The Amazing Howard Hughes emerged from one of the strangest publishing scandals of the 1970s. While writer Bob Thomas was working with Hughes's former business partner Noah Dietrich on a legitimate biography, Clifford Irving's purported Hughes memoirs had already created enormous confusion in the marketplace. Irving claimed to possess Hughes-authorized diaries, and the resulting book caused publishers and readers to doubt competing accounts of the intensely private aviation magnate. Thomas and Dietrich struggled to find a publisher for their own manuscript until Irving's material was exposed as fabricated; Fawcett then moved quickly, releasing the legitimate book and printing one million copies, although only about a third sold, a failure Thomas attributed largely to the damage caused by the hoax.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1970s
The 1972 Howard Hughes Autobiography Hoax That Nearly Buried His Own Biography
Howard Hughes and Clifford Irving / 1970s
The Amazing Howard Hughes emerged from one of the strangest publishing scandals of the 1970s. While writer Bob Thomas was working with Hughes's former business partner Noah Dietrich on a legitimate biography, Clifford Irving's purported Hughes memoirs had already created enormous confusion in the marketplace. Irving claimed to possess Hughes-authorized diaries, and the resulting book caused publishers and readers to doubt competing accounts of the intensely private aviation magnate. Thomas and Dietrich struggled to find a publisher for their own manuscript until Irving's material was exposed as fabricated; Fawcett then moved quickly, releasing the legitimate book and printing one million copies, although only about a third sold, a failure Thomas attributed largely to the damage caused by the hoax.
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