Fake It and You'll Make It: Elmyr de Hory

been waiting to tell you this. George Washington's death. That's no. No, I know that sounds disrespectful for the nation's first president. I'm not saying that. I'm not making fun of his death, but rather, I'm kind of making fun of the state of medicine at the time, because George Washington went out and did this thing that like my mother and millions of other mothers have told you, which is, don't wear wet clothes or you'll catch your death. We wet clothes. Well,

that's essentially what happened to Washington. The story goes, he's out, he's like riding around on horseback and Mount Vernon. It's raining, cats, dogs, and everything else. He rides back to his house for dinner, but he's a hard head like me. He refuses to change out of his wet clothes, like I want to eat my steak wet, right, So he's sitting there, he's doing it. He gets sick, he gets a sore throat.

His doctors like, well, clearly we need to drain him of nearly half of his blood, and so they do. They drain him of forty percent of dudes blood. Now drained out, zombie Washington starts circling the drain. Right, he's about to die. Physicians aren't done. They're like, oh, though, this is we need him to gargles butter, molasses and uh looking around, vinegar butter. He's garland, butter, vinegar and molasses. And when that doesn't work, surprise, surprise, doctors are like,

you know what it is. We need to feed him beetles. So they feed him beetles, and then, surprisingly, eating beetles does not save the nations for his president. Three days after he gets sick, George Washington up and dies. So my point is, listen to your mother, don't sit around and wet clothes. It's a good, okay, ridiculous, And don't eat beetles. That is ridiculous. Do you want to know what else is ridiculous. I'm here for dedicating your incredible

talent to forging, only to be forged. Yes, this is a ridiculous crime. A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, cons it's always murder free and ridiculous that you know. I love a good art crime because for the most part, they're not violent or destructive. And since I'm convinced that much of the art world is a cover for money laundering, I usually don't feel so bad. I do feel bad. It's like a beloved or famous piece of art that

normally lives in a publicly available space is stolen or away. Yeah, but if it's like taken away to a Russian oligarchs mansion, yeah, that's terrible. Yeah. I don't like for the public to be robb to access to beautiful, important or historical items. We've talked about. Yes, let us keep our cara. But a private collector getting scammed count me in. Yeah. U. One of the great types of art crimes is forgeries. Yeah. And did you know that it's estimated that between and

of paintings in museums around the world are fakes. Yeah? I actually did that interview the FBI art guy. That's right, you saying that, and that blew my mind when I so pretend I just heard that. Holy wow. So what fascinates me about forgeries is that the perpetrators, they have artistic talent completely, you know, but the artist in their own rights, sometimes their own work just doesn't resonate with the world, or maybe they don't have the right contacts

to get recognition sure, or they're still alive. Other times they can basically only work from assignment, you know what I mean, Like, so they can only copy the art. Yeah, so they're not true artists. Um, they take direction. Let me tell you about a true artist. He had incredible talent on his own, but he was also an incredible mimic. And after World War Two, this artist went to Paris. One day in Lady Malcolm Campbell was visiting his house

and saw an ink drawing on the wall. She said she was certain it was a Picasso and she wanted to buy it, and he didn't tell her that it was his own work. He charged her less than the equivalent of like a hundred bucks for it. Not a bad payday on a drawing for an unknown artist. It pays to have rich friends. Is basically that he pretending like he also didn't know if it was a Picasso. Do we know that he He doesn't say one way, Oh yes, you know, just like like kind of he

passes it off as the real thing. But then he realizes that his copycat skills are his real talent. So he's broke, he's struggling, and he's able to make some cash and make someone happy. So it's a win win. Here, she thinks, like I scored, I had this beautiful Picasso drawing. Who was this man, sarin Um. This man was Wilfred Brimley. Yes, his name was Elmir do Hori. I referred to him as I referred to him as elmerd Hori before when I told you about Clifford. But I realized that that's

not how you say his name. Um. So he was the artist that Clifford Irving wrote the book about. He wrote a book called Fake exclamation Point, The Story of Elmir de Hori, the Greatest art forger of our Time. Um, I told you oas hoax fake. I told you that Tori was a piece of work and deserved his own episodes. Here it is so I should add that the best information on. This guy comes from Clifford Irving's book. Is it reliable though well to con man making two conman

making one great story. It calls into questions the materials presented as fact, but let's just say it is and enjoy the ride. So elm Arta Hori was actually born Elmer Albert Hoffman in Budapest, Hungary, in n six So he liked to tell people that he was from this family of aristocrats like bankers, financiers, top government officials, my mother,

the countess. He was actually from a very lovely, very middle class Jewish family, and um, they believed in his talent, so they sent him off for formal training at the nagy Banya Artist Colony. I'm probably not saying that right in Romania when he was only sixteen years old. Ye, based on how you said, I thought it was in Japan, so probably not. I'm totally saying it wrong. I'm sure

