Larry Cohen

by Michael Doyle

  The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1977)

  Why exactly did you want to make a film about J. Edgar Hoover?

  That’s a very important question. Many people asked me how I could dare make a picture about Hoover, particularly after what he had done to the people out here in Hollywood for such a long time. They asked me if I realized just how terrified this town was of the guy and what he stood for; how the blacklist had destroyed the careers of so many people in the motion picture business and in television, as well. Hoover had been dead for just two years when I first started making the picture, and I was warned by everybody not to deal with this subject as it could have terrible repercussions. That’s probably why I wanted to make the picture most of all — because everyone told me not to do it! [Chuckles] I just thought I’d be my usual stubborn self and do something that everybody insisted I should not do. I mean, the FBI was a sacrosanct organization that was seemingly beyond reproach. It was the finest investigative agency in the world — integrity personified — but of course, upon closer examination, there were considerable flaws in it. The FBI had demonstrated a lot of monstrous behaviour and had inflicted a lot of cruelty and pain on people, some of it unnecessarily. I suddenly thought, Well, I can do the same thing with the FBI that I did with a baby in It’s Alive. I can show the devilish side of this apparently honest organization and make the first FBI movie without the express authorisation and supervision of the Bureau itself. You must understand that up until the time I made The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover, nobody had ever made an FBI movie without the FBI’s approval, and without having an FBI agent present on the set. This was obviously done to check and approve everything. All the pictures made about the FBI back then were basically public relations movies for the Bureau like The FBI Story with James Stewart. [1] That was certainly a public relations movie in which every element of the story was greatly sanitized. I was going to make a more realistic and honest film. It would be an entirely different — and probably a very dangerous — undertaking but, perversely, I liked the idea of doing something dangerous.

  You’ve said that you structured the script as “a post-mortem of Hoover’s life and career.” Why take that approach?

  With Hoover having only recently died, it seemed rather appropriate. When a person dies and you read their obituary, it’s basically a summing up of their entire life — all their major achievements and disgraces framed in a few sentences. A number of movie biographies follow that same structure, such as Lawrence of Arabia. That film begins with Lawrence getting killed on a motorcycle, then we see the funeral before we flashback into his life story. Naturally, when you do a movie based on someone’s life, you examine not only the details of their personality and career, their public and professional and private relationships, but also their morality and philosophy. You try to include all these things and retain a balance and objectivity, but above everything you want to make the picture entertaining. You don’t want it to be too factual and dry, because it then plays like you are hanging the story on familiar historic events rather than trying to get at the heart of this person. You have the dramatic imperative, but you also have a responsibility to the truth. What are the facts here? Who was this guy? What did he do? What things shaped him? The structure of looking back and contemplating the past also added a certain poignancy that I liked. So, I was really just trying to write a complex portrait of a complex man within a complex structure.

  How did you raise financing for such a potentially controversial project?

  I didn’t, actually. I went to Washington DC with cast and crew, and I didn’t have any financing confirmed. The first week I was there, I was directing the picture and, at the same time, was also on the phone trying to raise money. I figured I could lay out enough cash to get us there for the first week and then, after that, I would have to get money from someplace. Finally, I got money from Samuel Arkoff at American International Pictures based on the actors I had assembled. I told Sam that the cast included no less than four Academy Award-winners. He didn’t know exactly which ones, but I did hire Dan Dailey to play Hoover’s long time associate, Clyde Tolson. I also remembered some of the old FBI movies I saw as a kid starring Lloyd Nolan as an FBI agent, things like The House on 92nd Street, [2] The Street with No Name [3] and Walk East on Beacon. [4] I was very lucky to get Lloyd to play the Attorney General Harlan Stone in the film, the guy who appointed Hoover as acting head of the Bureau, which led to Hoover becoming Director a short time afterwards. I really sold Lloyd to Sam. I insisted, “You simply can’t make an FBI movie without Lloyd Nolan! It can’t be done!” But when it came to casting the lead, Sam originally believed that Rod Steiger was going to play Hoover. Naturally, I didn’t tell him otherwise.

  What was Arkoff’s reaction when he eventually learned that Hoover was being portrayed by Broderick Crawford?

