Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of I Heart Radio. Hiz
Speaker 1: what up, Elizabeth? Nothing? Um, I wanted to tell you something,
Speaker 1: but oh my god, thank you. So I'm so glad
Speaker 1: you noticed. Yeah. I made it myself. I plucked them myself.
Speaker 1: It's really I can tell the bloodstains. Yeah, you go
Speaker 1: do something first time. You can't always winning. Uh, do
Speaker 1: you want to know what's ridiculous? Oh? Yeah, girl, I've
Speaker 1: been waiting to tell you this. George Washington's death. That's no. No,
Speaker 1: I know that sounds disrespectful for the nation's first president.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that. I'm not making fun of his death,
Speaker 1: but rather, I'm kind of making fun of the state
Speaker 1: of medicine at the time, because George Washington went out
Speaker 1: and did this thing that like my mother and millions
Speaker 1: of other mothers have told you, which is, don't wear
Speaker 1: wet clothes or you'll catch your death. We wet clothes. Well,
Speaker 1: that's essentially what happened to Washington. The story goes, he's out,
Speaker 1: he's like riding around on horseback and Mount Vernon. It's raining, cats, dogs,
Speaker 1: and everything else. He rides back to his house for dinner,
Speaker 1: but he's a hard head like me. He refuses to
Speaker 1: change out of his wet clothes, like I want to
Speaker 1: eat my steak wet, right, So he's sitting there, he's
Speaker 1: doing it. He gets sick, he gets a sore throat.
Speaker 1: His doctors like, well, clearly we need to drain him
Speaker 1: of nearly half of his blood, and so they do.
Speaker 1: They drain him of forty percent of dudes blood. Now
Speaker 1: drained out, zombie Washington starts circling the drain. Right, he's
Speaker 1: about to die. Physicians aren't done. They're like, oh, though,
Speaker 1: this is we need him to gargles butter, molasses and
Speaker 1: uh looking around, vinegar butter. He's garland, butter, vinegar and molasses.
Speaker 1: And when that doesn't work, surprise, surprise, doctors are like,
Speaker 1: you know what it is. We need to feed him beetles.
Speaker 1: So they feed him beetles, and then, surprisingly, eating beetles
Speaker 1: does not save the nations for his president. Three days
Speaker 1: after he gets sick, George Washington up and dies. So
Speaker 1: my point is, listen to your mother, don't sit around
Speaker 1: and wet clothes. It's a good, okay, ridiculous, And don't
Speaker 1: eat beetles. That is ridiculous. Do you want to know
Speaker 1: what else is ridiculous. I'm here for dedicating your incredible
Speaker 1: talent to forging, only to be forged. Yes, this is
Speaker 1: a ridiculous crime. A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists,
Speaker 1: cons it's always murder free and ridiculous that you know.
Speaker 1: I love a good art crime because for the most part,
Speaker 1: they're not violent or destructive. And since I'm convinced that
Speaker 1: much of the art world is a cover for money laundering,
Speaker 1: I usually don't feel so bad. I do feel bad.
Speaker 1: It's like a beloved or famous piece of art that
Speaker 1: normally lives in a publicly available space is stolen or away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but if it's like taken away to a Russian oligarchs mansion, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's terrible. Yeah. I don't like for the public to
Speaker 1: be robb to access to beautiful, important or historical items.
Speaker 1: We've talked about. Yes, let us keep our cara. But
Speaker 1: a private collector getting scammed count me in. Yeah. U.
Speaker 1: One of the great types of art crimes is forgeries. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And did you know that it's estimated that between and
Speaker 1: of paintings in museums around the world are fakes. Yeah?
Speaker 1: I actually did that interview the FBI art guy. That's right,
Speaker 1: you saying that, and that blew my mind when I
Speaker 1: so pretend I just heard that. Holy wow. So what
Speaker 1: fascinates me about forgeries is that the perpetrators, they have
Speaker 1: artistic talent completely, you know, but the artist in their
Speaker 1: own rights, sometimes their own work just doesn't resonate with
Speaker 1: the world, or maybe they don't have the right contacts
Speaker 1: to get recognition sure, or they're still alive. Other times
Speaker 1: they can basically only work from assignment, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Like, so they can only copy the art. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they're not true artists. Um, they take direction. Let
Speaker 1: me tell you about a true artist. He had incredible
Speaker 1: talent on his own, but he was also an incredible mimic.
Speaker 1: And after World War Two, this artist went to Paris.
Speaker 1: One day in Lady Malcolm Campbell was visiting his house
Speaker 1: and saw an ink drawing on the wall. She said
Speaker 1: she was certain it was a Picasso and she wanted
Speaker 1: to buy it, and he didn't tell her that it
Speaker 1: was his own work. He charged her less than the
Speaker 1: equivalent of like a hundred bucks for it. Not a
Speaker 1: bad payday on a drawing for an unknown artist. It
Speaker 1: pays to have rich friends. Is basically that he pretending
Speaker 1: like he also didn't know if it was a Picasso.
Speaker 1: Do we know that he He doesn't say one way,
Speaker 1: Oh yes, you know, just like like kind of he
Speaker 1: passes it off as the real thing. But then he
Speaker 1: realizes that his copycat skills are his real talent. So
Speaker 1: he's broke, he's struggling, and he's able to make some
Speaker 1: cash and make someone happy. So it's a win win. Here,
Speaker 1: she thinks, like I scored, I had this beautiful Picasso drawing.
Speaker 1: Who was this man, sarin Um. This man was Wilfred Brimley. Yes,
Speaker 1: his name was Elmir do Hori. I referred to him
Speaker 1: as I referred to him as elmerd Hori before when
Speaker 1: I told you about Clifford. But I realized that that's
Speaker 1: not how you say his name. Um. So he was
Speaker 1: the artist that Clifford Irving wrote the book about. He
Speaker 1: wrote a book called Fake exclamation Point, The Story of
Speaker 1: Elmir de Hori, the Greatest art forger of our Time. Um,
Speaker 1: I told you oas hoax fake. I told you that
Speaker 1: Tori was a piece of work and deserved his own episodes.
