“J. Edgar” - Home Movie?
Rev. by Hugh Murray
Basically, the film was a love story. Unfortunately, it is not told in a linear manner, and at times one must guess as to the time a scene is occurring. It did show some of the pettiness of Hoover – requiring agents to dress in a certain manner, cut mustaches, etc. The earliest event shown is the bombing of Attorney General Palmer’s home after WWI. Hoover is clearly anti-Bolshevik, and aids in the round-up of radicals for deportation. The film might have devoted more to the role of his bureau during Prohibition. The anti-gangster campaigns of the late 20s and 30s indicate how Hoover increases the power of his agency. However, more should have been shown how he vindictively sought to destroy agents who did more to capture the gangsters and yet were destroyed by Hoover out of jealousy. Nothing is shown of FDR’s campaign against pro-German elements as WWII approached. All know that Japanese were rounded up and interned in the US, but so were German and Italian nationals. Was the FBI involved? I don’t know, but possibly. Communists spies stealing atomic or other secrets is ignored in the film, as is the whole Cold War era. And to protect the US from subversion, the FBI researched to ferret out homosexuals from government jobs. Had Eastwood included this crusade, the movie would have had a certain irony.
Hoover’s hostility to ML King is emphasized, but nothing about the surveillance of the Communist operative that led to the FBIs wiretapping King. The assassination of John Kennedy is passed quickly, with nothing about the FBI’s role in investigating the killing. It is clear in the film that Hoover used files to blackmail President’s, - Eleanor Roosevelt who had a close (lesbian) woman friend, JFK who romanced a beautiful East German gal (possible spy), etc. Hoover’s blackmail files (without specifics) are used to threaten President Nixon to keep Hoover on the job.
Nothing in the film extends far beyond the generally accepted story. What did the FBI know about Lee Harvey Oswald, for example? Various agents have alleged Hoover knew much more, but Eastwood does not speculate on this issue. Did Hoover use the media to out suspected Communists during the Cold War? Was his relation to Sen. Joe McCarthy as condescending as the one-line in the film? Jim Marrs alleged that in the 1930s the Mafia had proof of Hoover’s affection for his assistant Tolson, and the mob blackmailed Hoover so the FBI would ignore the Mafia. For whatever reason, Hoover did maintain that there was no organized crime in the US.
Instead, the film focuses on the love story of Hoover and Tolson, and the efforts of Hoover’s mother to prevent him from being a daffodil. Happily, Eastwood did not have Hoover attending a party in a bright, red dress, as alleged by a woman with mob connections. But he does place Hoover in his mother’s dress and beads. It seems clear that Hoover was gay, but there is little evidence that he was a cross-dresser.
For several decades Hoover was among the most powerful men in America. And for decades, he was accompanied by another man; all this in an era when homosexuality was deemed a crime and a pathology. At times, Hoover’s FBI was charged with ridding the government of subversives and homosexuals. Yet, Hoover and Tolson were an item aat race tracks and restaurants. Communists hated Hoover and the FBI. I recall in the 1960s how a radical friend sneered that three leading conservative, anti-Communists, Cardinal Spellman of New York, Sen. Joe McCarthy, and J. Edgar Hoover were all homosexuals. (McCarthy had married, but a bit later in life). At the time I discounted the charge as simply an example of smearing the political opponent (all sides do it). However, now I wonder.
This film “J. Edgar” is not a bad one. However, Hoover was far too powerful for so long and was so complex that this effort fails to do the subject justice. Eastwood’s attempt might better be retitled, “J. Edgar Hoover: the Home Movie.”
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I posted this review on amazon.com. Then I read another review by Herbert Calhoun who judged Hoover a monster. I commented on his review, he replied, and the debate ensued. Below are the comments from amazon.com:
Your initial post: Nov 21, 2011 11:40:26 PM PST
Comparing Beria of the Soviet secret police to J. Edgar Hoover simply shows how much better we in the US were. While Beria and his predecessors in the NKVD were rounding up and killing millions of Soviet citizens, Hoover's reign seems extremely mild by comparison. There were in the US spies aiding the USSR, to build atomic bombs and steal our military and economic secrets. Some were caught. Few were executed. It was far easier to be a dissident in J. Edgar's America than in Beria's USSR.
In reply to your post on Nov 22, 2011 3:50:23 AM PST I did not miss this point.
