10/9/08: The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1977)Oliver Stone’s
W. is coming, and we’ve all got good reasons to stay home. Personally, we just don’t see how the film can be nearly as good as
The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover. Writer and director Larry Cohen—who’s made a few films discussed here before—really threw together an epic biography on the cheap.
More importantly,
The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover is a truly balanced look at a complicated man. We certainly have our problems with Hoover—including his opposition to the United States highway system—and we know plenty of other conservatives ready to rant against the guy. Still, Cohen’s film is an inspiring story that’s certainly fairer than anyone could’ve expected in 1977.
The film opens with machine gun fire and full opening credits. This helps kill several minutes of running time, but also prepares you for the amazing cast that Cohen assembled. Then the action starts with the aftermath of Hoover’s death in 1972. Powerful people in Washington are worrying about who’s going to get those titular private files. Then we see a journalist (John Marley) having a good laugh with his pals in the newsroom over the death of the FBI Director.
We get our first glance of Hoover’s cronies shredding files while the Nixon administration discusses the importance of the papers. There’s a narrator during all this, and he sets up a flashback to when Hoover was a mere FBI clerk. It’s explained that Hoover got his big break when activists bombed the J.P. Morgan bank in 1920, and the young agent was the only one who’d been keeping tabs on the Commies. We then jump to the Palmer Raids—which were a notorious crackdown on the era’s radical Leftists.
Young Hoover (James Wainwright) isn’t happy with how the assorted Leftists are being detained. “Every one of these aliens has the right to legal counsel,” he declares. The local official isn’t impressed: “You’re a real bleeding heart, aren’t you?”
Then we get an idea of how the film plans to treat Hoover’s private life. He gets paranoid when an overage flapper (Ronee Blakley) throws herself at him, convinced that he’s being set up for blackmail. See, he just can’t believe a woman would want him. Hoover’s career is moving along, though. Attorney General Harlan Stone (Lloyd Nolan) offers the 29-year-old agent the directorship of the FBI, which needs some big changes in the wake of the Teapot Dome scandal. Hoover agrees, but only after making demands to ensure the FBI’s integrity—and he wants those demands agreed to in writing.
Hoover begins by putting a ban on FBI wiretaps and starting up fingerprinting laboratories. He’s also sick of gunmen being glorified. “The press seems to enjoy writing stories about these bank robbers and criminals,” he complains. “They’re supposed to be colorful.” Hoover hires a PR man to jazz up the FBI’s image. He gets plenty of help from Walter Winchell (Lloyd Gough, a formerly blacklisted actor).
Hoover’s happy to nab John Dillinger, although his demanding mother (June Havoc) complains that he should be there for the arrest. He deports Dillinger’s girlfriend, and gets jealous of all the press attention given to agent Melvin Purvis (Michael Sacks). Hoover’s already getting heat from eggheads in the Senate over the FBI’s high profile. The narrator informs us that Hoover’s many bestsellers are written by FBI employees on the federal payroll, but the director gets all the royalties.
Hoover is also being mocked for having never collared a criminal, so he sets up a splashy arrest with the last surviving member of Ma Barker’s gang. Things go comically.
That’s a lot of negatives piled on, but here come the Nazis. President Roosevelt (Howard Da Silva) asks Hoover (now old enough to be played by Broderick Crawford) to go after Nazi agents. “I’ve been against wiretaps since I took over the Bureau,” says Hoover. “Probably unconstitutional.” He asks Roosevelt to put the request in writing. “Just don’t get caught,” says the President, thereby setting a 30-year precedent.
Back to the private life, as Hoover dines with Damon Runyon (Jack Cassidy) and Quentin Reynolds (George Plimpton). The guys are talking about how Hoover avoids women, and Reynolds warns about how that’ll start rumors about the Director’s sexuality. Hoover leaves the table. Reynolds speculates that maybe he hit a nerve.
“What are you mugs saying?” scoffs Runyon. “You wouldn’t pull the same line of stuff on Cardinal Spellman!”
“He’s a priest.”
“What the hell? So’s Edgar—and we ordained him.”
We next see Hoover confronting legendary Leftist loon Earl Warren over the interring of Japanese-Americans. “That makes about as much sense as rounding up the Italian-Americans,” says Hoover. Roosevelt—who keeps coming across as a smug creep—tells Hoover to support Warren’s plan.
Hoover’s a lot happier after the war, as he gets back to hunting for Commie agents. (His mother dies somewhere around this time, too.) The narrator gets a little carried away with talk about fear driving the nation. (It doesn’t help that he’s talking over newsreel footage of the Rosenbergs.) Hoover is helping out Senator Joe McCarthy by giving him confidential information, but McCarthy can’t keep the facts straight. We also get more of Hoover dealing with gay rumors. He casually stands in the line of fire while confronting a ranting fugitive, and gets called a big nelly for his trouble. (Hoover’s stepped in to make the arrest after the local authorities are on a coffee break. Hoover doesn’t believe in coffee breaks.)
Also, we see an FBI agent murdered by a purse-snatcher. Our narrator—who we thought was a mere voiceover—reveals that this is his father. That’s a nice weird touch.
