Clifford Irving

Irving grew up in New York City, the son of Jay Irving, a Collier's cover artist and the creator of the syndicated comic strip Pottsy, and his wife, Dorothy. After graduating in 1947 from Manhattan's selective High School of Music and Art, Irving attended Cornell University. He graduated with honors in English.

His first wife was Nina Wilcox. Their marriage was annulled in 1952. Later, on the Spanish island of Ibiza, he met an Englishwoman, Claire Lydon; they married in 1958 and moved to California. She died the following year at Big Sur in an automobile accident on May 8, 1959.

By 1958, millionaire Howard Hughes had become a recluse. In 1970, in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, Irving met with Richard Suskind, a longtime friend who was an author of children's books. They conceived a scheme to write Hughes' purported "autobiography". Irving and Suskind believed that, because Hughes had completely withdrawn from public life, he would never draw attention by denouncing such a book or filing a lawsuit for libel. Suskind took on the work of research in news archives. Irving started by enlisting the aid of artist and writer friends on Ibiza in order to create letters in Hughes' own hand, imitating authentic letters they had seen displayed in Newsweek magazine.

In 1962, after a year spent traveling around the world and living in a houseboat in Kashmir, Irving moved back to Ibiza with his third wife, Fay Brooke, an English photographic model, and their newborn son, Josh. This marriage ended in divorce. In 1967, Irving married Swiss/German artist Edith Sommer. They had two sons, John Edmond (aka "Nedsky") and Barnaby. He reportedly had a lengthy affair in the 1970s with the Danish actress and singer Nina van Pallandt.

On January 7, 1972, Hughes arranged a telephone conference with seven journalists, whose end of the conversation was televised. Hughes claimed that he had never even met Irving. Irving claimed the voice on the phone was an imposter, but it subsequently became clear that Irving was the fraud.

The Irvings confessed on January 28, 1972. They and Suskind were indicted for "conspiracy to defraud through use of the mails" and pleaded guilty on June 16. Irving spent 17 months in prison, where he stopped smoking and took up weightlifting. He voluntarily returned the US$765,000 advance to his publishers. Edith, a.k.a. "Helga", served prison sentences in the United States and in Switzerland.

In July 2005, filming began in Puerto Rico and New York on The Hoax, starring Richard Gere as Irving, Alfred Molina as Suskind, and Marcia Gay Harden as Edith. On March 6, 2007, Hyperion reissued Clifford Irving's The Hoax in a movie tie-in edition. The film, directed by Swedish filmmaker Lasse Hallström, opened on April 6, 2007, with a DVD release following on October 16. The majority of reviews were favorable.

In spring 2012, the movie rights to Irving's nonfiction book, Fake!, were optioned by Steve Golin and Anonymous Content LLP. Irving was commissioned to write a screenplay for the movie. In 2015, Anonymous Content's option for the book's dramatic rights expired.

In 2012 Irving formatted and placed 12 of his books, including one unpublished novel, for sale on Kindle and Nook. In 2014 he added six books to the total, including his prison journal. Sales were brisk. Irving was open about it, and offers the text of the hoax autobiography for sale in book form. In May 2014 Irving launched his official website, cliffordirving.com.

In November 2014 the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas announced that they had acquired all of Irving's literary and personal papers. The archive includes material from more than 50 years, from 1954 to 2012. Among the trove is Irving's correspondence with lawyers, publishers, colleagues and friends such as Graham Greene, Robert Graves and Irwin Shaw, his personal diaries and prison journals, many manuscript drafts, legal documents from lawsuits and from his 1972 bankruptcy, portions of his Howard Hughes manuscript and extensive handwritten notes and musings. It fills 20 boxes in the research center archive.