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. He was 87. Irving\u2019s wife, Julie Irving, confirmed that he died Tuesday at a hospice near his Sarasota home, The New York Times reported. She said he had been admitted there after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer about a week earlier. A novelist of little note in 1971, Irving conned McGraw-Hill 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 \u201cThe Hoax,\u201d 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\u2019t published until 1999, when it was printed as a private edition. \u2018It became an adventure\u2019 The scam \u201cwas exciting. It was a challenge. It became an adventure,\u201d Irving told the Los Angeles Times in 2007. The International Herald Tribune called the fake autobiography \u201cthe most famous unpublished book of the 20th century.\u201d Time magazine dubbed Irving \u201cCon Man of the Year\u201d in a 1972 cover story.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\u2019s eccentric lifestyle. Hughes\u2019 hermit-like obsession with his privacy all but guaranteed that the \u201cgorgeous literary caper\u201d would succeed, Irving wrote in \u201cThe Hoax,\u201d his 2006 account of the scheme. \u201cHughes would never be able to surface to deny it, or else he wouldn\u2019t bother,\u201d he wrote. Rising skepticism At the time of the hoax, Hughes had long withdrawn from his life as a powerful industrialist, aviator and filmmaker.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 near-total seclusion, even neglecting personal hygiene to avoid contact with the outside world. Hughes\u2019 intense aversion to publicity gave rise to skepticism about Irving\u2019s claims to have interviewed the billionaire. Irving insisted that he had several clandestine meetings with Hughes. He submitted to a lie-detector test and produced documents purportedly from the billionaire, including a handwritten letter written to McGraw-Hill. The letter, forged by Irving, was deemed authentic by handwriting analysts hired by McGraw-Hill. At that point, the publisher decided to move forward with the book. Irving put the cash advance into a Swiss bank account, opened in the name Helga R. Hughes. The unraveling The deception unraveled when investigative reporter James Phelan, writing a book about Hughes, recognized passages of his work in an excerpt from Irving\u2019s manuscript of the autobiography. Hughes himself then surfaced to conduct a telephone conference with reporters during which he repudiated Irving\u2019s story and said that he never met him. His lawyer sued Irving and his publisher. At the urging of McGraw-Hill, Swiss authorities investigated the Helga R. Hughes bank account and learned that the deposits had been made by Irving\u2019s wife, Edith. Irving and his collaborator, Richard Suskind, were indicted on fraud charges and were found guilty in June 1972. In addition to his prison term, Irving returned the $765,000 advance to McGraw-Hill. Suskind was sentenced to six months and served five. Edith Irving served a total of 16 months in U.S. and Swiss jails for fraud. She left jail announcing her intent to file for divorce. Irving was unhappy with the movie version of his escapades and asked to have his name removed from the credits as a technical adviser. \u201cMovie Clifford has the energy of a not-too-bright psychopath. If I were that man, I\u2019d shoot myself,\u201d he wrote on his website. \u201cThe movie is best thought of as a hoax.\u201d Background, books Born in 1930, Irving grew up on Manhattan\u2019s Upper West Side. He attended public schools and his boyhood friends included William Safire, the late columnist and speechwriter for President Richard Nixon. He attended Cornell University and stayed on for a year after graduation in 1951 on a creative writing fellowship. He worked odd jobs after leaving academia and traveled to Europe, where he finished his first novel, \u201cOn a Darkling Plain.\u201d He moved in 1962 to an artists\u2019 colony on the island of Ibiza off the east coast of Spain. It was there that he wrote \u201cFake!\u201d the story of art forger Elmyr de Hory. The reviews of the book were favorable, but it sold fewer than 30,000 copies. In all, Irving wrote more than a dozen books. In recent years, he and fifth wife Julie lived in Mexico, Colorado and Florida.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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. He was 87. Irving\u2019s wife, Julie Irving, confirmed that he died Tuesday at a hospice near his Sarasota home, The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59131,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59130"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}