Speaker 1: Here it is so I should add that the best
Speaker 1: information on. This guy comes from Clifford Irving's book. Is
Speaker 1: it reliable though well to con man making two conman
Speaker 1: making one great story. It calls into questions the materials
Speaker 1: presented as fact, but let's just say it is and
Speaker 1: enjoy the ride. So elm Arta Hori was actually born
Speaker 1: Elmer Albert Hoffman in Budapest, Hungary, in n six So
Speaker 1: he liked to tell people that he was from this
Speaker 1: family of aristocrats like bankers, financiers, top government officials, my mother,
Speaker 1: the countess. He was actually from a very lovely, very
Speaker 1: middle class Jewish family, and um, they believed in his talent,
Speaker 1: so they sent him off for formal training at the
Speaker 1: nagy Banya Artist Colony. I'm probably not saying that right
Speaker 1: in Romania when he was only sixteen years old. Ye,
Speaker 1: based on how you said, I thought it was in Japan,
Speaker 1: so probably not. I'm totally saying it wrong. I'm sure
Speaker 1: of it that that's my hidden talent. Um. So then
Speaker 1: he goes on to study at the Academy Hineman in
Speaker 1: Munich and then at Academy Lean in Paris, so he
Speaker 1: gets trained as a classical painter. In these places. There's
Speaker 1: a problem with that though no one's paying for class card. No,
Speaker 1: all these new experimental avant garde movements Cubism, Expressionism are
Speaker 1: all the rage in this kicking it. At that point,
Speaker 1: most of what he learned is outdated, it's useless, and
Speaker 1: the art community is just like, why, we don't even
Speaker 1: care about the focus anymore. So the economy is also
Speaker 1: taking of time um, and it's starting to look like
Speaker 1: being an artist just isn't a way for him to
Speaker 1: make a living. But he's dedicated most of his life
Speaker 1: to it so far. Enter crime, always Door. Committed a
Speaker 1: bunch of minor crimes in Geneva in the late twenties
Speaker 1: and then into the nineteen thirties, just a little petty
Speaker 1: stuff here and there. And then at the beginning of
Speaker 1: World War Two he went back to Hungary. Dicey, right,
Speaker 1: so he picked the other side. Well, he had a
Speaker 1: friendship there with this British journalist that was believed to
Speaker 1: be a spy, and so that raised red flags and
Speaker 1: he gets sent to a prison for political dissidents in Transylvania,
Speaker 1: and I have my suspicions about why they really sent
Speaker 1: him there, but more on that later. So while he's there,
Speaker 1: he paints a portrait of the prison camp officer, and
Speaker 1: they sparked this friend ship. He's just blown away by
Speaker 1: his talent. So they eventually released a Hory. But then
Speaker 1: he gets him prisoned in a concentration camp for being
Speaker 1: gay and Jewish. And I think that's how he wound
Speaker 1: up in the Transylvanian prison in the first place. This
Speaker 1: World War one. He's at the during World War two. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: So he gets sent to a concentration camp. He's tortured.
Speaker 1: They break his leg and then they transfer him because
Speaker 1: of this like terribly broken leg, they transfer him to
Speaker 1: a Berlin prison hospital. He escaped because he noticed that
Speaker 1: the gate entrance to the hospital was open, so he
Speaker 1: like he's in pain, he grabs some crutches and just
Speaker 1: makes a break for it. Right, He goes out and
Speaker 1: he goes to the homeless some of his friends. They
Speaker 1: take him in and then he makes his way back
Speaker 1: to Hungary and he learns that his family home has
Speaker 1: gone and his parents have been killed. It's horrible. So
Speaker 1: at the end of the of World War two, there's
Speaker 1: Dory selling fake Picasso sketches because who cares, That's what
Speaker 1: I say. But when you survive what hes vibe, I say,
Speaker 1: do whatever you want. He goes to Paris and then
Speaker 1: he's selling like these fakes. Good. Great, you get to
Speaker 1: do whatever you want. If you can count some rich
Speaker 1: person out of a few francs, more power to I
Speaker 1: don't care. So the thing about Doris fake artwork, though,
Speaker 1: is that um he didn't try to reproduce existing works.
Speaker 1: He created new pieces in the style of famous artists.
Speaker 1: So he created works that did not exist but look
Speaker 1: like like they exactly. So he knew he was a
Speaker 1: great mimic. He started selling what he were calling Picasso
Speaker 1: pieces to art galleries all over Paris. He said that
Speaker 1: he was a displaced Hungarian aristocrat and he's just trying
Speaker 1: to survive by selling what was left of his family's estates.
Speaker 1: This is what my family has left. Or he'd say
Speaker 1: that he got the Picasso, gave them to me. He
Speaker 1: was my friend before the war. I just want to
Speaker 1: I want to sell them. We all hung out. He
Speaker 1: sold a bunch of them of fakes in Sweden and
Speaker 1: that gave him enough cash to get a one way
Speaker 1: ticket to Rio de jannarro In. Say yes, cash out,
Speaker 1: my brother, he will survive and I love him for that,
Speaker 1: like he's just he's he cannot hold him down. So
Speaker 1: he still tried to make it as an artist with
Speaker 1: his own work. But in the meantime the fakes were
Speaker 1: like paying the bill for him. So he visits the
Speaker 1: US on a three month visa. He's able to get
Speaker 1: a show there at the Lillanfeld Galleries in New York
Speaker 1: in and that was all his own work. Per Art News,
Speaker 1: this is what they said, Doris pieces struck quote the
Speaker 1: well known chord of the School of Paris, which is
Speaker 1: a way of saying yawn, not into it. He only
Speaker 1: he sold one piece at the show. Um, like these
Speaker 1: would be good in a motel, right, So, despite how
Speaker 1: cruel the New York art world had been to him,
Speaker 1: he decides to make a go of it there. Um.
Speaker 1: He overstayed his visa and he lived in the US
Speaker 1: for the next twelve years, just by a smith. Um.
Speaker 1: He moved from New York to l A to Chicago
Speaker 1: to Miami, selling all his forgeries all good art markets
Speaker 1: and in America, right, he sells to galleries, museums, even
Speaker 1: major A list celebrities. And by that I mean Ja
Speaker 1: jacobor yeah girl, He's moved beyond just Picasso sketches into
Speaker 1: serious works. He created fake originals from Madigliani, Matisse, and Renoir.
Speaker 1: The Madigliani's are fantastic, by the way, Yeah, they're incredible,
Speaker 1: They're beautiful. He created so many Madigliani pieces that Kenneth Wayne,
Speaker 1: the director of the Madigliani Project, had trouble compiling a
Speaker 1: comprehensive catalog of the artist's work. He's just doing there
Speaker 1: are too many fakes distort through. So in seven uh
Speaker 1: Dori he goes to the Pearls Gallery in New York
Speaker 1: and it's open. It was opened by these brothers, Klaus
Speaker 1: and Frank. Pearls were these really well known European art dealers.
Speaker 1: They opened it in nineteen thirty seven and they displayed
Speaker 1: significantly P. E. R. L S. So they had all
Speaker 1: these really significant works of contemporary art they really brought out.
