Clifford Irving Although he wrote his first novel in 1956 and has continued to pen many well received books since, Clifford Irving has become best known for his attempt to fool the world with his hoax that he had been chosen by Howard Hughes to write his Autobiography. Clifford Irving was born on November 5th 1930 in New York, the only child of Dorothy and Jay Irving. His father, Jay, was a magazine cover artist. In 1947 Clifford graduated from Manhattan’s High School of Music and Art and went on to attend Cornell University. After he had completed his education he worked for the New York Times as a copy boy. During this time he wrote his first novel, On a Darkling Plain Clifford Irving was married for two years from 1947 to Nina Wilcox. His second book, The Losers was penned in 1958 while he traveled Europe. For a while he lived on the island of Ibiza which is where he met and married his second wife, an English woman named Claire Lydon. After moving to California in 1958 Claire was tragically killed in a car accident on the Big Sur, California.
In 1960 McGraw-Hill published Irving’s third book, The Valley which was a mystic Western. It was in 1962 when he moved back to Ibiza with his third wife, again an English woman, model Fay Brooke. That marriage too was to be quite short lived when he met his fourth wife Swiss/German born artist, Edith Sommer in 1967. They married and together had two sons. In 1969 he teamed up with Elmyr de Hory and wrote his biography, Fake, which was later featured in Orson Welle’s documentary, F for Fake in 1974. Meeting up with an old author friend in 1974, Richard Suskind, Irving and Suskind together hatched the plan to forge the “autobiography’ of Howard Hughes. Irving contacted his publisher at McGraw and made the claim that he had been corresponding with Hughes and had numerous clandestine meetings with the billionaire and that he had expressed his interest in Irving writing his autobiography. McGraw-Hill agreed to the terms and wrote a contract between Hughes, Irving and McGraw-Hill, with forged signatures by Irving on behalf of Hughes, which paid an advance of $100,00 and an additional fee that would go to Hughes in the sum of $400,00. Irving had his wife Edith deposited the Hughes cheque into a Swiss bank account in the name of Helga R Hughes. Together, Irving and Suskind, knowing that Hughes had a penchant for meeting in remote and secluded places made their story seem all the more believable. During their research Irving and Suskind also gained access to the private files of Time-Life and a manuscript by James Phelan, who was ghostwriting memoirs of Noah Dietrich, former business manager to Hughes.During this time, with all the talk of meetings with Hughes, he was never actually seen. On January 7, 1972, Hughes arranged a telephone conference with seven journalists who had known him years before knowing they would recognize his voice. The interview was televised and during the questioning Hughes denounced Irving, saying that he had never even met him, and that he was still living in the Bahamas. But the quick thinking Irving claimed that the voice was probably a fake.
Hughes' lawyer, Chester Davis, filed suit against McGraw-Hill, Life, Clifford Irving and Dell Publications. Swiss authorities investigated a bank account Edith Irving had opened with the name "Helga R. Hughes." When Swiss police visited the Irvings on Ibiza they finally identified Edith Irving as the depositor of the funds, at which point the game was up. Eventually the Irvings gave up and confessed in early 1972. They, and Suskind were indicted for fraud and were found guilty. Despite the efforts of Irving's lawyer he was convicted and spent fourteen months in prison. He voluntarily returned the advance to his publishers. Suskind was sentenced to six months and served five.Following his release, Clifford Irving continued to write books, including several bestsellers, most notably Trial, Tom Mix and Pancho Villa, Final Argument and Daddy's Girl. The fraudulent autobiography was published in a private edition in 1999, and is now out of print. After the discovery of the association between President Richard Nixon and Howard Hughes, Nixon’s paranoia caused him to have his agents break into the offices of The Watergate building in an effort to seek out any other incriminating information on the president. Shortly before the 1960 Presidential election, Richard Nixon was harmed by revelations of a $205,000 loan from Hughes to Nixon's brother Donald. It has long been speculated that Nixon's drive to learn what the Democrats were planning in 1972 was based in part on his belief that if the Democrats knew about a bribe that his friend Bebe Rebozo had received it could be politically ruinous, and Nixon's desire to cover up the event led to the Watergate break-ins. In April 2007 the movie ‘Hoax’ was released starring Richard Gere, as Irving and Stanley Tucci in a portrayal of the events that lead to the hoax Clifford managed to pull on the world. Irving currently lives in Aspen, Colorado. ABB |
