Every letter reproduced here, along with hundreds like them, were turned out by me — conceived, written, typed, and signed — in my perilously held studio apartment in the shadow of Zabar’s on New York’s Upper West Side in 1991 and 1992.
I heard about Lee Israel and her forged autograph scheme during Melissa McCarthy’s Oscar campaign this year. I was only four when Lee’s legal shenanigans occurred so I missed the original scandal- was there much of a scandal? This was a fairly niche crime…
Anyway, Lee Israel had a mildly successful career as a biographer but after a series of contracts failed to produce a manuscript, and therefore she had to return her advances, Lee was resorting to selling her personal collection of books to make ends meet. Then her cat got sick and she needed $75 to get some testing done at the vet. This would probably be my origin story as a crime lord too.
Lee went to the library and stole three letters written by Fanny Brice; she was able to sell the letters without any provenance for a total of $120 and a scheme was hatched. Less quickly changed her tactics from stealing letters to writing her own and forging the signatures because juicy content would land a bigger payday.
For about two years she managed to create and sell over 300 letters; Californian autograph dealers quickly became skeptical of Lee’s wares but it took much longer for the New York dealers to get wise. She knew she was being watched when a “friend” told her he was being summoned to testify at a New York grand jury targeting her but for $5,000 he wouldn’t. This was either a bogus claim or fizzled without his testimony but eventually, after she went back to stealing authentic letters, Lee was caught by the FBI. She was sentanced to four years of probation following 6 months of house arrest.
Paying restitution to her victims was also part of her sentencing and the vibe of Can You Ever Forgive Me seemed very cash-grabby. If you were already aware of her crimes there is probably little new information besides maybe her initial justification for her crime spree and she doesn’t divulge anything particularly scandalous even if you were unaware. Lee knows what you want from her- why and how’d you do it, and maybe how did you get caught- and she uses a scant 125 pages to cover those three questions and only those three questions. I am assuming the advance from this memoir went to paying some bills.