Early in 1971, the McGraw-Hill publishing company passes on Clifford Irving's new novel. He's desperate for money so, against the backdrop of Nixon's re-election calculations, Irving claims he has Howard Hughes' cooperation to write Hughes's autobiography. With the help of friend Richard Suskind, Irving does research, lucks into a manuscript
In what would cause a fantastic media frenzy, Clifford Irving sells his bogus biography of Howard Hughes to a premiere publishing house in the early 1970s.