The Hoax

by Clifford Irving

  “No,” Graves said, “I’d rather read in sequence.”

  But the interruption broke his concentration and I saw him flip through the appendix material. He read for ten minutes, carefully, then brought the appendix over to the desk where Maness sat, poker-faced. I was unable to sit still and I wandered from the sofa to the side of the desk, where I had slipped photographs of Edith, the kids, and our finca under the glass top. I saw what Graves had passed to Maness: the transcript of the 1958 Hughes-McCulloch telephone conversation. Maness read the first page, then looked up at me sharply.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “From Hughes. It looks to me like it’s verbatim. The funny thing is, he left out all of McCulloch’s remarks.”

  Maness read it, line by line, all twenty pages of double-spaced manuscript. In Pompano Beach I had retyped it, changing the paragraphing and punctuation so that it would read almost precisely like the transcribed conversation McCulloch had sent to James Shepley, but appear as if it had been taped on Hughes’s end rather than McCulloch’s. The McCulloch version, I assumed, had been one of the private documents removed from the Time-Life files prior to my seeing them the previous June. Graves stood at one side of the desk, passing him the pages after reading them a second time. Maness finished his reading, ignoring me completely.

  He looked up at Graves and said: “It’s good.” Graves nodded and went back to the love seat. That’s it, I thought, hardly able to suppress a smile. That’s the clincher. They’re hooked.

  It was almost lunchtime. Albert Leventhal had been skimming and had dipped into the appendix, too, where he fastened on the six-page memo dealing with the shaping of Jane Russell’s nipples for the filming of Macao. It had been appended to the Dietrich manuscript, and I had worked it into Howard’s tale of his stewardship at RKO. “My God,” Leventhal said. “You’ve got to read this. This is the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever read. This has got to be in the book. Hughes gave this to you?” he asked me.

  “He was really proud of it,” I explained. He wanted to prove that he hadn’t run RKO at a distance, that he was really on top of things and involved in the day-to-day direction of the studio.”

  “But he’s crazy,” Leventhal said. “He keeps repeating himself over and over again.”

  “He wanted to make his point absolutely clear.”

  “It’s the most hilarious thing I’ve ever read.”

  “No,” said Beverly. “The story of his shoplifting with Bob Gross is funnier.”

  “And the cookies,” I interjected. “The cookies he gave to the guy when he was making Scarface.”

  “Let’s break for lunch,” Leventhal said. “Can we order it up here?”

  “There’s a restaurant downstairs,” Graves suggested. “I think we should have something of an atmosphere of celebration.”

  “You like the material?” I asked quietly.

  “Like it?” he said. “It’s fantastic.”

  The readings continued all week. Graves and Maness were by far the most diligent; they skipped nothing and by Tuesday evening had finished all 950 pages of transcript plus my 49-page appendix, which explained some of Hughes’s more esoteric references and also related some of the tales he had told me when the tape was not running. Graves said: “We’re picking up our option. That’s firm. It’s an amazing piece of work.” He extended his hand and said, warmly and sincerely: “Congratulations.”

  I tried to be humble. “All I did was ask the right questions.”

  “I can tell you this much,” Graves went on. “It’s the most exciting and revelatory first-person story that Life will ever have published, at least while I’ve been there. And there’s something else.” He turned to Beverly and Albert. “We pride ourselves at Life that we can take any book, no matter how long it is, and gut it.”

  “What do you mean by ‘gut’ it?” I asked.

  “We can excerpt anything in ten to twenty thousand words and get the guts, the meat, the heart, out of it. But we can’t gut this book. It’s impossible. There’s too much material in it — it’s packed. We’re going to have arguments up at Life day and night about what to put in and what to leave out.”

  On Wednesday the contingent from Dell Publishing showed up. It had taken some arm-twisting on Beverly Loo’s part to get them to come. They had read more than a hundred pages of the Eaton “autobiography” and they had been offered, through a writer named Ovid Demaris, a book by Robert Maheu which evidently contained dozens of private memos from Hughes to his erstwhile major-domo in Nevada. The Dell people included Helen Meyer, president of the company; Bud Toby, Vice-President; and Ross Claiborne, Executive Editor. Ross was the only one of the three to read the transcript from beginning to end, but Bud Toby, after going through the first two hundred pages (which Dick and I had deliberately made dull to give a sense of mounting revelation to Hughes’s later ramblings), turned to Beverly and said: “You don’t have to worry about the competition.” He was referring to Eaton and Demaris. “This is the real McCoy.”

