Clifford Irving, who perpetrated one of the grandest hoaxes of the 20th century when he concocted and sold a bogus autobiography of billionaire Howard Hughes in 1971, died from pancreatic cancer on December 19 at a hospice near his home in Sarasota, Florida. He was 87.
Irving, who had published Fake!: The Story of Elmyr de Hory, the Greatest Art Forger of Our Time in 1969, may have been inspired by his subject when he claimed to have cut a book deal with the reclusive billionaire. So clever and convincing was Irving’s ruse that McGraw-Hill paid him an advance of $750,000. Life magazine bought the serial rights for $250,000, and Dell obtained the paperback rights for $400,000.
Orson Welles used de Hory and Irving as subjects in his 1973 film essay F For Fake. It recounted Irving’s scheme and how it unraveled. Welles’ film evolved from a François Reichenbach documentary about de Hory. Reichenbach gave the film to Welles, who shot additional footage with Reichenbach serving as cinematographer.
Irving confessed to liking Welles’ look at hoaxes and con men in a 2014 interview with Sarasota magazine.
“I like Orson’s movie a lot — it was unique, it’s stood the test of time, and it’s become a cult movie. But only the first part focused on Elmyr and me as iconoclasts in the art world. The last part is some silly business about Orson and his beautiful Hungarian girlfriend (Hungarian-Croatian actress Oja Kodar), who has a fantasy relationship with Picasso.”
Irving claimed he had been hired by the BBC to work on Reichenbach’s documentary as “their intermediary, a kind of point man. As a result, I owned part of the profits.”
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