of it that that's my hidden talent. Um. So then he goes on to study at the Academy Hineman in Munich and then at Academy Lean in Paris, so he gets trained as a classical painter. In these places. There's a problem with that though no one's paying for class card. No, all these new experimental avant garde movements Cubism, Expressionism are all the rage in this kicking it. At that point, most of what he learned is outdated, it's useless, and the art community is just like, why, we don't even

care about the focus anymore. So the economy is also taking of time um, and it's starting to look like being an artist just isn't a way for him to make a living. But he's dedicated most of his life to it so far. Enter crime, always Door. Committed a bunch of minor crimes in Geneva in the late twenties and then into the nineteen thirties, just a little petty stuff here and there. And then at the beginning of World War Two he went back to Hungary. Dicey, right,

so he picked the other side. Well, he had a friendship there with this British journalist that was believed to be a spy, and so that raised red flags and he gets sent to a prison for political dissidents in Transylvania, and I have my suspicions about why they really sent him there, but more on that later. So while he's there, he paints a portrait of the prison camp officer, and they sparked this friend ship. He's just blown away by

his talent. So they eventually released a Hory. But then he gets him prisoned in a concentration camp for being gay and Jewish. And I think that's how he wound up in the Transylvanian prison in the first place. This World War one. He's at the during World War two. Okay, okay, So he gets sent to a concentration camp. He's tortured. They break his leg and then they transfer him because of this like terribly broken leg, they transfer him to

a Berlin prison hospital. He escaped because he noticed that the gate entrance to the hospital was open, so he like he's in pain, he grabs some crutches and just makes a break for it. Right, He goes out and he goes to the homeless some of his friends. They take him in and then he makes his way back to Hungary and he learns that his family home has

gone and his parents have been killed. It's horrible. So at the end of the of World War two, there's Dory selling fake Picasso sketches because who cares, That's what I say. But when you survive what hes vibe, I say, do whatever you want. He goes to Paris and then he's selling like these fakes. Good. Great, you get to do whatever you want. If you can count some rich person out of a few francs, more power to I

don't care. So the thing about Doris fake artwork, though, is that um he didn't try to reproduce existing works. He created new pieces in the style of famous artists. So he created works that did not exist but look like like they exactly. So he knew he was a great mimic. He started selling what he were calling Picasso pieces to art galleries all over Paris. He said that he was a displaced Hungarian aristocrat and he's just trying to survive by selling what was left of his family's estates.

This is what my family has left. Or he'd say that he got the Picasso, gave them to me. He was my friend before the war. I just want to I want to sell them. We all hung out. He sold a bunch of them of fakes in Sweden and that gave him enough cash to get a one way ticket to Rio de jannarro In. Say yes, cash out, my brother, he will survive and I love him for that, like he's just he's he cannot hold him down. So he still tried to make it as an artist with

his own work. But in the meantime the fakes were like paying the bill for him. So he visits the US on a three month visa. He's able to get a show there at the Lillanfeld Galleries in New York in and that was all his own work. Per Art News, this is what they said, Doris pieces struck quote the well known chord of the School of Paris, which is a way of saying yawn, not into it. He only

he sold one piece at the show. Um, like these would be good in a motel, right, So, despite how cruel the New York art world had been to him, he decides to make a go of it there. Um. He overstayed his visa and he lived in the US for the next twelve years, just by a smith. Um. He moved from New York to l A to Chicago to Miami, selling all his forgeries all good art markets and in America, right, he sells to galleries, museums, even

major A list celebrities. And by that I mean Ja jacobor yeah girl, He's moved beyond just Picasso sketches into serious works. He created fake originals from Madigliani, Matisse, and Renoir. The Madigliani's are fantastic, by the way, Yeah, they're incredible, They're beautiful. He created so many Madigliani pieces that Kenneth Wayne, the director of the Madigliani Project, had trouble compiling a comprehensive catalog of the artist's work. He's just doing there

are too many fakes distort through. So in seven uh Dori he goes to the Pearls Gallery in New York and it's open. It was opened by these brothers, Klaus and Frank. Pearls were these really well known European art dealers. They opened it in nineteen thirty seven and they displayed significantly P. E. R. L S. So they had all these really significant works of contemporary art they really brought out. They kind of helped foster Alexander Calder's work, George brock Brock,

and they had all of this. So Dori sold to quote unquote Picassos to Klaus Pearls, and later on in ninety two, he's in l A. Dori is selling his forgeries to galleries. There he ends up walking into the Frank Pearls gallery. So one of the brothers has a gallery in Beverly Hills, and one of the brothers meaning they're related, So Frank, so Frank Pearls. He's really interested in the pieces that Dori has, but he starts noticing that there are similarities between the pieces that it were