  Some time Tuesday or Wednesday, Harold McGraw himself showed up at the Elysee. He hadn’t wanted to come and at the beginning could not understand why I wouldn’t deliver one of the transcripts to the executive offices of McGraw-Hill. I relayed a message to him through Beverly Loo. “I can come up with it,” I told Harold, “and you can read it in my presence. But if I’m up there at McGraw-Hill with you, then there’s no one to guard the shop at the Elysee. Hughes won’t let any readings take place unless I’m physically present. That’s in the contract. I’ll come up, but then the editors can’t read that day.”

  Harold agreed to come.

  The legal contingent also arrived, in the person of Faustin Jehle. Leventhal had been worried about libel, in particular the passages dealing with the Nixon “loan” and similar favors to other politicians. Jehle read selected passages and then began skimming. “Jesus,” he said, “it’s full of libel. He’s telling a story here about the president of Lockheed stealing candy and cookies from a supermarket …”

  “Yes, but Bob Gross is dead,” I explained. “You can’t libel the dead, can you?”

  “And then there’s this Colonel Kuldell who stole from Hughes Tool, according to Hughes, back in the forties.”

  “He’s dead, too.”

  “There’s this story about how Ramon Navarro attacked him sexually at Mary Pickford’s house. He’s not dead, is he?”

  “I’ll have to check it out,” I said. I knew, of course, that Navarro had been murdered a few months previously in Hollywood. Jehle named a few other individuals whom Hughes had defamed or libeled. “All dead,” I said.

  Jehle nodded. “That’s a lucky break. Seems to me that most of the people we might have to worry about suing us are dead.”

  I nodded agreement.

  “But our main problem,” he said, “is this man Noah Dietrich. What about him?”

  “He’s 83 years old. Hughes says he’s dying.”

  “Well, I don’t wish any harm to him, but if he’s dying I hope it’s painless and soon, because he can give us a lot of trouble.”

  I repeated this story later to Dick, who said: “Tell them not to worry about Dietrich. When he reads the book and sees that we’ve swiped those stories from his own autobiography, he’ll have a heart attack on the spot.”

  The passages about Richard Nixon, however, weighed heavily on the corporate mind of the executives at McGraw-Hill. Harold McGraw had read the Nixon story and had evidently taken it up with some of his fellow executives. Beverly gently explained it to me: McGraw-Hill did a fair amount of business with the U.S. Government. If Mr. Nixon were offended and if Mr. Nixon were re-elected, that business might suffer. “We may have to cut out that whole story of the loan.”

  I was incensed, and after a talk with Ralph Graves I called Beverly at her office. “You can’t cut it,” I said. “Howard will have a fit and I won’t let you do it. It’s the truth and it’s got to stay. Ralph says Life will include it in their ex
cerpts. You’re going to look pretty gutless if they print it and McGraw-Hill doesn’t.”

  “They can’t do that legally,” Beverly pointed out. “They can only excerpt from our final text.”

  I thought for a minute, then said: “In that case I’ll sell them the Nixon chapter as a separate article. Howard wants it printed, and there’s not a damn thing in the contract that can stop me from doing it.”

  Beverly called later.

  “They’d like you to bring the transcripts to the 32nd floor, to the Board Room.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?”

  “Everybody from Shelton Fisher on down.” Shelton Fisher was President of McGraw-Hill, Inc., the parent corporation of McGraw-Hill Book Company, of which Harold McGraw was president. “I’ve never even met Shelton Fisher,” Beverly said, obviously pleased at the prospect of doing so. “And John McGraw, Chairman of the Board, and Bob Slaughter and Joe Allen, and everybody.”

  “Then I’d better wear a jacket and tie.”

  “Oh, I think so,” Beverly said, alarmed. “Definitely.”

