J. Edgar Hoover Biopic Punts On Gay Question

Clint Eastwood's new film about J. Edgar Hoover which stars Leonardo DiCaprio as the storied FBI Director declines to expressly address his sexuality, and leaves it to viewers to draw their own conclusion about his relationship with Associate Director Clyde Tolson.

M. Wesley Swearingen, an agent from 1951 to 1977, writes in FBI Secrets about the long-standing rumors within the Bureau concerning Hoover and Tolson which include allegations that the FBI Director ignored the Mafia for decades because the wise guys had incriminating goods on the supposed lovers.

The allegations were fleshed out -- so to speak -- in Official and Confidential: the Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover by Anthony Summer. A review of the book ("Partners For Life") by Sidney Urquhart for Time magazine summarizes one alleged incident as follows:

Perhaps Summers' most bizarre revelation is an account provided by Susan Rosenstiel, the wife of a liquor distiller and gambling crony. Rosenstiel recalls attending what she thought would be an elegant private party at New York City's Plaza Hotel in the company of lawyer Roy Cohn, Hoover and others. Instead, Cohn introduced Rosenstiel to a woman named "Mary," dressed in a fluffy black dress, lace stockings and high heels. It was obvious Mary was no woman. "You could see where he shaved. It was Hoover," said Rosenstiel. Joined by Cohn, Hoover stripped down to a tiny garter belt and proceeded to have sex with two young boys. Cohn later joked about the evening. "That was really something, wasn't it, with Mary Hoover?"

The "two young boys" with whom Hoover allegedly had sex perhaps were provided by Ed "the Skull" Murphy who was a long-time Genovese associate involved in the crime family's gay bar and boy prostitution rackets in New York City.

Saw this movie last night. The only indication of Hoover's homosexuality is based on private conversations between him and Tolson, which, obviously, were never made public, and a blurb at the end of the movie that Tolson was the only beneficiary of the Hoover estate. Slim pickings, when the entire premise of the movie is less about what Hoover accomplished in a lifetime of dedication to his country, and more about "Brokeback Mountain" in really great suits and with fewer horses.

Incidently, the film also insinuates that Hoover couldn't blackmail Roosevlelt with a suggestive letter from his wife to her lesbian lover, because Roosevelt knew about the relationship, and was cool with it. It also has a wiretap of President Kennedy having sex with "as East German Communist," and AG Bobby Kennedy more interested persuing Martin Luther King than further prosecution of Communist infiltrators.

Look, it is high time people on this website come to terms with the fact that libertarians and conservatives are different KINDS of Republicans. Federal law enforcement is not popular among libertarians.

As the son of a retired FBI agent, I am glad I did not see this movie with my father, as we originally planned. I am going to to him and my mother into seeing the Margaret Thatcher biopic instead. Maybe it will get into her alleged affair with Ronald Reagan.

I don’t buy the concept of Hoover as a flaming homosexual. If he was a homosexual, he kept it under wraps.

Those stories about him going to cocktail parties in drag and engaging in widely attended group orgies are horse hooey, in my opinion.

It is a standard slander by the left who claim to love homosexuality, yet use it as their favorite malediction against anyone who disagrees with them.

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