supposed to be created by different artists. Like he's just seeing these little threads. This is what Clifford Irving said in his book Fake Quote. The longer Pearls looked at the pictures, the more concerned he became. It was clear that something was wrong, and Pearls, worrisome of expression, discomforted Elmir. Pearls questioned Elmir about his address and other detailed personal information,

causing Elmir's nervousness to grow. Pearls then calmly placed the pictures back into the portfolio, tied the strings, and then suddenly through the mat at Elmir. Elmir was shocked by the unexpected action and was uncertain what to do next,

until Pearls ordered him to get out. To Pearl's surprise, Elmir asked, after being thrown out of the gallery, whether he thought the drawings were well done, Pearls replied, they certainly fooled me for a few minutes before ordering the counterfeiter away again at somehow weirdly heartbreaking that He's like, were they at least good? When he gets tossed out of the gallery, you have more heart than I do in that. To me, that just sounds like, come on, now,

what are we doing here? More and more galleries are

becoming suspicious because it's like there's little whispers right. So in order to get around this, he comes up with a bunch of aliases and starts doing all of his deals through the mail bad So what are some of his alias's Elmer Hoffman, Lament her Hoffman, Baron de Hory, Hory Cury, Harry Hory, Baron rain All Rain or Rain all Compe, They herd Sog, Baron de Bougaday, Baron von Bay, Elmer, Laslow, Dorey, Dory Bouten, Dory Bouten, Cassue Robert or Cassue, Charles, Louis

Curiel or Curiel Charles. He's he's just rolling the dice on these randoms. The awesome. In the mid fifties, he gets busted for the first time, not criminally, but in his world. Um, so he doesn't get tossed out of a gallery, but he gets marked as a con man

in the art world. I thought, busted up. No, well, he sold a Matisse supposed Matisse drawing to the fog Museum at Harvard, and when the sale was finalized, he said, oh, you know what, I also if you like those, I've got a Madigliani and a Renoir if you're interested in And they're like, so the curator is like, all right, let me lays him out. He takes She takes a closer look, and then just like Frank, pearls too much of a stylistic similarity between the Batists that should they

just purchased and the Madigliani and the ren Walk. So she refuses his offer, and not just that. Then she gets on the phone. She's starts reaching out to all the other museums. Hey, did you recently buy any art from like a smooth talk in European fella going by the name of e Renal. And then with those calls, the word gets out when we come back, I'll tell you how Elmire dealt with this development, Zaren We're back. Hey, you look at us, good ads right by the way,

I spent some of your money on this. Yeah, I'm gonna put your purse back in cand in my pocketbook. All right, well we'll see. Uh where where where was I before? We were so rudely interrupted by those phenomenal lots? Had just gotten busted down by those right. So he's selling Elmir do Hori, selling paintings inspired by famous artists, passing them off as designer originals, not designer and fosters. So he gets called out by a curator at Harvard,

and now everyone's wise to him. So a Chicago art dealer named James Faulkner, he bought some paintings from door in and then he found out they were fake. So he pressed charges for mail and telephone fraud because remember you said federal lawsuit, right, Um, don't do crime in the U S. Mail, Never stop your CMO. I'm not sure what became of that lawsuit, but he decided to head down Mexico way out of here. He goes to

Mexico City. He moves there, but he gets caught up with the cops there too, only this time it was Elmir getting conned because the Mexican police said that they thought he was involved in a man's murder, and he's like, I have I've never met the guy you're talking about. I have no idea that, right, I'm a different kind of crimer. So then the police try and extort him and his lawyer. Door pays his lawyer with one of his paintings, and the Federal him so he's like whatever,

I'm out of here. He leaves Mexico City comes back to the United States. When he gets back, he sees that the galleries were selling his forgeries for way more than he sold them for. Now. It just goes to show that the art dealers are willing to look the other way if they can make some money. If everyone kind of there's like the open secret of these aren't real. Yeah, they don't want other people to know that. But he's

also so Dori seeing this. But he's also a person of interest with the FBI, right, so he tries to lay low. He gets this like really meager apartment in l A. Tries to make a go of it as a legit artist and in order to sell paintings like we had to paint what the people wanted. Um and that meant, according to Clifford Irving's book, mostly paintings of pink poodles for interior decorators. Not what I thought you were going to say, Well, like, what a wild time

for interior decord totals? Was the pink poodle the live Laugh love Decalivin's day? Yes, I think so. Yeah. So things got bad in l A. It was a dark time for him, so he decided to move back to New York. According to Clifford Irving to Hoary through a party while living in New York, lavish super edgy stars like Marilyn Monroe show up, this Arthur Miller Monroe. Yes, so she's like she's out there with this kind of

