Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He Was Lying The Whole Time // The Clifford Irving Scandal

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

In 1972, American novelist Clifford Irving orchestrated one of the most audacious literary frauds of the 20th century by concocting a completely fabricated autobiography of the notoriously reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes.

Did you know there was a guy who wrote a fake book about a celebrity, and he made over $760,000 from it? Now, this starts with this guy, Clifford. And Clifford is 40 during this time, and he lives in Abiza, Spain, and he writes novels for a living. And he's moderately well-known, he's written a few somewhat successful books, and he's doing pretty okay for himself. But he's living in Abiza, which isn't cheap. And he lives kind of an expensive bohemian lifestyle. And he's got a family to support, and he's got a mistress to impress. So he needs money.

Plus, he'd really like to write a best-selling book that makes him a household name. And so one day, in 1970, he comes up with an idea that's going to make all that happen for him. So he's at home reading an article in Newsweek, and that is when he learns about this guy, Howard Hughes. And Howard Hughes is a famous billionaire, aviation pioneer. and Hollywood producer. Howard Hughes also has untreated, undiagnosed, obsessive, compulsive disorder. And he's gone a bit mad and he spends most of his time hiding out in a blacked out room of a hotel penthouse. And he makes almost no contact with the outside world. The public hasn't seen him in a long time. In fact, he hasn't been seen in public in about 12 years.

So Clifford is reading this article about how reclusive Howard Hughes is and that is when he gets an insane idea. What if he tells everyone that he's ghost writing an autobiography for Howard Hughes and that Howard has agreed to do it? Then he can just make up the entire story, publish it, and boom, he's going to get all the fame and money that he wants. And Howard, he isn't going to object to this because that would require him to come out of hiding and he definitely isn't going to come out of hiding. Perfect plan. What could possibly go wrong? So Clifford gets to work. He starts by by forging letters in Howard's handwriting to make it seem like they've both been sending letters back and forth. Then he goes to his publisher, McGraw-Hill, who he's worked with on his previous books.

And he tells them that he's been in communication with Howard and that Howard has agreed to let him ghost write his autobiography. And he tells him it's going to sell so well and that they're all going to make so much money. And to prove that he's been in communication with Howard, he shows them the forged letters. So then they do the deal. Clifford signs a contract and McGraw-Hill gives him a $760,000 advance for the book. Not only that, but Life magazine pays him about $250,000 for the magazine serialization rights, while Dell Publishing pays him $400,000 for the paperback rights. And so, without writing a single word of this fake book, Clifford has secured a few deals worth about $1.4 million.

dollars total. So now the problem is he's actually got to go and write this book. He's now under contract. Now, Clifford has a friend helping him out with this scheme, and Clifford and his friend start going through any material they can find on Howard, newspaper archives, old magazine articles, old interviews with him, whatever they can get. And during this process, they discover another author previously wrote a biography about Howard and it was never published. So they get a copy of this unpublished biography, and they start copying whole sections of it to use in their book. And pretty quickly, they put together a manuscript. And during all this, Clifford is telling the editorial team at McGraw-Hill that he needs to travel to different countries to interview

Howard, because Howard is an unpredictable nomad who constantly moves between hotel penthouses. And so he tells them that he needs extra money for these travel expenses, so they pay him. And so he travels around to places like the Bahamas and Puerto Rico and Mexico. And of course, he isn't meeting up with Howard. Howard doesn't know him. He's actually using some of those trips to meet up with his mistresses. And so all of these shenanigans go on for a lot. while. And so it's now 1971. And

by this point, some journalists become aware that Clifford is allegedly ghost writing Howard Hughes's book. And these journalists are like, wait a minute. Is this guy legit? Because some of them had personally tried to interview Howard themselves in the past, but he wouldn't

cooperate with them. He's not that kind of guy. So if he wouldn't cooperate with them, why is he suddenly agreeing to work with Clifford? Now, at this point, the book has already been announced publicly, and it's a big announcement. So the news makes its way to the inner circle of Howard Hughes. And Howard Hughes's inner circle lets him know, and he gets pissed. Like, what the fuck?

He's not publishing an autobiography? He hasn't spoken to anyone named Clifford. And he knows he's got to fix this. So he calls up a top editor at Time Life, the last journalist to have interviewed Howard face-to-face. And Howard straight up tells this guy, this Clifford person is full of shit. Now, that should be enough to expose Clifford as a liar and destroy his entire book deal. However, it doesn't. Because Howard had been in hiding for so long and he's such an unpredictable eccentric guy

that executives at McGraw-Hill and Life magazine start thinking that maybe Howard really did have contact with Clifford. And maybe now he's denying it because he changed his mind and because, you know, he's a little bit crazy. And so, instead of killing Clifford's story, McGraw-Hill and Life magazine issue a definitive official joint public statement to the media, and they back Clifford's version of events. And this, of course, makes this a huge news story. I mean, two of the world's largest publishing giants are basically calling this famous bill. A billionaire, a liar. So from his private blacked-out penthouse in the Bahamas, Howard coordinates a televised press conference, where he will call in to these seven reporters in Los Angeles, and the world will be able to hear him deny all of this in his own voice.

And on this televised phone call, Howard basically says, I never even heard of this fucking guy. Now, that should, once again, put this all to rest. But it still doesn't. Because then Clifford goes and does an interview on 60 minutes, and he argues his case, and he says that he's actually telling the truth. So now, the public, they don't know what to believe. Who's telling the truth here? And at this point, it's starting to look like Clifford might actually get away with all of this. Until...

Okay, see, part of the advance that McGraw-Hill gave Clifford for the book, specifically $650,000 of it, was supposed to be sent directly to Howard Hughes as payment for agreeing to do the book. But of course, Clifford doesn't give it to Howard Hughes. He takes that money for himself, which is a crime. Not only that, but excerpts of the book are leaked. And the guy who wrote that unpublished biography of Howard Hughes, he wrote, he wrote. reads these excerpts, and he's a journalist himself, and he recognizes that this is his own writing. So now he knows that Clifford straight up plagiarized his unpublished book. And he gets super pissed off, and he goes right to the offices of Life Magazine and McGraw-Hill, and he shows them

proof that Clifford's book copied his. Not only that, but around this time that all of this is going public, one of Clifford's mistresses comes forward, and she tells the media that, Some of those trips where he was supposed to be meeting with Howard, he was actually meeting with her. And so now, poor Clifford has no choice but to come clean and admit that he conned everyone. And he doesn't get arrested for this, but he does turn himself in. And I don't have a mugshot, but here is a picture of him. And so ultimately, Clifford ends up taking a plea deal and he gets sentenced to two and a half years in prison, while his friend who helped him out also takes a plea deal and he gets six months in prison,

while Clifford's wife, who also helped him out in this scheme, takes a plea deal and gets sentenced to two years in prison.