This book will be my epitaph, the only one I’ll ever have
I don't see it as a crime worthy of society's customary revenge
Elmyr de Hory made his New York gallery debut at age 42. Five months after moving to the U.S. sans-passport, the Hungarian artist’s work hung at the Lilienfeld Galleries. The exhibition was dismissed by the art press as an old-fashioned approach to modern art of the era. By the time it was over, de Hory had sold a single painting – a fact he quickly attributed to a January blizzard that kept the art crowd at home.
For all of the critiques of his relevance, however, the painter was blessed with a gifted brush. By the time the Lilienfeld exhibition rolled around, de Hory had already successfully sold several forgeries in his native Europe. After the gallery showing, a small but profound change in career found him playing the part of a broke aristocrat, maintaining his lifestyle with the sale of works from some of the era’s most prominent artists.
de Hory sold Picassos and Matisses painted by his own hand. He created hundreds of forgeries, before fleeing the country. “I came out of it without a dime,” the painter told biographer Clifford Irving. “It’s the dealers and the art galleries who made a fortune, buying as cheap as they could from me and selling as dear as they could to the collectors.”
It was de Hory who suggested his friend Irving pen the biography. The resulting title – 1968’s Fake! – was a hit.
"All the world loves to see the experts and the establishment made a fool of," the author reflected on the painter during an interview for Orson Welles’ 1973 film portrait, F for Fake. "And anyone likes to feel that those who set themselves up as experts are really as gullible as anyone else."
After publication, Irving sent copy to reclusive aviation pioneer, Howard Hughes. By the late 60s, the billionaire mogul had spent more than two decades as the world’s most infamous recluse. Shunning the public, Hughes reportedly survived on chicken, chocolate bars and milk. Refusing to bath, cut his hair and trim his nails, the creator of the Spruce Goose sat naked watching films surrounded by tissue boxes, penning memos instructing aides to neither speak to or look at him.
He did, however, write Irving a letter of thanks for the book, praising the work. “I find myself deeply interested in the fellow you have written about, despite a natural inclination to the contrary,” Hughes wrote. “I cannot help wondering what has happened to him. I would hate to think what other biographers might have done to him, but it seems to me that you have portrayed your man with great consideration and sympathy, when it would have been tempting to do otherwise.”
Sensing an opportunity, the author suggested that Hughes would be the perfect subject for his follow up. Publisher McGraw-Hill paid a staggering $750,000 advance for The Autobiography of Howard Hughes. Life Magazine followed suit, pitching in a lofty sum for the exclusive rights to publish excerpts of the work.
“They tried to put me in an asylum,” Hughes writes, closing the preface that opens the book. “They wrote outright lies about me; I don’t mean distortions, I mean outright lies. The portrayal of me as an aging lunatic – I won’t have it. I want the balance restored. I don’t want future generations to remember Howard Hughes only as an obscenely rich and weird man. There’s more to me than that. Nevertheless, I intend to be dead honest, because a great deal of what I did I kept well hidden. This is the truth about my life, warts and all. This book will be my epitaph, the only one I’ll ever have.”
Those words – along with the thank you note that set the entire project in motion – were fake. Irving had constructed The Autobiography of Howard Hughes out of whole cloth. It was a forgery on a level that would have made de Hory blush. Irving and co-author Richard Suskind took turns interviewing one another in character as Hughes, spinning a 389 page lie about the pilot.
To throw his publishers off the scent, the author studied Hughes’ handwriting to create convincing forged letters. He traveled to fake meetings with the billionaire in Puerto Rico, the Bahamas and Mexico on the publisher’s dime, while his wife Edith deposited publishing fees into a Swiss bank account using forged passport with the name, “Helga R. Hughes.”
It was Hughes (and his lawyers) who finally put an end to the shenanigans, announcing that the “autobiography” was a fake. Further investigation into the Swiss bank deposits pulled the plug on the project for good, not long before its planned 1972 publication. Irving, his wife and co-author all spent time in prison. The former ultimately served nearly a year-and-a-half over charges of grand larceny and conspiracy.
"I don't see it as a crime worthy of society's customary revenge,” Irving reflected, decades later. "Had I succeeded, no one would have been hurt […] If I had it all to do over again, I would do it all, with one difference. I would succeed."
Sources:
Clifford Irving, whose ‘autobiography’ of Howard Hughes nearly fooled the nation, dies at 87 https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/clifford-irving-whose-autobiography-of-howard-hughes-nearly-fooled-the-nation-dies-at-87/2017/12/21/83c7f9ba-e662-11e7-833f-155031558ff4_story.html
The Artist Beneath the Art Forger https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/21/arts/design/elmyr-de-hory-art-forgery.html
Howard Hughes: The Autobiography : the Most Famous Unpublished Book of the 20th Century-- Until Now https://books.google.com/books/about/Howard_Hughes.html?id=2GDOIAAACAAJ