Straddling the line ‘between hero and villain’
J. Edgar arrives on DVD and Blu-ray
It’s a safe bet that J. Edgar Hoover had some knowledge of the affair between President Kennedy and young intern Mimi Alford, the details of which were recently published in Alford’s memoir, Once Upon a Secret. During his 48-year reign as director of the FBI and its predecessor, the Bureau of Investigation, Hoover had files on just about everyone.
Clint Eastwood’s recent biopic, starring Leonardo Dicaprio as the embattled director, arrives on DVD and Blu-ray with a brief making-of that combines information about the film and historical footage of the man. “I always start with the idea that no one sees themselves as a villain,” writer Dustin Lance Black says. Indeed, a key scene in the film involves Hoover dictating his life story, “re-clarifying the difference between hero and villain.”
The making-of is called The Most
J. Edgar is in stores now. Powerful Man in the World, and runs 18 minutes on the Blu-ray edition. (Oddly, it has been edited down to 12 minutes and retitled A Complicated Man for the DVD.) It discusses how Hoover sought to control the public image of the FBI from the start. He even helped recast James Cagney from villain in the 1931 film The Public Enemy to hero in 1935’s G-men, which was practically a recruitment ad for the FBI.
Hoover’s cozy relationship with the Mafia is also touched upon. He came of age during the First Red Scare of 1919, and for the rest of his life saw Communism as the greatest threat to America. Organized crime, by comparison, was an evil he could control, and he afforded it a long leash.
Hoover was a supremely organized crime fighter, setting up a centralized fingerprint database and a forensics lab at a time when many police took only a cursory notice of crime scenes. Denis O’hare, who has a minor role in the film, credits Hoover with creating the conditions for tv’s long-running csi franchise. And Eastwood waxes rhapsodic on Hoover’s creation of a card catalogue for the Library of Congress – although no longer in use, it has been retained as a valuable artifact in the history of information management.
Eastwood’s movie skirts around whether Hoover ever consummated his relationship with lifelong friend and second-in-command Clyde Tolson, played swishily by Armie Hammer. Few have suggested any sexual feelings between Hoover and Helen Gandy (Naomi Watts), although she worked as his personal secretary for most of her life, retiring at age 75 on the day he died. Her last official duty was to shred stacks of incriminating documents.
In the end, Hoover’s grip on power became more important to him than how he used it. His relationship with the FBI was a case of “le bureau, c’est moi.” Following his death in office in 1972, Congress passed a law limiting terms for future directors to 10 years. However, the current FBI head, Robert Mueller had his term extended to 12 years by executive order of the president. Maybe he knows something?