In The End Forgery My Friend, But Only In The End-With Melissa McCarthy’s "Can You Ever Forgive Me?” (2018) In Mind   

By Laura Perkins

When I was a kid, a young girl growing up in a heavy religious atmosphere Second Awakening “burned over” area of upstate New York and stuck, and I use that word correctly, on an isolated truck farm one way that I entertained was collecting stamps, postage stamps mainly U.S. postage and what were called First Day covers, meaning that you got an envelope with a stamp usually with a cachet postmarked on the first day of issue from whatever place it was issued. Very early First Day of Issues were much rarer and worth more although less likely to have a commercial cachet. My overall collection was based mainly on stamps and covers from the 1950s onward that were both inexpensive but also produced in enough qualities that they except for maybe printing errors to this day have had no serious appreciation in value. I kept those covers and stamp album and gave them to a granddaughter who expressed some passing interest in collecting such materials. That in itself is unusual since you hardly ever see or hear of young people, kids, getting into philately (that is just the technical name for stamp-collecting not some coded sexual reference for any evil-minded readers).

Many years later after my second divorce with two young daughters to raise on a fairly meager settlement I came back to philately (remember that is not a bad word) using part of my settlement to start a mail order (quaint, right) stamp and covers business via various stamp publications and doing weekend shows at places like hotels and stamp clubs. I would buy, starting out at least, stamp albums at auction or via dealers and break them up for individual sale of the stamps (and plenty of postage for the latter stuff that wasn’t worth selling). I would buy bulk First Day covers and do the same creating a tough but profitable little business which along with an occasional writing assignment or printing order would keep a roof over my head and my daughters until things stabilized. As I expanded my reach I would also scour out of the way flea markets and “antique” stores looking for postcards with interesting postmarks (not for the scene on the front buy for say a postmark from some railroad train or tram). That later expansion is important below in reviewing this film because along the postcard trail you would also find old letters and contents from various famous or well-known people. In those days I had a market for such material among certain types of collectors. I did that work for several years until the interest in stamp-collecting except for very rare investment type items dried up among the young. Also on-line operations like E-Bay and mainline auction houses were taking away mail order (remember quaint) business and shutting down physical shows when the customer based dried up. I haven’t been in touch with this field for a while so I am not sure about the condition of the industry except when I did a quick Google search again and didn’t see much market except for those rare portfolio items and one of a kind pieces which will always have some market.  

 All of this foreknowledge to address the main issue, the main criminal issue in the film under review Melissa McCarty’s Can You Ever Forgive Me? -the market for literary material from famous writers, a market I never got involved with but which the main character Ms. Israel in this based on fact story delved into in order to keep herself afloat when she was going under after having some early success as a historical novel writer. But fame is fleeing and so forgery became her friend (along with a mad monk gay con man and man about town Johnny Too Bad, take that as you will who glided the path for her). Frankly I do not remember being part of any stamp show or attending any auction where famous authors had their personal mostly typewritten notes and letters on sale but perhaps that was a separate market. I do know because I sold many such items that letters from Presidents or just their signatures had some value and formed a collectible market as did sports figures and celebrities.       

What joins my experiences and Ms. Israel’s conscious if seemingly minor criminal activity was around the question of forgeries, and its subset authentication. In philately there have been many such forgeries, some quite famous and stamp dealers have been known to do a few things to stamps to sell them as more expensive items like taking stamps you get by the sheet and turning them into coil stamps by cutting the perforations, adding so-called lines between such stamps which make them more valuable, things like that. Various fixes although for the most part with expensive items, and even not so valuable items but ones that should be authenticated there are agencies including the American Philatelic Society who for a fee will do the service. The almost shocking part of the Israel story in that the dealers she was dealing with took whatever she had to offer without much fuss until she went too far on a playwright Noel Coward intimate letter which had to be fake since it would have revealed too much about his sexual preferences when such knowledge would have subjected him to criminal sanctions.       

That is the technical part of Ms. Israel’s operation but the film is as much about her being on the ropes as a writer and desperate to keep herself (and a beloved cat) afloat even though she was not nature’s noblewoman by any stretch of the imagination. Mostly she had moped along assuming that having written a few successful works that she should have been on easy street and took her fall pretty hard. Things looked really bad until she “discovered” she could con supposedly sophisticated New York City booksellers into buying her forgeries. Thereafter she made a cottage industry out of it. Along the way the seemingly asexual Ms. Israel made what could only be called an association with one Johnny Too Bad who after she told what she was doing became something like her confederate. That is until the heat came down on his soft head and he ratted her out to save his own ass. She would take the fall although not serving any prison time but her operation was over if not in the end her friendship with ugly Johnny Too Bad. She was forced to write her own stuff and face the hard realities of the hard copy publishing business. Having been down and out myself despite her disagreeable nature I had some sympathy for her situation despite myself. A well done job here by Melissa McCarthy and Brother Grant as the mad monk Johnny.