like um crowd. Uh. And it was there that he met his future long term accomplice for non Legro, Yes, now legro he Okay, I have to pull up a pickle on His name is fern Lgro like grow the fern. Okay, So for non Legro right, Uh, this is what he looks like, right, He's like, he looks like he's like if Shooter Jennings and Rick Rubin had a kid and and the kids smells like mildew and they let River Phoenix raise him. Yes, it's amazing, So we'll put that

picture up. So for non Legro, Legro he's a gay man who married an American woman in order to get US citizenship. He was born in Egypt ninety one, so he's like, you know, thirty years younger than uh elmir uh. So from that moment on, Dehor and Lagro they're inseparable. After they meet at this car, I don't know, I don't think they were a couple. Umdhri seems like he was just like his older mentor sort of. Um he's but anyway, so he's got likedor's got Lagro being all

super groovy riding around with him. Good cover is like, you know what, let's move back to Miami. I like you look, screams Miami. So he convinces him to go down there with him and act as his quote unquote agent art agent. So Lagros was like, yeah, you know what, and um, I'll take a cut. That's more than an agent a little bit, right. So they moved to Miami. They start traveling all over selling these forgeries. Lagro was the face of the deals and Dhari just kept turning

them out. So um. In Miami, Lagro met a French Canadian teenager named Real Lissard. Yeah, and Lagro and Lessard they hook up and become lovers. Look, Lessard also becomes an accomplice in this. So now it's Lagro and Lessard who are the faces. They're the ones selling the paintings swan around the art world. Door creates these fake masterworks Lagro and Lessard. They're selling them all over the world for like the next thirteen years. Right. They create fake

stamps of authenticity. Uh. They acquired old art books and swapped out the pictures of actual works with art of art with the copies of his forgeries. You know. Um, when one time Lagro crosses the US border and his luggage gets inspected and um, customs officers they called an art experts to verify you know that what these were. He's telling customs they're just copies there, that's you know. Then the experts look at them and they're like, no,

these are authentic. So they fool the experts and Lagro has to pay attack. So he did. But he wanted that to happen because that got him actual US customs documentation verifying the optics. Yeah. Yeah, so nineteen nine to Hori is tired of like this loud violently relationship between Lagro and Lasard, like they're just yeah, it's a very fiery thing. He's not. He's like there for very much. So uh Dri goes back to Europe. He's like, I'm out of here. Who does he run into in Paris?

Lagadah spills a secret to Lagro. He's like, look, I still have a collection of fake painting stored in New York. And then Lagro but they're like in this locker you can't get into. So Lagro figures out how to steal them and sell them, and then convinces Dhry, like, get back in the game, start painting, We'll sell them. You can't help it. So in nineteen six they get back into it. In nineteen sixty two, Lagro and Lasard they convinced Hori to move to Ibiza. Right, but see Abisa

wasn't the party in vacation destination then that it is now? No, not Then At that time it was like a really poor rural island. Well it was like a haven for artistic exile. So the cost of living was really so cheap at that point. Yeah, it was like this misfits art commune. The landscape totally unspoiled because they don't have all this like development, living super cheap. Artists and thinkers who felt like they didn't have a place elsewhere in

the world went there and created a family. Um. It was also attractive for criminals and con artists to hang out because Franco was still in power then, so it was like a hideaway out of the reach of interpal So Franco was good for that way. So Lagro and Leguard they rent Dhri this gorgeous villa Anybisa, but they put him on a small allowance of about like four a month to keep him working creating more forged works of art. It was enough to let him live comfortably

and like also be free of risk. Did they live there, No, No, they had this like absolutely lavish life in Paris. Oh yeah, they they're living off the money that they're breaking in. Yeah. And so Dori he never gained financial independence, but he enjoyed the company of this like incredible colorful community. Right.

Lagro tells a different version of this. He said that Dare tricked him into believing he was a destitute and desperate aristocrat needing mercy, and in fact he was a con man who was wanted by interpolse this long list of aliases, all these crimes. Um. According to Lagro, Dori was compromised by convictions and expulsions from France, Switzerland, Italy,

Federal Germany, Great Britain, Mexico, US, Canada. I don't believe you know, so Dori is like no, actually, um, I made a mistake in taking Lagro into my confidence because he took advantage of exactly exploited. So nineteen sixty four Door, he's fifty eight years old, tired of the forgery business, his works getting kind of sloppy, hand line is weakening. And apparently he always looked old, like people said like there were quotes and people who were just like he

kind of just always looks like an old man. He was the thoms A Gura of the art world. Well, in galleries they start alerting inter Poll and Lagro is like when Interpo did things, Yes, it's like getting a little hot. So Lagros sends Doory to Australia for a year to hide out, and then he and Lessard they go to zero. Let's just be glamorous about this. You need to go to Demming's New Mexico. We're going to go to. They always like send him in the opposite direction.