Speaker 1: They kind of helped foster Alexander Calder's work, George brock Brock,
Speaker 1: and they had all of this. So Dori sold to
Speaker 1: quote unquote Picassos to Klaus Pearls, and later on in
Speaker 1: ninety two, he's in l A. Dori is selling his
Speaker 1: forgeries to galleries. There he ends up walking into the
Speaker 1: Frank Pearls gallery. So one of the brothers has a
Speaker 1: gallery in Beverly Hills, and one of the brothers meaning
Speaker 1: they're related, So Frank, so Frank Pearls. He's really interested
Speaker 1: in the pieces that Dori has, but he starts noticing
Speaker 1: that there are similarities between the pieces that it were
Speaker 1: supposed to be created by different artists. Like he's just
Speaker 1: seeing these little threads. This is what Clifford Irving said
Speaker 1: in his book Fake Quote. The longer Pearls looked at
Speaker 1: the pictures, the more concerned he became. It was clear
Speaker 1: that something was wrong, and Pearls, worrisome of expression, discomforted Elmir.
Speaker 1: Pearls questioned Elmir about his address and other detailed personal information,
Speaker 1: causing Elmir's nervousness to grow. Pearls then calmly placed the
Speaker 1: pictures back into the portfolio, tied the strings, and then
Speaker 1: suddenly through the mat at Elmir. Elmir was shocked by
Speaker 1: the unexpected action and was uncertain what to do next,
Speaker 1: until Pearls ordered him to get out. To Pearl's surprise,
Speaker 1: Elmir asked, after being thrown out of the gallery, whether
Speaker 1: he thought the drawings were well done, Pearls replied, they
Speaker 1: certainly fooled me for a few minutes before ordering the
Speaker 1: counterfeiter away again at somehow weirdly heartbreaking that He's like,
Speaker 1: were they at least good? When he gets tossed out
Speaker 1: of the gallery, you have more heart than I do
Speaker 1: in that. To me, that just sounds like, come on, now,
Speaker 1: what are we doing here? More and more galleries are
Speaker 1: becoming suspicious because it's like there's little whispers right. So
Speaker 1: in order to get around this, he comes up with
Speaker 1: a bunch of aliases and starts doing all of his
Speaker 1: deals through the mail bad So what are some of
Speaker 1: his alias's Elmer Hoffman, Lament her Hoffman, Baron de Hory,
Speaker 1: Hory Cury, Harry Hory, Baron rain All Rain or Rain
Speaker 1: all Compe, They herd Sog, Baron de Bougaday, Baron von Bay, Elmer, Laslow, Dorey,
Speaker 1: Dory Bouten, Dory Bouten, Cassue Robert or Cassue, Charles, Louis
Speaker 1: Curiel or Curiel Charles. He's he's just rolling the dice
Speaker 1: on these randoms. The awesome. In the mid fifties, he
Speaker 1: gets busted for the first time, not criminally, but in
Speaker 1: his world. Um, so he doesn't get tossed out of
Speaker 1: a gallery, but he gets marked as a con man
Speaker 1: in the art world. I thought, busted up. No, well,
Speaker 1: he sold a Matisse supposed Matisse drawing to the fog
Speaker 1: Museum at Harvard, and when the sale was finalized, he said, oh,
Speaker 1: you know what, I also if you like those, I've
Speaker 1: got a Madigliani and a Renoir if you're interested in
Speaker 1: And they're like, so the curator is like, all right,
Speaker 1: let me lays him out. He takes She takes a
Speaker 1: closer look, and then just like Frank, pearls too much
Speaker 1: of a stylistic similarity between the Batists that should they
Speaker 1: just purchased and the Madigliani and the ren Walk. So
Speaker 1: she refuses his offer, and not just that. Then she
Speaker 1: gets on the phone. She's starts reaching out to all
Speaker 1: the other museums. Hey, did you recently buy any art
Speaker 1: from like a smooth talk in European fella going by
Speaker 1: the name of e Renal. And then with those calls,
Speaker 1: the word gets out when we come back, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you how Elmire dealt with this development, Zaren We're back. Hey,
Speaker 1: you look at us, good ads right by the way,
Speaker 1: I spent some of your money on this. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna put your purse back in cand in my pocketbook.
Speaker 1: All right, well we'll see. Uh where where where was
Speaker 1: I before? We were so rudely interrupted by those phenomenal lots?
Speaker 1: Had just gotten busted down by those right. So he's
Speaker 1: selling Elmir do Hori, selling paintings inspired by famous artists,
Speaker 1: passing them off as designer originals, not designer and fosters.
Speaker 1: So he gets called out by a curator at Harvard,
Speaker 1: and now everyone's wise to him. So a Chicago art
Speaker 1: dealer named James Faulkner, he bought some paintings from door
Speaker 1: in and then he found out they were fake. So
Speaker 1: he pressed charges for mail and telephone fraud because remember
Speaker 1: you said federal lawsuit, right, Um, don't do crime in
Speaker 1: the U S. Mail, Never stop your CMO. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what became of that lawsuit, but he decided to
Speaker 1: head down Mexico way out of here. He goes to
Speaker 1: Mexico City. He moves there, but he gets caught up
Speaker 1: with the cops there too, only this time it was
Speaker 1: Elmir getting conned because the Mexican police said that they
Speaker 1: thought he was involved in a man's murder, and he's like,
Speaker 1: I have I've never met the guy you're talking about.
Speaker 1: I have no idea that, right, I'm a different kind
Speaker 1: of crimer. So then the police try and extort him
Speaker 1: and his lawyer. Door pays his lawyer with one of
Speaker 1: his paintings, and the Federal him so he's like whatever,
Speaker 1: I'm out of here. He leaves Mexico City comes back
Speaker 1: to the United States. When he gets back, he sees
Speaker 1: that the galleries were selling his forgeries for way more
Speaker 1: than he sold them for. Now. It just goes to
Speaker 1: show that the art dealers are willing to look the
Speaker 1: other way if they can make some money. If everyone
Speaker 1: kind of there's like the open secret of these aren't real. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't want other people to know that. But he's
Speaker 1: also so Dori seeing this. But he's also a person
Speaker 1: of interest with the FBI, right, so he tries to
Speaker 1: lay low. He gets this like really meager apartment in
Speaker 1: l A. Tries to make a go of it as
Speaker 1: a legit artist and in order to sell paintings like
Speaker 1: we had to paint what the people wanted. Um and
Speaker 1: that meant, according to Clifford Irving's book, mostly paintings of
Speaker 1: pink poodles for interior decorators. Not what I thought you
Speaker 1: were going to say, Well, like, what a wild time
Speaker 1: for interior decord totals? Was the pink poodle the live
Speaker 1: Laugh love Decalivin's day? Yes, I think so. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: things got bad in l A. It was a dark
Speaker 1: time for him, so he decided to move back to
Speaker 1: New York. According to Clifford Irving to Hoary through a
Speaker 1: party while living in New York, lavish super edgy stars
Speaker 1: like Marilyn Monroe show up, this Arthur Miller Monroe. Yes,
Speaker 1: so she's like she's out there with this kind of
Speaker 1: like um crowd. Uh. And it was there that he
Speaker 1: met his future long term accomplice for non Legro, Yes,
Speaker 1: now legro he Okay, I have to pull up a
Speaker 1: pickle on His name is fern Lgro like grow the fern. Okay,
Speaker 1: So for non Legro right, Uh, this is what he
Speaker 1: looks like, right, He's like, he looks like he's like
Speaker 1: if Shooter Jennings and Rick Rubin had a kid and
Speaker 1: and the kids smells like mildew and they let River
Speaker 1: Phoenix raise him. Yes, it's amazing, So we'll put that
Speaker 1: picture up. So for non Legro, Legro he's a gay
Speaker 1: man who married an American woman in order to get
Speaker 1: US citizenship. He was born in Egypt ninety one, so
Speaker 1: he's like, you know, thirty years younger than uh elmir uh.
