REGARDS FROM NOEL AND FANNY AND DOROTHY


Three of the twentieth centuries biggest wits - Noel Coward, Fanny Brice, and Dorothy Parker - all recieved a career boost years after their deaths from an unlikely source, forger Lee Israel. Not exactly a master criminal, Israel forged letters from literary and entertainment legends. Her operation was fairly low-key. She wasn't caught in some grand sting that culminated in a shootout. She was simply approached by FBI agents and agreed to be questioned. Lee Israel's greatest lie wasn't the letters she made up, but the story she told about her forgery operation in her 2008 memoir Can You Ever Forgive Me? (upon which the 2018 film is based.) Contradictions abound, but, as a writer, Lee Israel knew how to tell a good story.


Leonore Carol Israel was born December 3, 1939 in Brooklyn to a Jewish family, with whom she wasn't close. She graduated CUNY Brooklyn in 1961. For most of the 1960s she was a freelance writer, writing for Soap Opera Digest and The New York Times. In 1967 she profiled Katherine Hepburn for Esquire magazine and that article raised her writing profile. Israel wrote a biography of actress Tallulah Bankhead, then one of game show legend Dorothy Kilgalen that sold well and received critical acclaim. She was given an advance by her publisher to profile makeup maven Estee Lauder. According to Israel, Lauder bribed her to not write the book but Israel refused. Lauder hired a team of writers and produced an autobiography that beat Israel's to the shelves. Israel's book failed and by 1991 her writing career was finished. Unable to support herself or pay her sick cat's vet bills, Israel made a desperate move to become financially solvent.


While researching at a library Israel was given a file containing two letters from Fanny Brice. She smuggled the letters out of the library and sold them for $40 each. That birthed idea that she could copy the letters, retype them, and with her skills as a biographical researcher, punch up the letters with some sass and wit, then sell them to collectors. She bought vintage typewriters and ripped blank pages of vintage paper out of books to type her fakes. She increased her prices to $50 to $100 per letter. Israel then began to steal letters from  archives, copy them, replace them with her fakes, then sell the real letters.


Letter collectors began chatting amongst themselves that Lee Israel seem to have a lot of letters to sell, more than their average client. Some noticed the paper wasn't quality stationary notables of the day would have owned. The FBI took notice and Lee Israel (and her partner, Jack Hock) was questioned. She threw out all her forgery equipment, but the jig was up. Lee Israel was convicted of conspiracy to transport stolen property. The money she earned for her forgeries wasn't a large enough some to cause concern, and no property traversed state lines. Israel was given 6 months of house arrest, 5 years probation, and (shudder) banned from libraries and archives in New York City.


Lee Israel was not a criminal mastermind. She was a desperate woman who took a desperate way out of a dire situation.  Lee Israel verges slightly from the truth in Can You Ever Forgive Me?, but what can one expect from someone so good at embellishment one of her forged Noel Coward letters was put into a collection of his correspondence? Israel mentioned that the collectors who sold her up the river never once asked for authentication of her wares. Lee Israel died December 24, 2014 of myeloma. She was, in her death, as she was in life, alone. When she released Can You Ever Forgive Me? Lee Israel faced backlash as critics saw the book as a way for her to benefit financially from her crime. Lee saw things a little bit differently. When summoned for jury duty she responded : "I am a convicted felon and thereby ineligible to serve. Who says crime doesn't pay?"


SOURCES :

Hubbard, Lauren. "The True Story of Lee Israel and the Literary Forgeries in Can You Ever Forgive Me." Town & Country, 22 February, 2019. 


Lee Israel. Wikipedia.

FURTHER MEDIA :

BOOKS :

Can You Ever Forgive Me? : Memoirs of a Literary Forger


VIDEO :

Can You Ever Forgive Me?



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