So by nineteen sixty six, more and more of the paintings are proving to be fake. There's an art collector who was duped by the trio of them, an oil tycoon named Alger Meadows of the General American Oil Company, and his wife is the one who convinced him to start an art collection. Like they were traveling. Yeah, he's wearing a big cowboy hat like mid century movies. That's like the mark in Europe is always the Texan with oil money and his wife going over there, like they're

in every movie. They start, they start getting French Impressionists and like post Impressionist paintings. News breaks across the country within the art community about the discovery of all the fakes, and he's like, am I evictim? So Lagro like he's like, look when Lagros sold him. He's like, these have been authenticated by Ziffinispaires. You see this um the Art Dealers Association of America, they put their hat on, they stepped in.

They looked at fifty eight of the French paintings in Meadows home in Dallas, and they determined that thirty eight of them were faked and taste and like most of the paintings have been purchased from Lagro for about two million dollars. Right, don't forgetors living on four months in Abisa. I knew you were. And it's that hair that hat. Meadows found out that UM pieces that were in s

m u's Meadows Museum we're also forgeries. Remember Klaus Pearls Pearls visited the Meadows Museum and saw the master works on display and that they were actually Doris fakes, and he proclaimed aloud forgeries altogether forgeries so he could tell Meadows. Um. He gave the museum a million dollars to replace the fakes and did never tell anyone about like I was, I was never here. Um. He then was like, you know what, guys, we're gonna go get this. They want there,

like I'm demanding his arrest and prosecution. So Legro was like, so he hides out in the pizza at the villa, right, but then he says, you know what, I actually I own this place. You gotta get out of here. He tries to evict Tory. What in the world is Elmire going to do when we get back from this break. I'll let you know which fellow con man came into his life. He's Aaron. Are you ready to put some beef in this? Oh my god, I got my hot beef injector right here. Well we're talking Texas oilman. So

here's the beef. When we laughed off elmir Door, he was in the crosshairs of beefy Texas oilman. Alger Meadows. He'd been Meadows duped by Dhris fakes. He wants justice. Lagro. He's trying to boot do Hori from the lavish villa. Right that guy Door is living like this interesting life among the wealthy and eccentric in Ibizza. He's friends with international movie stars Aristocracy zaren. I want you to picture it.

It's nineteen sixty six. You're at a swinging party on the vast patio of a villa in Ibizza that overlooks the blue waters of the Mediterranean. The sun is out. People are lounging about in groovy swim costumes and calftans that they picked up in Algiers. Just across the water, there's a man making fish stew. It's a real party. I mean there's fish, so you're just they're visiting a friend, a wealthy failed son lay about that you went to prep school with. Yeah, I'm double fist and looking for him.

You're also a wealthy lay about fail son. You've decided to surf your way around the globe all on daddy's time, So you're cool moondoggye surf buddies. They don't know about your rich family, and they don't know that you've skipped off to a Beatsa to see your old pal. So there you, guys are. You're on this giant patio, sitting under an umbrella, drinking red wine. You're staring at a bodacious blonde in a tiny bikini. She's surrounded by a

bunch of men, but she looks terribly bored. You like squint, and you realize who she is. Ursula andrews, Oh damn right, So you elbow your friend, but he just like nods his head slightly. Two of these two other women, one you recognize right away. That's Marlena Dietrich. She's an aging beauty at this point still before me. I mean, she's like a beauty's aging. I thought, you're not beautiful to me. She's not an aging beauty to me. She's so, ALRL,

what what are you doing here? So she's still performing, right, but she's plagued by health issues and like the creeping threat of time aging. Zeren, just admit it. It's okay. We're all aging, you know, we're all born to die. Zeron um. So she's reclining on this lounge chair. She's wearing like a turban with a matching velvet cap. Tan. You watch she reaches in a pocket and pulls out a couple of pills and washes him down with champagne. Oh my girl, hand roll of smoke and watch her

do it again. The other woman looks familiar, but you can't quite place her. She's blonde, and she's like tan and sporty. Her laugh is almost musical. And your friend says that her name is Nina van Pollent. She's a Danish singer. Okay, okay, okay. So then next next to Nina is a man. He's wearing like a loose linen top that's all unbuttoned. Um. He's reclining on a lounge chair looking out at the sea. You watch as an old man approaches him. The old man's a small fellow

with like a cheerful face, but sad eyes. He's decked out in a cravat and a Kashmere sweater. So all the fabrics are so luxurious on this patio. So you try and listen in, but there's too much chatter from the people around you. And like you ask your friend who those men are? You're tired of looking at Ursula Andrews. Who are those men? He's like the guy laying down as Clifford Irving. He's a writer, that old guy. He's

