Clifford Irving, Howard Hughes prankster, has died at 87
MIAMI BEACH, FLA. » Clifford Irving, whose scheme to publish a phony autobiography of billionaire Howard Hughes created a sensation in the 1970s and stands as one of the all-time literary hoaxes, died after being admitted to hospice care in Florida. He was 87.
Irving’s wife, Julie Irving, told The Associated Press he died Tuesday at a hospice near his Sarasota home. She said he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer about a week earlier.
Julie Irving and Irving’s sons Ned and Barnaby remembered the writer as a fearless charmer even in his last days.
The day before he died, they said Thursday, Irving asked his doctor to help hasten the process. The doctor demurred, saying he did not want to go to jail.
“Cliff said, ‘Don’t worry, I won’t tell anybody,’” Julie Irving said. “That was so classic Cliff. He was just conspiratorial to the end.”
A novelist of little note in 1971, Irving conned McGrawHill publishers into paying him a $765,000 advance for a book about the reclusive Hughes. His elaborate ruse became the subject of the 2006 movie “The Hoax,” starring Richard Gere.
Irving served 17 months in federal prison for fraud after Hughes emerged to condemn the work as a fabrication. The bogus autobiography wasn’t published until 1999, when it was printed as a private edition.
The scam “was exciting. It was a challenge. It became an adventure,” Irving told the Los Angeles Times in 2007.
The International Herald Tribune called the fake autobiography “the most famous unpublished book of the 20th century.” Time magazine dubbed Irving “Con Man of the Year” in a 1972 cover story.
Irving said the idea of fabricating an autobiography of Hughes came to him after reading a magazine article
about the billionaire’s eccentric lifestyle. Hughes’ hermitlike obsession with his privacy all but guaranteed that the “gorgeous literary caper” would succeed, Irving wrote in “The Hoax,” his 2006 account of the scheme.
“Hughes would never be able to surface to deny it, or else he wouldn’t bother,” he wrote.
At the time of the hoax, Hughes had long withdrawn from his life as a powerful industrialist, aviator and filmmaker. He reportedly lived the final 10 years of his life, from 1966 to 1976, in neartotal seclusion, even neglecting personal hygiene to avoid contact with the outside world.
Hughes’ intense aversion to publicity gave rise to skepticism about Irving’s claims to have interviewed the billionaire.