My reasons for drawing the "loose" comparison was that eventually Beria was brought to task for his excesses. But in the U.S. no one who makes a political (or an economic) mistake -- no matter how damaging to our democracy -- ever pays for it? My point is that it was a difference in degree, not in kind. And Mr. Hoover's was a perfect case in point.
And further to your point. Hoover would not have caught the atomic spies if Elizabeth Bentley had not for her on reasons exposed the cell she was in. Only after that was Hoover able to wrap-up most, but not all of the group. Claus Fuchs, you may recall, finally confessed under MI-5 pressure, many years later after he had lived a long trouble-free life.
I would not be the one to defend Miss Hoover under any circumstances.
Your post, in reply to an earlier post on Nov 22, 2011 9:19:18 AM PST
Last edited by you on Nov 22, 2011 9:19:50 AM PST J. Edgar was not Miss Hoover. Marx noted that quantitative differences when large enough become qualitative differences. The massive numbers rounded up into gulags and killed by Beria's agency were of a qualitative difference from Hoover's infractions in the US. And some of his attacks on civil liberties came at the orders of Presidents like Truman, whose Attorney General's list of subversive organizations led to firings and discrimination. That is a long way from Beria and Stalin.
Even if Hoover were connected to a plot in Dallas that resulted in the JFK assassination and cover up, and I do not assert that he was, then he was involved in a coup - but still nothing so deadly as the Soviet secret police.
From the 1920s until 1972 with J. Edgar in power, America was still one of the freest nations on earth. Had he been the monster you portray, America might be a different, dismal, regimented state.
In reply to your post on Nov 22, 2011 12:07:19 PM PST The film was not about Russia, which at the time was a communist country, but the U.S. which reputedly throughout Hoover reign was a democracy. I suppose you think of Ms. Hoover as a hero. That of course is your prerogative. But based on his record, he was little more than a monster -- who had no respect for democracy, or for the U.S. He was a sick racist, as are most of the people who see him as a hero.
Consider those who held similar positions elsewhere during J. Edgar's leadership in the US. It is clear that the Soviet system and Beria were incomparably worse. And what about Europe? For some of Hoover's time in leadership, the chief of Interpol was a gentleman by the name of Heinrich Himmler. By comparison, Hoover was certainly no monster. Was he racist? Probably no more so than Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, who instituted segregation in federal agencies. Probably no more so than Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt who vacationed in segregated Georgia and was allied with Democratic Senators like Bilbo of Mississippi. Probably no more so than Democratic President Truman, who denounced Martin Luther King, and said if agitators came into his store like the sit ins, he would throw them out. Was Hoover sick? He was vindictive toward possible rivals; he created an agency with rigid rules. He was gay and had his agents investigate if federal employes were gay, which might cause their termination. But he was following the rules of the time.
We do not live in a perfect world. Hoover had his faults, but he was no monster. He created an agency that outlived him and that has been relied upon by the nation's leaders. They found that he had performed a good job. And sometimes doing a good job is heroic.
In reply to your post on Nov 23, 2011 10:00:37 AM PST Mr. Murray,
Unless it is the Communist, I see you do not told those responsible for not making a mockery of our values very high. You have a very peculiar way of defending Hoover, our highest law enforcement officer who was most probably being blackmailed as a closeted homosexual by the very mob he was mandated by the American people to catch.
A man who while he was supposed to be catching spies, but instead was racking up stats on car thefts. A man who had all of Washington fearful of the sexual dirt he had accumulated in his files on others, while the mob had pictures in their files on him sucking on his boyfriend's private parts. Our chief law enforcement officer, who was implicated in assassinating American citizens, including even possibly the President?
Maybe by your way of thinking and according to your rules of morality, that is not a monster. For mine, it is.
We thus must agree to disagree.
peace
Hugh Murray adds - The great courage and determination of the bureaucrat, J. Edgar Hoover
There is another aspect to Hoover utterly neglected by the film. Under President Franklin Roosevelt, many Communists and others obtained jobs in the federal government. Some were spies. When some Soviet operatives turned, and told the FBI, Hoover believed them. He sought to alert other agencies that spies were in their employ. Under Roosevelt, it was clear, the government did not want to know about such matters. Hoover pressed on. A good bureaucrat often seeks to please his superiors. Hoover had the courage to continue to annoy them, warning them of the danger.
Similarly, when the Roosevelt government sought to return Soviet dissidents to our ally, the USSR (and probable death), Hoover intervened to save some.
Of course this is not in the movie. When does Hollywood ever criticize Franklin Roosevelt?