  Well, Broderick Crawford had also won an Academy Award [5], but I think Sam had his heart set on Rod Steiger. But Crawford was better than Steiger would have been. Actually, my first choice for the role was Albert Finney. When I’d originally written the script and was over in England, I was trying hard to get Finney to do it. I thought he could play Hoover when he was young and, with the aid of some makeup, when he was old. Finney also had that same kind of punched-in nose that Hoover had. So, I approached his assistant and he read the script. His assistant then recommended it to Finney, but Finney had too many other commitments, and for big money, too. I couldn’t afford to compete with that kind of price, and so we didn’t get him. I had anticipated that Finney would have been attracted to the part and he would have been great. As it was, when he got older, he ended up playing Winston Churchill instead. [6]

  How extensively did you research Hoover’s life when writing the screenplay?

  I read everything that was available on Hoover including many, many books that were critical. I also engaged a man named John Crewdson, who was The New York Times reporter assigned to cover the FBI and was later a Pulitzer Prize-winner. Crewdson knew the FBI intimately and he also knew all the inroads to the right people. He knew how to get me face-to-face with many of the individuals who had worked under Hoover, some of whom liked Hoover, some of whom didn’t. We spent nearly two years off and on interviewing people, compiling notes, and finding out stuff. Over the course of this time, we came up with a couple of front page stories that The New York Times carried on the FBI, based on revelations that we had uncovered ourselves whilst researching the movie. I felt that was a very satisfactory result — above and beyond the making of the picture — as we had made some news. We even stayed at the homes of several FBI agents and their families. We got close to them and found out even more information that we could use in the film. I mean, we not only discovered the existence of the Security Index, which was a list of people who were going to be arrested, we also uncovered the identity of Deep Throat. Of course, as most of us already know, Deep Throat was the informant who gave Woodward and Bernstein the information that resulted in Watergate and the eventual resignation of President Richard Nixon. The identity of Deep Throat had become a big secret over the years, but I knew it was a top-ranking executive at the FBI. In fact, he was the #1 executive at the Bureau. It was supposedly a top secret and there were all kinds of speculation going on for thirty years as to who this person might be. In our film, we stated very clearly that the information came from the FBI and we also put in a headline at the end of the picture: “Mark Felt Denies He is Deep Throat.” That was about as close as I could get to giving out the information because we knew exactly who it was! I couldn’t say that Felt was Deep Throat or I would have been the subject of a lawsuit. But we did say that Felt “denies” he is Deep Throat; it’s right there in print on the screen and nobody ever paid any attention to it! Nobody wanted to! The Washington Post was the newspaper that Woodward and Bernstein worked for, and which really exposed the Watergate story. They went to a great deal of trouble to discredit The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover when it opened in
Washington. They wrote two reviews of the movie — the first a creative review, the second a political review — in which they attempted to make the picture seem like it was badly researched. The fact was they knew we were too close to the truth. We had actually unearthed something that everybody else had decided to completely overlook.

  Did any part of you fear that machinations would be put in place against you by various individuals or parties when this information was featured in the film?

  I don’t know. I do know that the whole FBI involvement in Watergate was not much different from the usual tactics they had employed over the years under Hoover. They often leaked information to friendly newspapers and columnists such as Walter Winchell. [7] The leaking of information was one of Hoover’s most potent weapons and this situation was no different really. Watergate happened because Mark Felt who, let’s not forget, was the #1 man in the FBI after Hoover died and Clyde Tolson retired. Felt had moved into the top position. He wasn’t merely an FBI executive; he was the head of the organization. Then, Nixon appointed a kind of political appointee to run the FBI, and L. Patrick Gray came in as acting director, but he was a complete incompetent. Gray knew nothing about the Bureau and had no experience with the FBI. He didn’t even know many of the people working there. He was basically a figurehead, and his job was to destroy certain documents that Nixon wanted removed from the files. So, Felt ran the FBI and was the guy making all the decisions. So, when I said that the information which brought Watergate about came from Deep Throat, I was absolutely correct. It was the #1 guy who was responsible. That’s where it came from; there’s no question about it. The only thing that’s never really been examined — and it’s mentioned in the picture — is solving the riddle of why Nixon didn’t erase the tapes that incriminated him.

  Why didn’t Nixon destroy those tapes?

  Well, that’s the burning question isn’t it? The degaussing of those tapes could have been done in just a few minutes. They were all kept in a room in the Executive Office building and could have been easily erased. Nixon could have claimed executive privilege, preventing any action being taken against him, and that would have been the end of Watergate, but he didn’t do that! Again, the question is why? In my movie, we suggested that Hoover had duplicated some of the tapes. The tapes were readily available to the Secret Service and many of those agents in the Secret Service were former FBI Agents. So, Hoover had access to those tapes, and if Nixon believed that the tapes had been duplicated, then he couldn’t take the chance of erasing them and then have them turn up again later. That would have made him look even worse and is the secret of why Nixon’s tapes were not destroyed. That’s never been examined, and for what reason? Well, because nobody wants to pay attention to anything that’s in a movie. There are those that take the position of thinking, How can a movie actually break news and have a journalistic approach that beats the newspapers and television media to the scoop? But the fact remains that we did. We really were way ahead of everyone. After The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover came out, Senator Frank Church organized a senate subcommittee, which spent $4 million conducting hearings about the FBI. There was not one thing uncovered by those inquiries that had not already been revealed in our film or through our research.