a painter. Everyone loves him. So you just watched Elmer Dohr make his last gasp effort looking for help from someone who would later be a fellow con artist, Clifford. Here's what Clifford Irving had to say. Quote. At the time I wrote the book, Elmir was in trouble a Texas oil tycoon Alger Hurtle Meadows had bought more than forty paintings from the two villains who were selling Elmir's works. Meadows donated them to SMU, but first he showed them

at a Galla party in Dallas. When you can view Elmire's paintings in a group Matisse, Picasso, Madigliani, etcetera, there's something more obviously wrong with them than just seeing one or two, the discerning I can see that the same hand guided the brush. Paintings disappeared from the walls of art galleries and museums and were hurried off to back rooms and sellers to weather out the storm. Worse, the French police launched their own investigation into his work. Elmir

was frightened. He came to Miani Beazza and said, I'm going to tell you who I am and what I've done, and you'll be shocked. Well I wasn't shocked. I was surprised and amused. He proposed that I write some magazine articles in a book that would help him with his legal fees and give him a nest egg for the dangerous future. I called my publishers in New York, McGraw hill, and they snapped it up. So he's gotten McGraw hill doing his bidding back then, is this kind of really

good writer? Yeah, he's a great writer. So August eight door he gets convicted by the Spanish court for crimes of homosexuality not being able to show means of legitimately supporting himself, which like, that's a crime, and so we've got to like that that's a crime and consorting with known criminals, referring to LaGrow. So he gets sentenced to two months and an Abizsa prison. Why was he not

charged with forgery? Well, there was no proof he ever created any of the art in question on Spanish, Soil was just about to say they didn't find the man or the studio. Well, and also he denied ever signing the fakes with the artist's name, which is a key legal point because it's not a crime to imitate an artist until you put the name on it, right, So it's only signing the name that makes it a forgery.

It wasn't possible to prove if the artist signatures that appeared on the paintings were done by Dori who denied it, or Lagro. Oh that's an interesting rinkle actually, because you'd have a really hard time proving it without like either a confession or somebody saying I watched him do it, and that exactly so Dori. He gets released from prison in October of sixty eight and expelled from Abisa for a year. So by the end of that year he comes back and he is a celebrity on the island.

They love him. He's already a beloved local character, but the whole mess makes him an absolute star's phenomenal. Oh yeah, they're like he got busted. This is great, he's even more interesting now, Yes, exactly. So this is what Irving had to say. Many of us artists expats were poor to varying degrees. And I remember I once asked Elmer to lend me a hundred dollars, telling him i'd pay him back when a check from my publisher arrived. He'd heard that story so many times before from so many others.

With great reluctance, he loaned the cash to me, and he was flabbergasted. When I repaid the loan a few weeks later, tears came to his eyes. That's because he was always being used. He was gay, and he liked young men, so he had to pay one way or

another all the time for friendship and love. So here he's got this great community, but they're always people like taking a piece of him, and Clifford Irving like they connect because he's just like there, he's seeing him as just a person to person um and outside of out that I think right. And so here though, so we have like this troubled time nineteen sixty nine, though, Doory meets Mark Forgy, who was twenty one, twenty years old. He meets him on the beach in a bisa, and

the two became very close. Doory taught Forgy about art and graceful living, just because Dory had taste well and he had just this incredible, vast knowledge of art history just as everything with that, the finer things in life exactly, So he just kind of like leads Forgy. In an interview with The New York Times, for he was quoted as saying he was more of a father than my actual father. He was concerned with my future. And so finally he's got someone who's like seeing what he gives

and then giving back. Yeah. So Clifford Irving's book becomes an eventual success, and in nineteen seventy four it was adapted into an Orson Wells movie, f for Fake. No Way, Yes Way for Fake is a docu drama, So that means that Dry and Irving actually appear in it. Oh my god. The whole thing is like a film essay where Wells muses on the value of art. I've never seemed I read a bunch of quotes from this we need to have our ridiculous crime film Club. Yes, we

do so. In the movie, Dori asks what makes his work inferior to the works by the artists he was supposedly inspired by. M His stuff fooled experts worldwide, and they brought joy to the owners for a fraction of the cost of the real thing. But then that's presuming that, like they enjoyed the art itself and not just the prestige of owning a name. Yeah, that's that's leaving out a big part of it. So Wells said that since most of the art world is based on duplicity, illusion

and trickery, did Dori and his accomplices actually do anything wrong? Well? Wrong, and these are great, you know, I mean, I know what art was trying to say. I would say that if you're intentionally fooling somebody, you know that that is wrong. But at the same time, the question of how wrong is it. You're not really hurting them, And we are all constantly being tricked into capitalist society and exploited and

misled and so forth. So when you start to consider the full context of where this is occurring, this isn't like in a kindergarten classroom and one child lie to another child said this is food. Another kid ate it. Now, like that would be a bad dropping millions of dollars on artwork. You're not already kind of dancing with the devil, like you know, like that it's questionable exactly, And you're trying to get over on them too. Like on both sides you have people trying to get over on each other.