There’s a bizarre scene where Hoover baffles his favorite waiter at the Stork Club by casually inquiring about the man’s private life. This includes a helpful tip that the waiter’s college-age daughter just joined a Commie organization. Hoover then recites Rudyard Kipling’s “If.” (“Do you know Rudyard Kipling?” “Look, I don’t know no Rudyard Kipling, and I don’t
want to know him”)
This brings us far enough to get the dynamic duo of JFK and RFK—played by even more dynamic actors. President Kennedy (William Jordan, last seen here playing Monk in
Deathmaster) is offering Bobby (Michael Parks) the job of Attorney General. Bobby’s not too sure about working with Hoover. JFK doesn’t see a problem: “You both got your start trying to hunt Reds…Maybe, in fact, you’re too much alike.”
We get a lot of tension between Hoover and his new boss. This includes a heavy-handed moment when the FBI director finds a young agent casually carrying a copy of
Playboy under his arm. The kid is promptly exiled to Knoxville—but, seriously, it’s not likely anyone would be casually carrying a copy of
Playboy around the Justice Department anytime in the last 48 years.
RFK then complains about Hoover not going after the Mafia. The director eventually reveals that he’s trying to avoid corruption in the FBI. Hoover also casually notes Kennedy’s own Mob connections. That conversation ends with RFK authorizing massive wiretaps. The surveillance includes Martin Luther King, Jr.
The action cuts to Agent Dwight Webb (Rip Torn) stopping a hijacker on a TWA airline. The psycho wants to crash the plane into the White House. “Or the Pentagon,” he adds, “I’ll be a national hero!” This is our first look at Hoover’s longtime pal Clyde Tolson (Dan Dailey, in his final role). Tolson steps in after Hoover tries to call off the rescue, since a TWA pilot in an earlier hijacking complained to the press that the agents were “trigger-happy.”
This is when we find out that Agent Webb has been our narrator. There’s some soap opera going on while Webb romances a secretary, and gets transferred for the fraternization. Meanwhile, JFK is dead and Hoover is feeding President Johnson (Andrew Duggan) dirt on the rest of the family. “Nobody prints anything bad about the Kennedys,” Hoover adds.
Meanwhile, we get the most serious inference yet that Hoover’s gay. He passes on the attentions of a hot widow. (The scene includes some casual anti-Semitism from Hoover.) This is followed by a visit to the FBI offices by Martin Luther King (Raymond St. Jacques). “I’m here to find out why you’re tapping my phones,” he announces, only to find out that his pal RFK signed the orders. Hoover got it in writing.
Meanwhile, we see John Marley’s journalist in the newsroom, planting a blatant blind item accusing Hoover of being gay. “Let’s bring it out in the open,” he declares. Hoover responds by proudly taking Tolson out to their regular restaurant.
Nixon’s in office now, and Agent Webb is getting fed up with the FBI’s tactics. He tracks down Hoover at the horse races to deliver a big outraged speech. Then the narration comes in: “What a hypocritical son of a bitch I was…” Hoover also has a nemesis in Nixon operative Lionel McCoy (José Ferrer). The FBI director is regularly clashing with the CIA, and Nixon isn’t happy about Hoover’s habit of wanting things in writing. The pressure’s on, and Tolson nicely sums things up:
How the hell did we get to be villains, Edgar? The Rosenbergs, Oppenheimer, Alger Hiss—all of them made into martyrs, and suddenly we’re some kind of Gestapo?Hoover dies at home from a heart attack, so it must be 1972. Agent Webb—now a former agent—meets with Marley’s character. They discuss that Hoover’s files are being shredded. Webb guesses that Nixon’s people must also know, so he heads over to the FBI headquarters and bluffs McCoy’s men into scurrying away. Tolson comes out of the building, and the two get to talking. Webb grudgingly admits that Hoover should be admired for letting the FBI control the politicians, instead of the other way around.
A smiling Tolson gets another speech:
The Bureau? They’ll get their coffee breaks now. The ladies will smoke in their slacks. The boys will have mustaches and sideburns. A year from now, there won’t be any FBI as we know it. Edgar took over after the greatest scandal of our time—the Harding mess. He managed to hush everything up for 48 years. Now it’s all going to come tumbling down. The FBI, the CIA, maybe even the administration itself. He isn’t there to cover for them, manage their dirty linen. Oh, they’ll miss him, alright.Tolson gets into a car (along with some files he saved from the shredder) and Webb’s voiceover dwells on the quick downfall of Nixon and Spiro Agnew. There’s your movie—which is a lot of fun crammed into 112 minutes.
We should add that the film shows Melvin Purvis—having left the FBI for a radio show—committing suicide in a paranoid fit that Hoover’s tapping his phone. It’s possible that Purvis’ death was just an accident. We’re certainly not suggesting that everything here is factual. Plenty of Leftists would still be surprised at how much holds up to examination. What doesn’t hold up to examination is bizarre tales of Hoover parading around at parties in drag—but that’s the kind of thing that gets reported as fact nowadays.
Make it your own: The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover has never been released on DVD. As it turns out,
VHS copies are rare and expensive. Just as well that we covered the whole story here.