Speaker 1: So from that moment on, Dehor and Lagro they're inseparable.
Speaker 1: After they meet at this car, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't think they were a couple. Umdhri seems like he
Speaker 1: was just like his older mentor sort of. Um he's
Speaker 1: but anyway, so he's got likedor's got Lagro being all
Speaker 1: super groovy riding around with him. Good cover is like,
Speaker 1: you know what, let's move back to Miami. I like
Speaker 1: you look, screams Miami. So he convinces him to go
Speaker 1: down there with him and act as his quote unquote
Speaker 1: agent art agent. So Lagros was like, yeah, you know what,
Speaker 1: and um, I'll take a cut. That's more than an
Speaker 1: agent a little bit, right. So they moved to Miami.
Speaker 1: They start traveling all over selling these forgeries. Lagro was
Speaker 1: the face of the deals and Dhari just kept turning
Speaker 1: them out. So um. In Miami, Lagro met a French
Speaker 1: Canadian teenager named Real Lissard. Yeah, and Lagro and Lessard
Speaker 1: they hook up and become lovers. Look, Lessard also becomes
Speaker 1: an accomplice in this. So now it's Lagro and Lessard
Speaker 1: who are the faces. They're the ones selling the paintings
Speaker 1: swan around the art world. Door creates these fake masterworks
Speaker 1: Lagro and Lessard. They're selling them all over the world
Speaker 1: for like the next thirteen years. Right. They create fake
Speaker 1: stamps of authenticity. Uh. They acquired old art books and
Speaker 1: swapped out the pictures of actual works with art of
Speaker 1: art with the copies of his forgeries. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: when one time Lagro crosses the US border and his
Speaker 1: luggage gets inspected and um, customs officers they called an
Speaker 1: art experts to verify you know that what these were.
Speaker 1: He's telling customs they're just copies there, that's you know.
Speaker 1: Then the experts look at them and they're like, no,
Speaker 1: these are authentic. So they fool the experts and Lagro
Speaker 1: has to pay attack. So he did. But he wanted
Speaker 1: that to happen because that got him actual US customs
Speaker 1: documentation verifying the optics. Yeah. Yeah, so nineteen nine to
Speaker 1: Hori is tired of like this loud violently relationship between
Speaker 1: Lagro and Lasard, like they're just yeah, it's a very
Speaker 1: fiery thing. He's not. He's like there for very much.
Speaker 1: So uh Dri goes back to Europe. He's like, I'm
Speaker 1: out of here. Who does he run into in Paris?
Speaker 1: Lagadah spills a secret to Lagro. He's like, look, I
Speaker 1: still have a collection of fake painting stored in New York.
Speaker 1: And then Lagro but they're like in this locker you
Speaker 1: can't get into. So Lagro figures out how to steal
Speaker 1: them and sell them, and then convinces Dhry, like, get
Speaker 1: back in the game, start painting, We'll sell them. You
Speaker 1: can't help it. So in nineteen six they get back
Speaker 1: into it. In nineteen sixty two, Lagro and Lasard they
Speaker 1: convinced Hori to move to Ibiza. Right, but see Abisa
Speaker 1: wasn't the party in vacation destination then that it is now? No,
Speaker 1: not Then At that time it was like a really
Speaker 1: poor rural island. Well it was like a haven for
Speaker 1: artistic exile. So the cost of living was really so
Speaker 1: cheap at that point. Yeah, it was like this misfits
Speaker 1: art commune. The landscape totally unspoiled because they don't have
Speaker 1: all this like development, living super cheap. Artists and thinkers
Speaker 1: who felt like they didn't have a place elsewhere in
Speaker 1: the world went there and created a family. Um. It
Speaker 1: was also attractive for criminals and con artists to hang
Speaker 1: out because Franco was still in power then, so it
Speaker 1: was like a hideaway out of the reach of interpal
Speaker 1: So Franco was good for that way. So Lagro and
Speaker 1: Leguard they rent Dhri this gorgeous villa Anybisa, but they
Speaker 1: put him on a small allowance of about like four
Speaker 1: a month to keep him working creating more forged works
Speaker 1: of art. It was enough to let him live comfortably
Speaker 1: and like also be free of risk. Did they live there, No, No,
Speaker 1: they had this like absolutely lavish life in Paris. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: they they're living off the money that they're breaking in. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so Dori he never gained financial independence, but he
Speaker 1: enjoyed the company of this like incredible colorful community. Right.
Speaker 1: Lagro tells a different version of this. He said that
Speaker 1: Dare tricked him into believing he was a destitute and
Speaker 1: desperate aristocrat needing mercy, and in fact he was a
Speaker 1: con man who was wanted by interpolse this long list
Speaker 1: of aliases, all these crimes. Um. According to Lagro, Dori
Speaker 1: was compromised by convictions and expulsions from France, Switzerland, Italy,
Speaker 1: Federal Germany, Great Britain, Mexico, US, Canada. I don't believe
Speaker 1: you know, so Dori is like no, actually, um, I
Speaker 1: made a mistake in taking Lagro into my confidence because
Speaker 1: he took advantage of exactly exploited. So nineteen sixty four Door,
Speaker 1: he's fifty eight years old, tired of the forgery business,
Speaker 1: his works getting kind of sloppy, hand line is weakening.
Speaker 1: And apparently he always looked old, like people said like
Speaker 1: there were quotes and people who were just like he
Speaker 1: kind of just always looks like an old man. He
Speaker 1: was the thoms A Gura of the art world. Well,
Speaker 1: in galleries they start alerting inter Poll and Lagro is
Speaker 1: like when Interpo did things, Yes, it's like getting a
Speaker 1: little hot. So Lagros sends Doory to Australia for a
Speaker 1: year to hide out, and then he and Lessard they
Speaker 1: go to zero. Let's just be glamorous about this. You
Speaker 1: need to go to Demming's New Mexico. We're going to
Speaker 1: go to. They always like send him in the opposite direction.
