Warts, and that’s all
New doc paints Trump’s former lawyer as allergic to the truth
Is Roy Cohn a footnote in the history of Donald Trump, or is Trump a mere footnote in Cohn’s storied life? The New York lawyer and the U.S. president would doubtless have different answers, but we can’t ask Cohn directly; he died of complications from AIDS in 1986.
Director Matt Tyrnauer (Studio 54, Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood, Citizen Jane) gives Cohn a platform of sorts in his newest documentary, Where’s My Roy Cohn?
We follow the pugnacious prosecutor from his such early exploits as helping to send the Rosenbergs to the electric chair in 1953, through to the 1970s, when he became the New York Mafia’s lawyer of choice after helping John Gotti serve just two years for manslaughter; this after Gotti shot a man in cold blood in front of eyewitnesses in a crowded Staten Island bar.
This was also about the time he started working for real estate mogul Donald Trump, accused by the Justice Department of refusing to accept African-American tenants in his properties. Cohn counter-sued the government for $100-million; Trump settled out of court; and he and Cohn declared it a victory.
Cohn then framed Trump’s letter of thanks along with a photo of the two men. It hung in his office next to one of his good friends Ronald and Nancy Reagan. In an interview at the time, Cohn calls them his two favourite photos. The film’s title is a quote of Trump’s when he was looking for legal advice or representation, which was often.
And whatever else he was, Cohn was one hell of a lawyer. But as Tyrnauer’s film divulges, he wasn’t much else, at least not much that was good. You’ve heard of the warts-and-all biography? Cohn was all warts. Relatives and even a former lover seem more amazed at his gall than truly admiring. The man was allergic to the truth.
He was born to Dora Marcus, known as “the ugliest woman in the Bronx” for her personality as well as her looks. His father, Albert C. Cohn, is said to have agreed to marry her in exchange for a seat on the New York Supreme Court. They had one child.
The documentary describes Cohn as a self-hating Jew; a closeted gay man whose sexuality was an open secret; Senator Joseph McCarthy’s chief counsel in the years of Communist witch hunts; a man who took over a relative’s decades-old model train company and ran it into the ground; owner of a heavily insured yacht that burned under mysterious circumstances, killing a crew member; and a political fixer who helped Reagan win the 1980 election, and worked to torpedo Geraldine Ferraro’s vice-presidential chances four years later.
Cohn was eventually disbarred, a few months before his death; one of the rare accusations that stuck was his attempt to have a comatose millionaire client “sign” a new will naming him beneficiary. But he never seemed to mind insults, denigration or derogatory names. “The worse the adjectives, the better it is for business,” he once said.