So that's why I don't feel too bad. They're trying to get a deal. They're trying to go like when they hear like, oh, you've got this Picasso and you've fallen on hard times, they're exploiting this person has fallen on hard time. So it turns out that person also three one's deluding each other. Everyone's tricking each other. Scorpion

striking a snake. I don't care. So once again, but now as a celebrity, Dhry tries his hand at earning a living as a legitimate artist, and he's now a recognized figure in the art world and kind of well, he's like this anti hero in the anti establishing. Yeah, he fooled everybody. They're loving this, but he wasn't able to make the money that he was on his own artwork as he was doing the forgeries. Um. And then to make matters worse, France is again trying to extradite

him from Spain. So he learns this from Mark Forgy, and Hori says, I'm gonna overdose on sleeping pills and he asks Forgy to respect his decision and not revive him. And so Forgy he didn't want him to die, right, so um, he takes him to the hospital, but he dies in Forgy's arms at the hospital. Um. They've been friends for six years, right, So it's December eleventh, ninety six. He dies or does he? Wait? What death? His death is shrouded in mystery. So here's what Clifford Irving had

to say. The story I heard from reliable sources was that he had concocted a plan with his then boyfriend to fake his death. Elmir would take an overdose of sleeping pills at five minutes to ten, and the boyfriend was supposed to come home at tend sharp to save Elmir's life in a timely manner, but he didn't come back until midnight, and then it was too late. I do know that Elmir was about to be extradited to France, and he was fearful that for non Lagrox would have

him killed in prison. I knew Lagro a man with the scruples of a sewer rat, and he was certainly capable of murder. Elmir thought that if he nearly committed suicide, the Spanish authorities would take pity on him and cancel the extradition to the Beast deal. It was a naive concept. The Spanish government wanted to get rid of Elmir. They

were fascist, they don't care. So four, he's denying all this, but there is that strong theory that it was basically an accidental overdose that he wanted to just use it as kind of cry for help. Now you can't extradite me. Why did dehy do? Why did he do what he did?

Why did he get overall, not just with at the end of his life, but like overall, I mean, it seems to me that he basically he gets a rough or unfair start in life in terms of all of who he is and all of his identities and all of his his family's existence becomes reasons for him to be challenged to continue existing. So then he, you know it, could become a great artist at that point because he has a lot to say, but instead he needs to survive, so he learns to become a great imitator rather than

a great artist at that moment. From the point on, he never really able to find his own voice, but as as you said, a great mimic, so he becomes the booth beautiful choir singer ever. But it's not who do you want acquired? Everyone has their notions of why he did this, and it's like anyone who hears the story is going to come up with theirs. And since we can't ask him, and if we could ask him,

there's no telling if he would tell the truth. Right, Here's what Forgy said, that's who I believe Elmir was always attempting mightily to champion the intrinsic merit of art, as opposed to having a name tag on it. Huh, I don't find that that part. I don't believe. This is what Clifford Irving said. It's a World War two refugee mentality, which is what you were saying. He never thought he'd be rich, but he needed money to survive and still keep some prideful identity as a painter. Survival

is the name of the game. He justified by naming all the great artists in history who had copied and faked. He knew his art history. There were many, and they were young and poor. They had to eat. So that's you know, I'm but this is also this is what something else that Irving said about him. Alas our friendship ended, many people thought my portrait of Elmir was sympathetic. I certainly meant it to be. But Elmir didn't like that I quoted some French dealer calling him quote a charming crook.

He didn't appreciate that kind of raw truth. The tail in cold black and White did not flatter him sufficiently. He demanded I make changes. I refused. He stopped speaking to me personally. I loved Elmir as a friend, although I didn't trust him, and I portrayed him as a sophisticated, elegant, intelligent, sad and exploited man. I understood his plate. He was one of my first gay friends, and he and talked about the problems of being an older gay man that

was foreign to me before then. So they have this really interesting but I can see where he's crafted this great illusion of who he is, and to cut to the heart of it. He's a charming crook, is painful and also it I mean, it seems like dignity is the thing that he's been hanging onto it from the point of being in the concentration camp on and that

isn't a direct attack on his dignity. Everything else is a is an attack on identity and things that are more elusive and more like debatable in terms of someone else can have an opinion, but his dignity is his, and that challenges his sense of who he is and his his dignity, which is the only thing that seems to that's the one. Yeah, Because if you craft an illusion and someone comes after the illusion, you just wipe

away into another. It doesn't matter. So Mark Forgy, he continues to honor and preserve the memory of his friend and companion as caretaker of doris legacy. He created an exhibit of DRI's work at the Hillstrom Museum of Art in St. Peter, Minnesota, UH. He wrote a memoir for he did called The Forger's Apprentice, Life with the World's most Notorious Artist, and that was adapted into a play

