Richard Suskind (May 2, 1925September 14, 1999) was a
children's author
Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are created for children. Modern children's literature is classified in two different ways: genre or the intended age of the reader.
Children's ...
who participated with author
Clifford Irving in creating a fraudulent
autobiography
An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life.
It is a form of biography.
Definition
The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...
of the reclusive entrepreneur
Howard Hughes. Suskind was incarcerated for five months of a six-month prison sentence for his role in collaborating with Irving on the hoax. He died in 1999, aged 74, in Woodland Hills
Los Angeles County, California, USA.
He was portrayed in the 2007 film ''
The Hoax'' by
Alfred Molina.
Biography
Richard Suskind was born in
New York City and attended public schools there. In 1943, he joined the Army and served in the
8th Armored Division as a machine gunner in the
Battle of the Bulge, in the Netherlands and in Germany. After the war he continued his education on the
G.I. Bill in such schools as
Columbia University, the
University of Florence, the
University of Paris, the
Juilliard School of Music
The Juilliard School ( ) is a private performing arts conservatory in New York City. Established in 1905, the school trains about 850 undergraduate and graduate students in dance, drama, and music. It is widely regarded as one of the most elit ...
, and the
Paris Conservatory of Music.
In 1948, Suskind served with the
Israeli Army
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF; he, צְבָא הַהֲגָנָה לְיִשְׂרָאֵל , ), alternatively referred to by the Hebrew-language acronym (), is the national military of the State of Israel. It consists of three service branc ...
during the
Arab–Israeli War. He then joined the merchant marine, and in the next two years traveled around the world twice. He spent two years in
Italy, five in
Paris, and seven years on the Spanish island of
Ibiza
Ibiza (natively and officially in ca, Eivissa, ) is a Spanish island in the Mediterranean Sea off the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula. It is from the city of Valencia. It is the third largest of the Balearic Islands, in Spain. Its l ...
, part of the Balearic group in the Mediterranean.
A writer since the age of fifteen, Suskind was the author of twelve books and more than one hundred articles and short stories. He was married and had one son.
Bibliography
* 1962 ''Crusades''
* 1964 ''Do You Want to Live Forever!''
* 1967 ''Cross and Crescent: the Story of the Crusades''
* 1968 ''Men in Armor: the Story of Knights & Knighthood''
* 1969 ''Swords, Spears & Sandals: the Story of the Roman Legions''
* 1969 ''Battle of Belleau Wood; the Marines Stand Fast''
* 1970 ''Barbarians: the Story of the European Tribes''
* 1971 ''Sword of the Prophet: the Story of the Moslem Empire''
* 1971 ''By Bullet, Bomb and Dagger: the Story of Anarchism''
* 1973 ''Crusader King, Richard the Lionhearted''
Collaboration
* 1972 with Clifford Irving: ''What Really Happened; His untold story of the Hughes Affair'', New York: Grove Press.
* As ''Project Octavio: The Story of the Howard Hughes Hoax'', London: Allison & Busby, 1977.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Suskind, Richard
Literary forgeries
American children's writers
1925 births
1999 deaths