Lee Israel

Lee Israel
Born Leonore Carol Israel
(1939-12-03)December 3, 1939
Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States
Died December 24, 2014(2014-12-24) (aged 75)
Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
Occupation Author, biographer

Leonore Carol "Lee" Israel (December 3, 1939 – December 24, 2014) was a noted American author who became a literary forger and thief.

Early life and education

Israel was Jewish and born in Brooklyn, to Jack and Sylvia Israel; she also had a brother, Edward. She graduated from Midwood High School, and in 1961 from Brooklyn College.[1][2]

Journalist and author

She began a career as a freelance writer in the 1960s. The November 1967 edition of Esquire ran her profile of Katharine Hepburn for which Israel had visited California shortly before the death of Spencer Tracy in his apartment in Beverly Hills. Hepburn and Tracy had a long-term relationship.[3] Israel's magazine career continued into the 1970s.

In the 1970s and 1980s she wrote biographies of actress Tallulah Bankhead, journalist and game show panelist Dorothy Kilgallen and cosmetics tycoon Estée Lauder. The biography of Kilgallen was well received and appeared on The New York Times Best Sellers List.

In her memoir Can You Ever Forgive Me? published decades later, Israel claimed that in 1983 she had received an advance from Macmillan Publishing to begin a project on Lauder, "about whom Macmillan wanted an unauthorized biography — warts and all. I accepted the offer though I didn't give a shit about her warts."[4]:16 Israel also claimed that Lauder repeatedly attempted to bribe her into dropping the project.[4]:17[5] In the book, Israel discredited Lauder's public statements that she was born into European aristocracy and attended church regularly in Palm Beach, Florida.[6]

When Lauder realized that Macmillan planned to publish Israel's book, Lauder wrote a memoir that her publisher timed to coincide with it, in fall 1985.[4]:17[5] Israel's book was panned by critics and a commercial failure.[4]:17 "I had made a mistake," said Israel of the episode. "Instead of taking a great deal of money from a woman rich as Oprah, I published a bad, unimportant book, rushed out in months to beat [Lauder's own memoir] to market."[4]:16

After this failure, Israel's career went into decline, compounded by alcoholism and a personality that some found difficult.[2][7]

Criminal career

Israel is best remembered for her criminal enterprises.[2] By 1992, her career as a writer of books and magazine articles had ended. She had tried and failed to support herself with wage labor.[4]:21 To make money, she began forging letters by deceased writers and actors, estimated at over 400.

Later, she began stealing actual letters and autographed papers of famous persons from archives and libraries, replacing them with forged copies. She sold both forged and stolen original works.

This continued for over a year before two undercover FBI agents questioned Israel on a Manhattan sidewalk. According to her memoir, in which she cites FBI documents from her case file, the agents left without arresting her or telling her what was going to happen next.[4] She immediately returned to her apartment on Riverside Drive in Manhattan and got rid of all evidence, discarding in public trash cans more than a dozen typewriters she had used to simulate various typefaces.[4] By the time she was served with a federal warrant ordering her to save evidence, it was already gone.[4]

In Israel's memoir, she also claims she was never arrested or handcuffed, instead receiving summonses for federal court dates.[4] In June 1993, Israel pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transport stolen property, for which she served six months under house arrest and five years of federal probation.[2]

Israel later expressed pride in her criminal accomplishments, especially the forgeries.[7][2][8]

Memoir controversy

Some reviewers of Can You Ever Forgive Me?, the book in which Israel confessed her crimes in detail, questioned Simon & Schuster's decision to publish it so that she could profit from the sales.[9] One reviewer wrote in 2010: "What this is is a hilarious memoir of a self-described miscreant and her pursuit of a meal ticket. Ironically, in a joke the reader will share, by purchasing her book we all participate in buying her that meal."[10] One of the New York bookstore owners who purchased Israel's letters in 1992 was quoted by The New York Times upon the publication of Israel's memoir in 2008: "I'm certainly not angry anymore, though it was an expensive and very large learning experience for me," said Naomi Hample. "And she's really an excellent writer. She made the letters terrific."[11]

Death

Lee Israel died on December 24, 2014 from myeloma in New York City. According to her New York Times obituary, she had lived alone and had no children.[2] Regarding her family, she wrote in her memoir, "I had a brother with whom I had never had much in common."[4]:111

Biopic

In April 2015, it was announced that a film version of Can You Ever Forgive Me?, starring Julianne Moore and directed by Marielle Heller, would be produced.[12] In July 2015, Moore dropped out of the project.[13] In May 2016, Melissa McCarthy was confirmed to be playing Israel.[14]

Filming of Can You Ever Forgive Me? began in January 2017 in New York City. Production concluded on March 2, 2017.[15]

References

  1. ↑ "Family Census records". FamilySearch.org. Retrieved May 19, 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Fox, Margalit (8 January 2015). "Lee Israel, a Writer Proudest of Her Literary Forgeries, Dies at 75". The New York Times. p. B10. Retrieved 8 January 2015.
  3. ↑ "Last of the Honest-to-God Ladies", Esquire, November 1967, retrieved 31 January 2015. Cited in Harris, Mark. Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood. Penguin, 2008, p. 463. ISBN 9781594201523; Israel's profile of Hepburn is cited as Endnote 19 in Chapter 23. templatestyles stripmarker in |postscript= at position 127 (help)
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Israel, Lee. Can You Ever Forgive Me?: Memoirs of a Literary Forger. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 1-4165-8867-1.
  5. 1 2 Yamamoto, C. (November 19, 1985). "Inside Info: The Story of Estee Lauder". Lodi News-Sentinel. p. 14. Retrieved August 29, 2016.
  6. ↑ "Empress with a finger in every pot of cream". The Glasgow Herald. re-published at Google News. April 8, 1986. p. 10. Retrieved August 29, 2016.
  7. 1 2 Champagne, Jennifer (8 January 2015). "Lee Israel 1939-2014". Paste. Retrieved 8 January 2015.
  8. ↑ "Instances of literary forgery". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 8 January 2015.
  9. ↑ "Reviewers and commentators". NitrateVille. Retrieved August 29, 2016.
  10. ↑ Bamberger, Barbara (2010). "Review: Can You Ever Forgive Me?: Memoirs of a Literary Forger by Lee Israel". BookReporter.com. Retrieved August 29, 2016.
  11. ↑ Bosman, Julie (July 24, 2008). "She Says It's True, Her Memoir of Forging". The New York Times. Retrieved 30 January 2015.
  12. ↑ Child, Ben (April 10, 2015). "Steal Alice: Julianne Moore to play celebrity letter forger". The Guardian. Retrieved April 11, 2015.
  13. ↑ McNary, Dave (July 15, 2015). "Julianne Moore Leaves 'Can You Ever Forgive Me?'". Variety. Retrieved September 14, 2015.
  14. ↑ McNary, Dave. "Melissa McCarthy to Play Novelist and Literary Forger Lee Israel". Variety. Retrieved August 29, 2016.
  15. ↑ "Can You Ever Forgive Me?" (PDF). Directors Guild of America. Retrieved March 2, 2017.
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