  The meeting took place on Monday morning in one of the executive conference rooms — no long table, just sofas and leather easy chairs and portraits of defunct McGraws on the walls. I had selected what I thought were key passages in the transcripts, a kind of crash course in Hughesiana. I distributed them to the various executives. Joe Allen, Executive Vice-President, read the section about Hughes’s early sex life. There were tears visible in his eyes. John McGraw read the sections dealing with Hughes’s financial manipulations to save TWA. “Very complicated,” was about all the comment he was willing to offer. Finally Shelton Fisher came to the passage in which Hughes describes his theory about eccentricity. Dutifully, at Shelton’s command, every man in the room read them and nodded his head: now they understood what Howard Hughes was all about. The readings continued, as in the Elysee, punctuated by chuckles, guffaws, wrinkled brows, and head-shakings of astonishment, pity, and admiration.

  “I don’t see that there’s anything here particularly vulgar,” Shelton Fisher said. “I don’t think we have to worry about the language.” This was directed to Harold McGraw, who shrugged but accepted the dictum. Beverly Loo sat in one corner of the room, looking pleased. Fisher and one or two of the others read the Nixon passages.

  “I think,” Fisher said, “that we have an obligation, as publishers, to publish this book and not cut anything out, even if it is political.” I said nothing, but I gave Shelton Fisher full marks for that. He was a fearless publisher. He also summed up the general executive attitude toward Howard Hughes, gleaned from the two-hour reading session: “Well, he may be crazy, but he’s a hell of a man.”

  Later, at the Elysee, with a certain pride, Beverly related to me a discussion that had preceded the conference. Harold McGraw had spoken to Shelton Fisher late Friday afternoon. According to Beverly, Harold had said: “Irving is in town with the manuscript of the Octavio Project. I think it’s important enough for all of us on the executive level to read some parts of it, and Irving suggests Monday morning, because Octavio is putting pressure on us for some changes in the contract. He wants the advance raised from half a million to $850,000.”

  Fisher stared at him. “What in hell is the Octavio Project? And who in hell is this Octavio person that we should pay him half a million dollars in the first place?”

  “You see how well the secret was kept?” Beverly said to me. “Even the president of the corporation didn’t know.”

  By the time everyone concerned had read the transcript, or at least important sections of it, McGraw-Hill’s deadline was fast approaching. It was time to “press,” as I had said to Dick after our hot roll with the dice in the Britannia Beach, and I showed Beverly Loo and Albert Leventhal the two letters that Howard had supposedly given me in the Beach Inn, and also the check for $100,000 drawn against his account in the Credit Suisse. “His instructions were clear,” I said. “If McGraw-Hill won’t meet his terms, I’m to find a new publisher and pay back the entire advance.”

  “He’s blackmailing us,” Beverly said angrily.

  “Hell, no,” I waved the check at her. “He’s willing to pay back the money.”

  “We won’t take it. We’ll tear up that check if you give it to us.”

  “I don’t think you can do that,” I said quietly.

  “We want that book,” Beverly shouted. “Do you understand that? We want that book!”

  “Then it looks like you’ll have to pay for it. If you don’t, what choice do I have? I’ve got to go to another publisher. If I can’t find another publisher, and I doubt that I can in the time he’s given me, I’ve got to go back to Nassau and return his damn transcripts. And then I’m out. He kisses me off for the lousy $50,000 I’ve gotten out of it — and I’ve already spent $30,000 in expenses — and he’s got the transcripts. All he has to do is eliminate my questions and he’s got the raw material for an autobiography. He gives it to another writer, and I haven’t got a leg to stand on.”

  “You could sue him,” Beverly snapped.

  “Sure,” I sighed. “I’ll sue Howard Hughes. Wish me luck.”

  “We’ll sue him,” she countered. “That’s a breach of contract. We have a bona fide contract with him.”

  “No, you don’t,” I reminded her, sadly. “You have a contract with me. I have a contract with Howard. You can’t sue a man for breach of contract when you don’t have a contract with him. Don’t you see what a clever sonofabitch he is? He’s got us in a bind.”

