Who Faked History Hoaxers amp Hustlers Minneapolis Oliver Press 1994 pp 103 121 References Edit Kaufman Michael T February 15 1974 Irving Is Freed on Parole Here Says He Owes About a Million The New York Times Amazon author page Clifford Irving Amazon Retrieved 2015 02 03 Lambiek comic shop and studio in Amsterdam The Netherlands Lambiek Comiclopedia Jay Irving Lambiek net Retrieved 2014 05 20 Irving Clifford 1960 The Valley McGraw Hill Wallace Mike July 2012 Con Men Fascinating Profiles of Swindlers and Rogues from the Files of the Most Successful Broadcast in Television History 60 Minutes Jackman Ian ed November 2007 Con Men Fascinating Profiles of Swindlers and Rogues from the Files of the ISBN 9781416593195 Retrieved 2014 05 20 via Books google com Enter the Baroness Nina Life No 11 February 1972 Time Inc 1972 pp 30 39 ISSN 0024 3019 a b The Fabulous Hoax of Clifford Irving Time February 21 1972 Reed Christopher December 21 2017 Clifford Irving obituary The Guardian Irving Clifford Irving 1990 A Trial Summit Books p 331 ISBN 9780671664220 Grimes William December 20 2017 Clifford Irving Author of a Notorious Literary Hoax Dies at 87 The New York Times The Secret Life of Clifford Irving Time February 14 1972 Archived from the original on October 11 2007 Retrieved 2014 05 20 a b Mick Brown 2007 07 28 You couldn t make it up The Telegraph Retrieved 2015 08 06 Bell Rachael Clifford Irving s Hoax truTV com p 7 Archived from the original on 2009 06 01 Retrieved 2010 02 26 B James Gladstone 2013 05 01 The Man Who Seduced Hollywood The Life and Loves of Greg Bautzer Tinseltown s Most Powerful Lawyer Creative Day Fakes Forgery and PhotoShop Part Two 2013 09 07 Retrieved 2015 08 06 Edith Irving to File for Divorce Zurich Switzerland Associated Press May 4 1974 Irving Clifford The New Movie 2007 12 24 Archived from the original on December 24 2007 Retrieved 2014 05 20 External links EditOfficial website Clifford Irving at IMDb Clifford Irving FBI file at Internet Archive Clifford Irving Papers 1954 2012 at Briscoe Center University of Texas Clifford Irving writing resume at The Cooper Company New Langton Arts Clifford Irving Show with Phantom RosebudsDocumentary films Kolarz Henry 1974 Der Scheck heiligt die Mittel Produced for German television Richard Suskind portrayed himself dd Welles Orson 1974 F for Fake Includes a segment on Irving filmed around the time the Hughes autobiography scandal broke dd Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Clifford Irving amp oldid 1131574610, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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