Speaker 1: So by nineteen sixty six, more and more of the
Speaker 1: paintings are proving to be fake. There's an art collector
Speaker 1: who was duped by the trio of them, an oil
Speaker 1: tycoon named Alger Meadows of the General American Oil Company,
Speaker 1: and his wife is the one who convinced him to
Speaker 1: start an art collection. Like they were traveling. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: wearing a big cowboy hat like mid century movies. That's
Speaker 1: like the mark in Europe is always the Texan with
Speaker 1: oil money and his wife going over there, like they're
Speaker 1: in every movie. They start, they start getting French Impressionists
Speaker 1: and like post Impressionist paintings. News breaks across the country
Speaker 1: within the art community about the discovery of all the fakes,
Speaker 1: and he's like, am I evictim? So Lagro like he's like,
Speaker 1: look when Lagros sold him. He's like, these have been
Speaker 1: authenticated by Ziffinispaires. You see this um the Art Dealers
Speaker 1: Association of America, they put their hat on, they stepped in.
Speaker 1: They looked at fifty eight of the French paintings in
Speaker 1: Meadows home in Dallas, and they determined that thirty eight
Speaker 1: of them were faked and taste and like most of
Speaker 1: the paintings have been purchased from Lagro for about two
Speaker 1: million dollars. Right, don't forgetors living on four months in Abisa.
Speaker 1: I knew you were. And it's that hair that hat.
Speaker 1: Meadows found out that UM pieces that were in s
Speaker 1: m u's Meadows Museum we're also forgeries. Remember Klaus Pearls
Speaker 1: Pearls visited the Meadows Museum and saw the master works
Speaker 1: on display and that they were actually Doris fakes, and
Speaker 1: he proclaimed aloud forgeries altogether forgeries so he could tell Meadows. Um.
Speaker 1: He gave the museum a million dollars to replace the
Speaker 1: fakes and did never tell anyone about like I was,
Speaker 1: I was never here. Um. He then was like, you
Speaker 1: know what, guys, we're gonna go get this. They want there,
Speaker 1: like I'm demanding his arrest and prosecution. So Legro was like,
Speaker 1: so he hides out in the pizza at the villa, right,
Speaker 1: but then he says, you know what, I actually I
Speaker 1: own this place. You gotta get out of here. He
Speaker 1: tries to evict Tory. What in the world is Elmire
Speaker 1: going to do when we get back from this break.
Speaker 1: I'll let you know which fellow con man came into
Speaker 1: his life. He's Aaron. Are you ready to put some
Speaker 1: beef in this? Oh my god, I got my hot
Speaker 1: beef injector right here. Well we're talking Texas oilman. So
Speaker 1: here's the beef. When we laughed off elmir Door, he
Speaker 1: was in the crosshairs of beefy Texas oilman. Alger Meadows.
Speaker 1: He'd been Meadows duped by Dhris fakes. He wants justice. Lagro.
Speaker 1: He's trying to boot do Hori from the lavish villa.
Speaker 1: Right that guy Door is living like this interesting life
Speaker 1: among the wealthy and eccentric in Ibizza. He's friends with
Speaker 1: international movie stars Aristocracy zaren. I want you to picture it.
Speaker 1: It's nineteen sixty six. You're at a swinging party on
Speaker 1: the vast patio of a villa in Ibizza that overlooks
Speaker 1: the blue waters of the Mediterranean. The sun is out.
Speaker 1: People are lounging about in groovy swim costumes and calftans
Speaker 1: that they picked up in Algiers. Just across the water,
Speaker 1: there's a man making fish stew. It's a real party.
Speaker 1: I mean there's fish, so you're just they're visiting a friend,
Speaker 1: a wealthy failed son lay about that you went to
Speaker 1: prep school with. Yeah, I'm double fist and looking for him.
Speaker 1: You're also a wealthy lay about fail son. You've decided
Speaker 1: to surf your way around the globe all on daddy's time,
Speaker 1: So you're cool moondoggye surf buddies. They don't know about
Speaker 1: your rich family, and they don't know that you've skipped
Speaker 1: off to a Beatsa to see your old pal. So
Speaker 1: there you, guys are. You're on this giant patio, sitting
Speaker 1: under an umbrella, drinking red wine. You're staring at a
Speaker 1: bodacious blonde in a tiny bikini. She's surrounded by a
Speaker 1: bunch of men, but she looks terribly bored. You like squint,
Speaker 1: and you realize who she is. Ursula andrews, Oh damn right,
Speaker 1: So you elbow your friend, but he just like nods
Speaker 1: his head slightly. Two of these two other women, one
Speaker 1: you recognize right away. That's Marlena Dietrich. She's an aging
Speaker 1: beauty at this point still before me. I mean, she's
Speaker 1: like a beauty's aging. I thought, you're not beautiful to me.
Speaker 1: She's not an aging beauty to me. She's so, ALRL,
Speaker 1: what what are you doing here? So she's still performing, right,
Speaker 1: but she's plagued by health issues and like the creeping
Speaker 1: threat of time aging. Zeren, just admit it. It's okay.
Speaker 1: We're all aging, you know, we're all born to die.
Speaker 1: Zeron um. So she's reclining on this lounge chair. She's
Speaker 1: wearing like a turban with a matching velvet cap. Tan.
Speaker 1: You watch she reaches in a pocket and pulls out
Speaker 1: a couple of pills and washes him down with champagne.
Speaker 1: Oh my girl, hand roll of smoke and watch her
Speaker 1: do it again. The other woman looks familiar, but you
Speaker 1: can't quite place her. She's blonde, and she's like tan
Speaker 1: and sporty. Her laugh is almost musical. And your friend
Speaker 1: says that her name is Nina van Pollent. She's a
Speaker 1: Danish singer. Okay, okay, okay. So then next next to
Speaker 1: Nina is a man. He's wearing like a loose linen
Speaker 1: top that's all unbuttoned. Um. He's reclining on a lounge
Speaker 1: chair looking out at the sea. You watch as an
Speaker 1: old man approaches him. The old man's a small fellow
Speaker 1: with like a cheerful face, but sad eyes. He's decked
Speaker 1: out in a cravat and a Kashmere sweater. So all
Speaker 1: the fabrics are so luxurious on this patio. So you
Speaker 1: try and listen in, but there's too much chatter from
Speaker 1: the people around you. And like you ask your friend
Speaker 1: who those men are? You're tired of looking at Ursula Andrews.
Speaker 1: Who are those men? He's like the guy laying down
Speaker 1: as Clifford Irving. He's a writer, that old guy. He's
Speaker 1: a painter. Everyone loves him. So you just watched Elmer
Speaker 1: Dohr make his last gasp effort looking for help from
Speaker 1: someone who would later be a fellow con artist, Clifford.