and then a musical which is amazing. And then art exhibits exist today specifically showcasing forgeries, and Forgy lends Dory pieces to those. Um here's an incredible end cap for this story. Forgy at one point learned that there was a business of forging forgeries, so paintings by Dory listed at a New Zealand auction house had to be taken down after it was discovered that the pieces were forgeries

of Doris forgeries. The forgery the Forger. Well, and it doesn't help too that his partner's name is Forgy, and I'm like stumbling around, so Forgy, the whole situation is very Forgy. Forgy said the topic quote came up only one time in conversation Forger Studio doing an impress. He said, quote we both contemplated that for a moment and then

laughed at the far fetched notion. Yeah, well, so auctioneer Andrew Griggs said, quote, we were astonished to find that there was a market in faking Faker's artwork, going on to say that he'll be sure to alert others in the industry of the Khan. The paintings that were thought to be Doris works were actually painted by Ken Talbot, a London bookmaker. This is what Clifford had to say about Ken Talbot. Quote. Ken Talbot was a London crook and a bookmaker who in reproduced and published my nineteen

sixty eight biography Fake, calling it Enigma. His hardback edition includes a quote preface by Clifford Irving, not a word of which I wrote, like they're all getting a piece of theirs come back to them, Bitter Medicine, an introduction by Talbot himself that is mostly half truths and lies, and a center color section of supposed Dory paintings that Talbot busily tried to sell as genuine Tory fakes of Matisse, Picasso, Madigliani.

At all. I have no idea who painted them. Talbot was a dangerous man, and if he were still alive, I wouldn't dare write these comments I gave this. I give this eighty dollar book a second star only because it included my text that of the original Fake is worth reading. Fake is for sale at five on Kindle and Nook. It's worth two stars because because my stuff sent it, by the way, by mine for five Kindle.

I love the forgeries of a forgery. I mean this is like when I do an impression of your doing an impression of your brother doing an impression of Steve Harvey. It is it's like, it's this like, it's like it's just as wrong. So here's a good take on it. This is what reporter David Holzer of the Budapest Business

Journal had. The same. Hungarians delight in listing the admittedly startling number of their countrymen and women who have soared the heights of excellence in the world outside the country. Quite rightly, Dori exemplifies another kind of Hungarian genius, one that makes his skill cunning and the survival instinct to make life tap dance to the tune only you here. This quality is best summed up in an expression taught to me by none other than Robin Marshall, editor of

this newspaper. Hungarian is the only person who can go into a revolving door behind you and come out ahead of you, he once told me, though he takes no credit for having come up with the idea. For most of his life, Elmir dehor came out of that revolving door well ahead of those who thought they had got one up on him, until well he didn't. Maybe it's believed that door still has hundreds of thousands of forgeries all over the The grand total of his sales has

approximated at like fifty million dollars. Damn, what's your ridiculous takeaway on the reel? My ridiculous takeaways? I hate Lagro but yeah, I mean you saw my instinct on him the entire time. But on the reel, I think it's a darn shame that that, you know, like icon of clastic bone vivant types, can't just hang out with the rich. You want to have this interesting stuff and just do it,

Like why the rich have to get mad? Like, come on, you exploited people and you guys always get so mad when these people turn out to be Charlatan's you want, and doesn't make an even greater story that now you've got a door. Look, I got duped and then I don't know, I feel like there's some notoriety I do like having a like wanting to have the best forger's forgery,

like having a door. I think that is really I would love to have a doughter and see if I can get you one, and if I can't get someone to paint one, so that you can paint a door, you can paint a what was the other guy's name, Ken Talbot Talbot Talbot of of Madigliani. Excellent, And that's actually a picture of Steve Harvey. That's that's my tale of Elmir door. That's it. That's it. Um. What's your

ridiculous takeaway on Elizabeth? Oh, I think I've exposed all of that, and my ridiculous takeaway, thank you, is that I do want I want an Elmir Dori what I want? Uh? You can find us online at Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter for the talk and Instagram for the gawk, and email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com if you'd like, download the I Heart app if you want to leave us something called a talk back. It's like

a thirty second voicemail that we can't respond to. But you know, we may play it on here an active revenge or I'll forge one, I'll mimic it. Tune in next time. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by mayor of Beizza, Dave Kusten. Research is by Exhausted authenticators Marissa Brown and Andrea Song sharpen Tier. The themes song is by Thomas fo Digliani,

Lee and Travis Picasso. Fake Donte executive producers are co directors of the FBI Art Crime Unit, Ben Boland and Noel Brown Ride Say It one More Time, We Dequeous. Ridiculous Crime is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts to my heart Radio, visit the i heeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.