The Gad About Town

Clifford Irving left a clue to his hoax in plain sight: in the introduction to The Autobiography of Howard Hughes, which was neither an autobiography nor by Hughes, “Hughes” tells Irving that he, Hughes, admired Irving’s (real) book about Elmyr de Hory, the famous art forger. Hughes tells Irving that this is one of the reasons he is giving him the manuscript of his autobiography.

Irving never met Hughes and he forged the manuscript. He later confessed to the crime and went to prison. But on this date 45 years ago, Howard Hughes felt forced by the rumor that his autobiography was about to be published to come out of hiding—a recluse, Hughes had not been seen in public nor spoken with a reporter in fifteen years, which is partly why Irving’s hoax was plausible—but he came out of hiding in the most bizarre, Hughes-ian, way possible: seven reporters were assembled in a hotel conference room in the center of which was placed a table covered with a cloth and a speakerphone atop that. (Photo at top.) A voice spoke from the phone, claimed to be Howard Hughes, and he took questions and denied ever meeting Irving.

Whatever Hughes had desired from the event, it only added to the circus atmosphere around his life and the “autobiography.”
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Although the program ran for “only” two seasons in the 1960s on American television, F Troop developed one of the most remarkable second lives in television history: re-run episodes started to appear on local television stations across the country that same decade, and by the 1970s, a little boy in Poughkeepsie, New York, thought the show was brand-new and hilarious. Much of the hilarious part came from the mugging of Larry Storch, “Corporal Randolph Agarn,” who turns 94 today.

(The youngster, also named me, was truly perplexed at what appeared to be an equal number of color and black-and-white episodes, randomly distributed on his family’s new color TV. It was because the show’s two seasons straddled the proliferation of color production: one season was shot in black-and-white and the next was filmed in glorious small screen color.)

Mr. Storch will be celebrating his 94th in grand style: with a show (a surprise guest not yet announced) at the Metropolitan Room in New York City. Tickets range in price from $15 to $115. His family maintains an active Facebook account for the actor to keep in touch with his fans, and he has been performing live stand-up in New York, Florida, and California in recent years.
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