Speaker 1: Here's what Clifford Irving had to say. Quote. At the
Speaker 1: time I wrote the book, Elmir was in trouble a
Speaker 1: Texas oil tycoon Alger Hurtle Meadows had bought more than
Speaker 1: forty paintings from the two villains who were selling Elmir's works.
Speaker 1: Meadows donated them to SMU, but first he showed them
Speaker 1: at a Galla party in Dallas. When you can view
Speaker 1: Elmire's paintings in a group Matisse, Picasso, Madigliani, etcetera, there's
Speaker 1: something more obviously wrong with them than just seeing one
Speaker 1: or two, the discerning I can see that the same
Speaker 1: hand guided the brush. Paintings disappeared from the walls of
Speaker 1: art galleries and museums and were hurried off to back
Speaker 1: rooms and sellers to weather out the storm. Worse, the
Speaker 1: French police launched their own investigation into his work. Elmir
Speaker 1: was frightened. He came to Miani Beazza and said, I'm
Speaker 1: going to tell you who I am and what I've done,
Speaker 1: and you'll be shocked. Well I wasn't shocked. I was
Speaker 1: surprised and amused. He proposed that I write some magazine
Speaker 1: articles in a book that would help him with his
Speaker 1: legal fees and give him a nest egg for the
Speaker 1: dangerous future. I called my publishers in New York, McGraw hill,
Speaker 1: and they snapped it up. So he's gotten McGraw hill
Speaker 1: doing his bidding back then, is this kind of really
Speaker 1: good writer? Yeah, he's a great writer. So August eight
Speaker 1: door he gets convicted by the Spanish court for crimes
Speaker 1: of homosexuality not being able to show means of legitimately
Speaker 1: supporting himself, which like, that's a crime, and so we've
Speaker 1: got to like that that's a crime and consorting with
Speaker 1: known criminals, referring to LaGrow. So he gets sentenced to
Speaker 1: two months and an Abizsa prison. Why was he not
Speaker 1: charged with forgery? Well, there was no proof he ever
Speaker 1: created any of the art in question on Spanish, Soil
Speaker 1: was just about to say they didn't find the man
Speaker 1: or the studio. Well, and also he denied ever signing
Speaker 1: the fakes with the artist's name, which is a key
Speaker 1: legal point because it's not a crime to imitate an
Speaker 1: artist until you put the name on it, right, So
Speaker 1: it's only signing the name that makes it a forgery.
Speaker 1: It wasn't possible to prove if the artist signatures that
Speaker 1: appeared on the paintings were done by Dori who denied it,
Speaker 1: or Lagro. Oh that's an interesting rinkle actually, because you'd
Speaker 1: have a really hard time proving it without like either
Speaker 1: a confession or somebody saying I watched him do it,
Speaker 1: and that exactly so Dori. He gets released from prison
Speaker 1: in October of sixty eight and expelled from Abisa for
Speaker 1: a year. So by the end of that year he
Speaker 1: comes back and he is a celebrity on the island.
Speaker 1: They love him. He's already a beloved local character, but
Speaker 1: the whole mess makes him an absolute star's phenomenal. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like he got busted. This is great, he's even
Speaker 1: more interesting now, Yes, exactly. So this is what Irving
Speaker 1: had to say. Many of us artists expats were poor
Speaker 1: to varying degrees. And I remember I once asked Elmer
Speaker 1: to lend me a hundred dollars, telling him i'd pay
Speaker 1: him back when a check from my publisher arrived. He'd
Speaker 1: heard that story so many times before from so many others.
Speaker 1: With great reluctance, he loaned the cash to me, and
Speaker 1: he was flabbergasted. When I repaid the loan a few
Speaker 1: weeks later, tears came to his eyes. That's because he
Speaker 1: was always being used. He was gay, and he liked
Speaker 1: young men, so he had to pay one way or
Speaker 1: another all the time for friendship and love. So here
Speaker 1: he's got this great community, but they're always people like
Speaker 1: taking a piece of him, and Clifford Irving like they
Speaker 1: connect because he's just like there, he's seeing him as
Speaker 1: just a person to person um and outside of out
Speaker 1: that I think right. And so here though, so we
Speaker 1: have like this troubled time nineteen sixty nine, though, Doory
Speaker 1: meets Mark Forgy, who was twenty one, twenty years old.
Speaker 1: He meets him on the beach in a bisa, and
Speaker 1: the two became very close. Doory taught Forgy about art
Speaker 1: and graceful living, just because Dory had taste well and
Speaker 1: he had just this incredible, vast knowledge of art history
Speaker 1: just as everything with that, the finer things in life exactly,
Speaker 1: So he just kind of like leads Forgy. In an
Speaker 1: interview with The New York Times, for he was quoted
Speaker 1: as saying he was more of a father than my
Speaker 1: actual father. He was concerned with my future. And so
Speaker 1: finally he's got someone who's like seeing what he gives
Speaker 1: and then giving back. Yeah. So Clifford Irving's book becomes
Speaker 1: an eventual success, and in nineteen seventy four it was
Speaker 1: adapted into an Orson Wells movie, f for Fake. No Way,
Speaker 1: Yes Way for Fake is a docu drama, So that
Speaker 1: means that Dry and Irving actually appear in it. Oh
Speaker 1: my god. The whole thing is like a film essay
Speaker 1: where Wells muses on the value of art. I've never
Speaker 1: seemed I read a bunch of quotes from this we
Speaker 1: need to have our ridiculous crime film Club. Yes, we
Speaker 1: do so. In the movie, Dori asks what makes his
Speaker 1: work inferior to the works by the artists he was
Speaker 1: supposedly inspired by. M His stuff fooled experts worldwide, and
Speaker 1: they brought joy to the owners for a fraction of
Speaker 1: the cost of the real thing. But then that's presuming that,
Speaker 1: like they enjoyed the art itself and not just the
Speaker 1: prestige of owning a name. Yeah, that's that's leaving out
Speaker 1: a big part of it. So Wells said that since
Speaker 1: most of the art world is based on duplicity, illusion
Speaker 1: and trickery, did Dori and his accomplices actually do anything wrong? Well? Wrong,
Speaker 1: and these are great, you know, I mean, I know
Speaker 1: what art was trying to say. I would say that
Speaker 1: if you're intentionally fooling somebody, you know that that is wrong.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, the question of how wrong
Speaker 1: is it. You're not really hurting them, And we are
Speaker 1: all constantly being tricked into capitalist society and exploited and
Speaker 1: misled and so forth. So when you start to consider
Speaker 1: the full context of where this is occurring, this isn't
Speaker 1: like in a kindergarten classroom and one child lie to
Speaker 1: another child said this is food. Another kid ate it. Now,
Speaker 1: like that would be a bad dropping millions of dollars
Speaker 1: on artwork. You're not already kind of dancing with the devil,
Speaker 1: like you know, like that it's questionable exactly, And you're
Speaker 1: trying to get over on them too. Like on both
Speaker 1: sides you have people trying to get over on each other.