  “Oh, no,” cried Beverly. “I know the way he does business now. But that’s not the way book publishers do business. Don’t forget, this is a gentleman’s business where everyone knows everyone else. It’s a fraternity, a club. If he breaks his contract with us” — it was difficult to disabuse her of the idea that Hughes and McGraw-Hill had a contract —” we’ll spread the word so quickly that he’ll never be able to get another publisher. No house will touch his goddam autobiography, I can guarantee you that. And you can tell him I said so. You may be scared of Howard Hughes, but I’m not, and neither is McGraw-Hill.”

  ‘There’s one publishing house that will touch it,” I said.

  “Which one?” she challenged me.

  “The publishing house that he’ll buy to publish this book.”

  “He wouldn’t do that,” Beverly decided.

  “I told him in Florida that you were pissed off and that you might fight him all the way. I told him about the publishing fraternity, too, and he said: ‘Bullshit. And if it’s not bullshit. I’ll buy a publishing house.’ Then he leaned back in his chair and said: ‘And the publishing house I buy might just be named McGraw-Hill, in which case all those so-called executives who are giving you such a hard time up there can count themselves lucky to get jobs running the elevators.’”

  “Oh, you can’t believe that kind of talk,” Beverly said, laughing.

  “With Hughes, anything is possible.”

  “He’d spend a hundred million dollars to buy a publishing company just so that he’d get an extra $350,000 as an advance on his autobiography?”

  “According to him it would cost a little over two hundred million. He’d need a controlling interest in the stock — it’s a publicly held company, don’t forget, listed on the Big Board. He knew all the figures.” I parroted them to Beverly, having lifted them earlier from the most recent issue of Standard and Poors’ Trendline.

  Beverly protested. “But that would be insane!”

  “Have you read the transcript of the interviews?”

  “Well, you know I have,” she said irritably.

  “Then you know what kind of man he is. He’s capable of anything.”

  “How can a man with two billion dollars be so greedy?”

  “He didn’t get to be a billionaire by being philanthropic. And it’s not just a question of money to him, it’s a question of pride. He feels McGraw-Hill diddled him, and I was a party to it, consciously or unconsciously.” I ove
rrode her burgeoning objections. “Look, I’m not saying he’s right. Basically he feels his autobiography is worth a million dollars. He’s come down to 850 as a favor to me and because I bugged the hell out of him and just wore him down. It’s a matter of pride. He says, ‘That’s what I’m worth and I won’t take a nickel less.’ He means it.”

  “He’s crazy,” Beverly kept repeating, and each time she said it, I replied: “He’s Howard Hughes.”

  That night I reported the conversation to Dick. “So what’s going to happen?” he asked anxiously.

  “They’ll stick to their $500,000,” I said. “They’ll never buy the story that Hughes is going to take over McGraw-Hill or any other publisher. But our plan worked. Not a peep out of any of them about the Eaton book. They’re so snarled up in their own worries that they’ve forgotten completely about the other thing.”

  “And how the hell do you explain Howard’s taking five hundred grand after all the fuss he’s made about raising the ante?”

  “He’s a totally unpredictable man. If they know anything, they know that.”

  The following day I had lunch at Sardi’s with Beverly and Albert. Albert told me what I had expected to hear:

  McGraw-Hill would under no circumstances meet Hughes’s demand for an additional $350,000, which would raise the total sum of the advance against royalties to $850,000. It was outrageous. McGraw-Hill had a contract with me, and I had a contract with Hughes, and McGraw-Hill would go to court on my behalf if Hughes wouldn’t play ball.

  “So what do I tell him when he calls?”

  “Read this letter to him,” Albert said, and handed me an unsigned draft copy of McGraw-Hill’s proposal. It was addressed to me at the Elysee Hotel, and read, in part:

  The notes and text materials that you supplied us with, and which we have read this past week, are superb and acceptable to McGraw-Hill.

  We were, however, startled and disturbed by the suggestion of Mr. Hughes that we scrap our existing contracts and substitute new ones calling for an additional guarantee of $350,000. As you know, these documents, which were hammered out with blood, sweat, and tears, are in our judgment completely equitable and valid.