Irving, Clifford

Howard Hughes's Fictional Autobiography

McGraw-Hill's commercial interest in publishing Hughes's autobiography was prompted by continued public fascination with Hughes because of his enormous wealth, fabled exploits, and unconventional lifestyle. In his prime, Hughes had earned a large fortune for his pioneering work in both films and aviation, and he invested his money wisely, resulting in Hughes becoming one of the world's wealthiest people. The same work that made him rich also made him famous, as did his reputation as a womanizer who had dated such high-profile Hollywood stars as Bette Davis, Ava Gardner, Olivia de Havilland, Katharine Hepburn, and Ginger Rogers.

After decades of high profile celebrity Hughes then retired completely from public view, living in protected seclusion in a series of upscale hotel sanctuaries in Las Vegas, Beverly Hills, Boston, the Bahamas, and elsewhere. Hughes's prolonged absence from public view after years of being a famous celebrity only served to increase interest in him, fueling rumors about his mental and physical health, his living conditions, and other details of his private life.

In perpetrating his hoax, Irving duped his publisher into believing that Hughes had written him a series of letters. These were forgeries written by Irving, who had developed skill at mimicking Hughes's handwriting using as a template a sample that had been included in a Newsweek article. The forgeries were so skillfully done that handwriting experts authenticated them as genuine. In the letters, Irving had Hughes convey admiration for Irving's previous work and express the desire to collaborate with him on a book about Hughes's legendary life.

Cleverly, Irving also had Hughes demand as a condition of his participation in the biographical project that all correspondence be done exclusively through Irving, giving him complete [Page 551]authorial and financial control over the process. When mounting doubts were raised regarding Irving's veracity regarding the letters, he took a polygraph test, the indeterminate results of which suggested at least the possibility that Irving was not lying.

Irving was aided in perpetrating his hoax by his friend, Richard “Dick” Suskind, and his fourth wife, Edith (née Sommer). Suskind helped conduct the meticulous research required to assure that publicly known facts about Hughes would not conflict with what the invented Hughes said in his interviews regarding what he did and when and where these activities took place. In preparing for the faux interviews, Irving and Suskind conducted extensive archival research, ranging from newspaper articles to unpublished manuscripts. In addition, when possible they sought out and interviewed Hughes's friends and acquaintances. This research provided rich details, some not publicly known, that lent the interviews and the fictional autobiography based upon them a high degree of credibility.

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