Speaker 1: So that's why I don't feel too bad. They're trying
Speaker 1: to get a deal. They're trying to go like when
Speaker 1: they hear like, oh, you've got this Picasso and you've
Speaker 1: fallen on hard times, they're exploiting this person has fallen
Speaker 1: on hard time. So it turns out that person also
Speaker 1: three one's deluding each other. Everyone's tricking each other. Scorpion
Speaker 1: striking a snake. I don't care. So once again, but
Speaker 1: now as a celebrity, Dhry tries his hand at earning
Speaker 1: a living as a legitimate artist, and he's now a
Speaker 1: recognized figure in the art world and kind of well,
Speaker 1: he's like this anti hero in the anti establishing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he fooled everybody. They're loving this, but he wasn't able
Speaker 1: to make the money that he was on his own
Speaker 1: artwork as he was doing the forgeries. Um. And then
Speaker 1: to make matters worse, France is again trying to extradite
Speaker 1: him from Spain. So he learns this from Mark Forgy,
Speaker 1: and Hori says, I'm gonna overdose on sleeping pills and
Speaker 1: he asks Forgy to respect his decision and not revive him.
Speaker 1: And so Forgy he didn't want him to die, right,
Speaker 1: so um, he takes him to the hospital, but he
Speaker 1: dies in Forgy's arms at the hospital. Um. They've been
Speaker 1: friends for six years, right, So it's December eleventh, ninety six.
Speaker 1: He dies or does he? Wait? What death? His death
Speaker 1: is shrouded in mystery. So here's what Clifford Irving had
Speaker 1: to say. The story I heard from reliable sources was
Speaker 1: that he had concocted a plan with his then boyfriend
Speaker 1: to fake his death. Elmir would take an overdose of
Speaker 1: sleeping pills at five minutes to ten, and the boyfriend
Speaker 1: was supposed to come home at tend sharp to save
Speaker 1: Elmir's life in a timely manner, but he didn't come
Speaker 1: back until midnight, and then it was too late. I
Speaker 1: do know that Elmir was about to be extradited to France,
Speaker 1: and he was fearful that for non Lagrox would have
Speaker 1: him killed in prison. I knew Lagro a man with
Speaker 1: the scruples of a sewer rat, and he was certainly
Speaker 1: capable of murder. Elmir thought that if he nearly committed suicide,
Speaker 1: the Spanish authorities would take pity on him and cancel
Speaker 1: the extradition to the Beast deal. It was a naive concept.
Speaker 1: The Spanish government wanted to get rid of Elmir. They
Speaker 1: were fascist, they don't care. So four, he's denying all this,
Speaker 1: but there is that strong theory that it was basically
Speaker 1: an accidental overdose that he wanted to just use it
Speaker 1: as kind of cry for help. Now you can't extradite me.
Speaker 1: Why did dehy do? Why did he do what he did?
Speaker 1: Why did he get overall, not just with at the
Speaker 1: end of his life, but like overall, I mean, it
Speaker 1: seems to me that he basically he gets a rough
Speaker 1: or unfair start in life in terms of all of
Speaker 1: who he is and all of his identities and all
Speaker 1: of his his family's existence becomes reasons for him to
Speaker 1: be challenged to continue existing. So then he, you know it,
Speaker 1: could become a great artist at that point because he
Speaker 1: has a lot to say, but instead he needs to survive,
Speaker 1: so he learns to become a great imitator rather than
Speaker 1: a great artist at that moment. From the point on,
Speaker 1: he never really able to find his own voice, but
Speaker 1: as as you said, a great mimic, so he becomes
Speaker 1: the booth beautiful choir singer ever. But it's not who
Speaker 1: do you want acquired? Everyone has their notions of why
Speaker 1: he did this, and it's like anyone who hears the
Speaker 1: story is going to come up with theirs. And since
Speaker 1: we can't ask him, and if we could ask him,
Speaker 1: there's no telling if he would tell the truth. Right,
Speaker 1: Here's what Forgy said, that's who I believe Elmir was
Speaker 1: always attempting mightily to champion the intrinsic merit of art,
Speaker 1: as opposed to having a name tag on it. Huh,
Speaker 1: I don't find that that part. I don't believe. This
Speaker 1: is what Clifford Irving said. It's a World War two
Speaker 1: refugee mentality, which is what you were saying. He never
Speaker 1: thought he'd be rich, but he needed money to survive
Speaker 1: and still keep some prideful identity as a painter. Survival
Speaker 1: is the name of the game. He justified by naming
Speaker 1: all the great artists in history who had copied and faked.
Speaker 1: He knew his art history. There were many, and they
Speaker 1: were young and poor. They had to eat. So that's
Speaker 1: you know, I'm but this is also this is what
Speaker 1: something else that Irving said about him. Alas our friendship ended,
Speaker 1: many people thought my portrait of Elmir was sympathetic. I
Speaker 1: certainly meant it to be. But Elmir didn't like that
Speaker 1: I quoted some French dealer calling him quote a charming crook.
Speaker 1: He didn't appreciate that kind of raw truth. The tail
Speaker 1: in cold black and White did not flatter him sufficiently.
