Hoax

Hoax

Richard Gere, Alfred Molina

We live in a nation of creative lying. If you don’t believe me… “Fox News: Fair and Balanced.” “Teach the controversy.” “We don’t torture.” “Brownie, you’re doing a good job.” “I did not have sex with that woman.” Rush Limbaugh and the right wing, with its focus groups, spin the truth so much that it would not be recognizable in a police lineup. Reality television is, in reality, just badly written sitcom material with almost no production value. A lot of advertisement is just the continuing adventures of a wooden boy with a growing nose. So, in my opinion, you have got to admire a first class liar. I’m not talking about someone like O.J. Simpson, Tonya Harding, or Bill Clinton, people who are just trying to weasel out of a hole they have dug for themselves. I am talking about frauds that even in this jaded world make you go, “Wow!” I love the kind of creative lying that the guy who produced Hitler’s Diaries showed. Who wouldn’t want to announce to the world that you are the last surviving member of the Czars royal family, Princess Caraboo, or even the child of a famous actor? If you can pick people’s pockets by going on national television and announcing, with a straight face, that you can talk to dead people, or predict the future, you’re my hero. I wish I had the creativity to create a monster like Colonel Robert Wilson, who transformed a children’s toy submarine into the Loch Ness Monster, or Elsie Wright and Frances Griffith, who cut out illustrations from their children’s book and made the world believe that fairies really exist, or even Roger Patterson, who became world famous by claiming some gentlemen in a gorilla costume was Bigfoot. Go into your office place tomorrow and announce to your friends and co-workers that god has disclosed the secrets of the universe to you and they should join your cult, give you all their money, and offer you their teenage daughters as sexual playthings. That takes big ones. Whether is the guy who faked the Shroud of Turin, Xenu, the creator of Piltdown Man, magic underwear, Rosie Ruiz winning the Boston Marathon, James Frey, Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, or P.T. Barum touring the country with George Washington’s 161-year-old nurse, creative prevarication is almost an art form. Yet, Clifford Irving might be the king of all con arts.

Unlike most liars who are unknown or talented newcomers looking for a big break, Clifford Michael Irving was one of the elite, a successful writer and public figure. A graduate of the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan and Cornell University, he was already a best-selling novelist. Rich, living on the island of Ibiza, Irving seemed like the last person in the world who would try to perpetrate such a fraud. Maybe the idea entered his head after he wrote a novel about a successful art forger. Maybe it was born in the financial desperation that comes with divorce and a new mistress. At some point, Irving decided he would fake an autobiography on Howard Hughes. As a young man, Hughes garnered a great deal of public attention by directing movies, dating actresses, and setting aerial records in planes he designed. Yet, mental illness caused the once public figure to retreat to penthouses where he was protected from the outside world by a handful of Mormon henchmen. Rumors had circulated for years that he had let his hair and fingernails grow out and sat around naked all day, almost paralyzed by his germ phobia. Clifford figured either Hughes was so far gone mentally that he would not dispute a phony biography or that he would not leave his self-imposed exile from the outside world to challenge it. It was a gamble that Clifford was willing to take.

In January 1971, Clifford wrote his publisher for the last 12 years, McGraw-Hill, that Howard Hughes had written him a series of letters to praise Irving’s last book and ask if the writer would assist him in writing his memoirs. The novelist was quickly flown to New York where Irving produced three letters he claimed were written by Hughes. One of the letters stated that the millionaire wanted to clear up certain misconceptions about his life before he died. McGraw-Hill fell all over itself to get legal documents drawn up to protect all parties involved. Irving forged Hughes’ signature. The fictional Hughes and Clifford would receive a $500,000 advance, the largest advance in company history. Time-Life Magazine ponied up a quarter of a million to serialize it in their magazines and Dell coughed up $400,000 for the paperback rights. To top it off, Irving was able to shake another $250,000 in advance out of McGraw-Hill for the yet to be written book. With the help of friend Dick Suskind, Irving began to dig up as much material as possible on the man they never met. They hit pay dirt when they found a manuscript written by an ex-accountant of Hughes named Noah Dietrich and writer Stanley Phelan. Unbeknown to these men, Irving copied the manuscript and used it as the basis of his fictional memoir. By the fall, Irving and Suskind had turned in their manuscript. In December, McGraw-Hill proudly announced the publication of their newest book. As soon as it became public, friends and associates of Hughes, knowing the millionaire’s almost pathological need for privacy, claimed that there was no way that Howard would be involved in such a project. Journalist Frank McCulloch, an expert on the life of Howard Hughes, received a phone call from a man claiming to be Hughes. The voice on the other end of the phone wanted McCulloch to inform McGraw-Hill that he had no knowledge of the book and in no way contributed to it. McCulloch informed the publisher of the conversation. Irving reacted by pretending to be upset and inviting McCulloch to read the manuscript and visit him in his office. McCulloch, not knowing that Irving had stolen Dietrich’s manuscript, was amazed by Irving quoted an off the record conversation between Hughes and the journalist. Clifford had dodged another bullet. To bolster his case, a firm of nationally recognized handwriting experts declared that the samples, provided by Irving, were written by Hughes. Still, smelling a rat, McGraw-Hill asked Clifford to take a lie detector test, which came back inconclusive. Unable to stand it any longer, Hughes arranged a phone interview with seven journalists, that later aired on national television. It was the first time in 14 years that the public heard Hughes’ voice. The millionaire clamed he had never met Irving, and had not left the Bahamas in years. Irving countered by claimimg the voice on speakerphone was not Hughes.

It was then that Clifford Irving’s lie caught up with him. Swiss police began an investigation of a suspicious bank account that had large sums of money going through it under the name H.R. Hughes (Helga). They made a link between the now near empty account and McGraw-Hill and the woman who managed the account looked extremely similar to Clifford Irving’s wife, Edith. They soon paid a visit to Irving’s home on Ibiza. McCulloch, now convinced that he had been conned, began to compare the scheduled claimed meetings between Hughes and Irving with Irving’s passport and travel records. The two did not add up. Within a few weeks, more reporters were following Clifford’s hoax than were covering the Vietnam War. Irving found himself up to his neck in legal problems. His wife, his friend Suskind, and Irving were convicted on 14 criminal counts in state court and 2 counts of mail fraud at the federal level. The novelist was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison and ordered to pay back the funds he had already received. Even in jail, Clifford’s problems continued. He was bounced between three difference institutions over his 17 months, even being accused of plotting to kill the warden and provoke a riot.

This is a complex story that director Lasse Hallstrom handles well and might be his best American film to date. Richard Gere has his best roll since Chicago. Given the quality to actors involved (Hope Davis, Marcia Gay Harden, Stanley Tucci, Julie Delpy, Eli Wallach) and the story, it would be hard to make a bad film. Still, the audience has to work to keep up with the complex plot.\

Verdict: B-