Speaker 1: He demanded I make changes. I refused. He stopped speaking
Speaker 1: to me personally. I loved Elmir as a friend, although
Speaker 1: I didn't trust him, and I portrayed him as a sophisticated, elegant, intelligent,
Speaker 1: sad and exploited man. I understood his plate. He was
Speaker 1: one of my first gay friends, and he and talked
Speaker 1: about the problems of being an older gay man that
Speaker 1: was foreign to me before then. So they have this
Speaker 1: really interesting but I can see where he's crafted this
Speaker 1: great illusion of who he is, and to cut to
Speaker 1: the heart of it. He's a charming crook, is painful
Speaker 1: and also it I mean, it seems like dignity is
Speaker 1: the thing that he's been hanging onto it from the
Speaker 1: point of being in the concentration camp on and that
Speaker 1: isn't a direct attack on his dignity. Everything else is
Speaker 1: a is an attack on identity and things that are
Speaker 1: more elusive and more like debatable in terms of someone
Speaker 1: else can have an opinion, but his dignity is his,
Speaker 1: and that challenges his sense of who he is and
Speaker 1: his his dignity, which is the only thing that seems
Speaker 1: to that's the one. Yeah, Because if you craft an
Speaker 1: illusion and someone comes after the illusion, you just wipe
Speaker 1: away into another. It doesn't matter. So Mark Forgy, he
Speaker 1: continues to honor and preserve the memory of his friend
Speaker 1: and companion as caretaker of doris legacy. He created an
Speaker 1: exhibit of DRI's work at the Hillstrom Museum of Art
Speaker 1: in St. Peter, Minnesota, UH. He wrote a memoir for
Speaker 1: he did called The Forger's Apprentice, Life with the World's
Speaker 1: most Notorious Artist, and that was adapted into a play
Speaker 1: and then a musical which is amazing. And then art
Speaker 1: exhibits exist today specifically showcasing forgeries, and Forgy lends Dory
Speaker 1: pieces to those. Um here's an incredible end cap for
Speaker 1: this story. Forgy at one point learned that there was
Speaker 1: a business of forging forgeries, so paintings by Dory listed
Speaker 1: at a New Zealand auction house had to be taken
Speaker 1: down after it was discovered that the pieces were forgeries
Speaker 1: of Doris forgeries. The forgery the Forger. Well, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't help too that his partner's name is Forgy, and
Speaker 1: I'm like stumbling around, so Forgy, the whole situation is
Speaker 1: very Forgy. Forgy said the topic quote came up only
Speaker 1: one time in conversation Forger Studio doing an impress. He said,
Speaker 1: quote we both contemplated that for a moment and then
Speaker 1: laughed at the far fetched notion. Yeah, well, so auctioneer
Speaker 1: Andrew Griggs said, quote, we were astonished to find that
Speaker 1: there was a market in faking Faker's artwork, going on
Speaker 1: to say that he'll be sure to alert others in
Speaker 1: the industry of the Khan. The paintings that were thought
Speaker 1: to be Doris works were actually painted by Ken Talbot,
Speaker 1: a London bookmaker. This is what Clifford had to say
Speaker 1: about Ken Talbot. Quote. Ken Talbot was a London crook
Speaker 1: and a bookmaker who in reproduced and published my nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight biography Fake, calling it Enigma. His hardback edition
Speaker 1: includes a quote preface by Clifford Irving, not a word
Speaker 1: of which I wrote, like they're all getting a piece
Speaker 1: of theirs come back to them, Bitter Medicine, an introduction
Speaker 1: by Talbot himself that is mostly half truths and lies,
Speaker 1: and a center color section of supposed Dory paintings that
Speaker 1: Talbot busily tried to sell as genuine Tory fakes of Matisse, Picasso, Madigliani.
Speaker 1: At all. I have no idea who painted them. Talbot
Speaker 1: was a dangerous man, and if he were still alive,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't dare write these comments I gave this. I
Speaker 1: give this eighty dollar book a second star only because
Speaker 1: it included my text that of the original Fake is
Speaker 1: worth reading. Fake is for sale at five on Kindle
Speaker 1: and Nook. It's worth two stars because because my stuff
Speaker 1: sent it, by the way, by mine for five Kindle.
Speaker 1: I love the forgeries of a forgery. I mean this
Speaker 1: is like when I do an impression of your doing
Speaker 1: an impression of your brother doing an impression of Steve Harvey.
Speaker 1: It is it's like, it's this like, it's like it's
Speaker 1: just as wrong. So here's a good take on it.
Speaker 1: This is what reporter David Holzer of the Budapest Business
Speaker 1: Journal had. The same. Hungarians delight in listing the admittedly
Speaker 1: startling number of their countrymen and women who have soared
Speaker 1: the heights of excellence in the world outside the country.
Speaker 1: Quite rightly, Dori exemplifies another kind of Hungarian genius, one
Speaker 1: that makes his skill cunning and the survival instinct to
Speaker 1: make life tap dance to the tune only you here.
Speaker 1: This quality is best summed up in an expression taught
Speaker 1: to me by none other than Robin Marshall, editor of
Speaker 1: this newspaper. Hungarian is the only person who can go
Speaker 1: into a revolving door behind you and come out ahead
Speaker 1: of you, he once told me, though he takes no
Speaker 1: credit for having come up with the idea. For most
Speaker 1: of his life, Elmir dehor came out of that revolving
Speaker 1: door well ahead of those who thought they had got
Speaker 1: one up on him, until well he didn't. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: believed that door still has hundreds of thousands of forgeries
Speaker 1: all over the The grand total of his sales has
Speaker 1: approximated at like fifty million dollars. Damn, what's your ridiculous
Speaker 1: takeaway on the reel? My ridiculous takeaways? I hate Lagro
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean you saw my instinct on him
Speaker 1: the entire time. But on the reel, I think it's
Speaker 1: a darn shame that that, you know, like icon of
Speaker 1: clastic bone vivant types, can't just hang out with the rich.
Speaker 1: You want to have this interesting stuff and just do it,
Speaker 1: Like why the rich have to get mad? Like, come on,
Speaker 1: you exploited people and you guys always get so mad
Speaker 1: when these people turn out to be Charlatan's you want,
Speaker 1: and doesn't make an even greater story that now you've
Speaker 1: got a door. Look, I got duped and then I
Speaker 1: don't know, I feel like there's some notoriety I do
Speaker 1: like having a like wanting to have the best forger's forgery,
Speaker 1: like having a door. I think that is really I
Speaker 1: would love to have a doughter and see if I
Speaker 1: can get you one, and if I can't get someone
Speaker 1: to paint one, so that you can paint a door,
Speaker 1: you can paint a what was the other guy's name,
Speaker 1: Ken Talbot Talbot Talbot of of Madigliani. Excellent, And that's
Speaker 1: actually a picture of Steve Harvey. That's that's my tale
Speaker 1: of Elmir door. That's it. That's it. Um. What's your
Speaker 1: ridiculous takeaway on Elizabeth? Oh, I think I've exposed all
Speaker 1: of that, and my ridiculous takeaway, thank you, is that
Speaker 1: I do want I want an Elmir Dori what I want? Uh?
Speaker 1: You can find us online at Ridiculous Crime on both
Speaker 1: Twitter for the talk and Instagram for the gawk, and
Speaker 1: email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com if
Speaker 1: you'd like, download the I Heart app if you want
Speaker 1: to leave us something called a talk back. It's like
Speaker 1: a thirty second voicemail that we can't respond to. But
Speaker 1: you know, we may play it on here an active
Speaker 1: revenge or I'll forge one, I'll mimic it. Tune in
Speaker 1: next time. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and
Speaker 1: Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by mayor of Beizza, Dave Kusten.
Speaker 1: Research is by Exhausted authenticators Marissa Brown and Andrea Song
Speaker 1: sharpen Tier. The themes song is by Thomas fo Digliani,
Speaker 1: Lee and Travis Picasso. Fake Donte executive producers are co
Speaker 1: directors of the FBI Art Crime Unit, Ben Boland and
Speaker 1: Noel Brown Ride Say It one More Time, We Dequeous.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of I Heart Radio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts to my heart Radio, visit the i heeart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.