  You spoke with William Sullivan, who, at one time, was Deputy Associate Director of the FBI. Was it he who first revealed to you that Mark Felt was Deep Throat?

  More or less, yes. Sullivan considered Felt to be an enemy. Sullivan had been removed from the FBI because he was doing too many favours for Nixon. He was vying to be appointed as the new director of the FBI and he really thought that he was going to get the job. In the movie, Sullivan is more or less the character that Jose Ferrer plays. Sullivan looked like he was going to succeed Hoover — if Hoover was to be relieved of his position. When Hoover found out what Sullivan was doing, he fired him, locked his office, and sealed his files. Naturally, Sullivan, who was rather a nice man if you knew him personally, had a lot of scores to settle with Hoover, Felt, and Tolson. That meant he was a more than willing supplier of information to me. I visited Sullivan at his house in Sugar Hill, New Hampshire, and stayed with him for a few days. He let us sleep in his son’s room and, during that time, gave us a lot of fascinating stuff. Not too long afterwards, Sullivan was killed behind his house when he was mistaken for a deer and shot by a hunter.

  Do you think that Sullivan’s death in November 1977 was indeed an accident?

  I have no idea. I couldn’t speculate on it. It was just unfortunate that he was shot in an apparent freak accident. As I say, Sullivan provided me with some intriguing information. It was Sullivan that informed us about the existence of the Security Index and the Nixon tapes, and he also gave us almost all the backdrop on Watergate. I put a lot of what he shared with us directly in the movie. Sullivan also revealed to me that he was responsible for writing the letter to Martin Luther King suggesting that Dr. King commit suicide. Sullivan actually mailed that letter from Florida to hide its origin. He told me that he wasn’t ashamed of having done it, too. He sent the letter down to Florida, and then they mailed it from there. Hoover had an enormous grudge against Martin Luther King and had been secretly recording Dr. King’s sexual activities in hotels around the country. Hoover felt that King was what he called “a tomcat” — someone who had a penchant for White women and was not at all like the image he presented of himself as the benevolent clergyman and Noble Prize-winner. Hoover was appalled at what he heard on those recordings, particularly some of the comments that were made by King. This included one that was made during the funeral of President Kennedy in 1963. Hoover had actually recorded King and his friends watching the funeral on television. At the moment Mrs. Kennedy approached the casket and kneeled down to kiss it, Dr. King apparently remarked, “Well, that’s the last time she’ll go down on him.” When Hoover heard that comment, that was it! These were highly unfortunate circumstances, and it doesn’t mean that Dr. King was not a tremendous political leader and a great spiritual leader of his people. It’s just that, like President Kennedy and many other political figures, he had a sexually impulsive side to his nature that he couldn’t control.

  Despite what we now know of Martin Luther King’s private life, did you encounter any resistance from his supporters during or after the film was made? Was anybody displeased with his rather unflattering portrayal?

  No, I never heard from anybody. As you know, over the years I’ve made a lot of movies with Black actors, and I never heard a single comment or complaint from anybody regarding the portrayal of Dr. King in the picture. Not from one person.

  Was there anything you discovered about Hoover’s life or administration that you decided not to put in the movie for any reason?

  No, not really. I certainly never found any evidence of a homosexual aspect to Hoover’s life or character. There were a lot of accusations and rumours that had persisted for forty years concerning Hoover and Clyde Tolson, and whether or not they were lovers and had a physical relationship. I saw absolutely no evidence of anything like that. [8] We actually shot at Tolson’s apartment, which was located twenty-five minutes away from Hoover’s house. We also shot inside and outside of Hoover’s home in Rock Creek Park, just outside of Washington. If you had seen Hoover’s home, you would realize that there wasn’t one gay aspect to the whole premises. When you visit the homes of gay people, they usually have a wonderful sense of style and preparation. From that standpoint alone, there was absolutely nothing in Hoover’s house that indicated he was homosexual. Seriously, walking in there was like walking into your grandparents’ house. It was full of old, musty stuff and nothing was up-to-date or repaired. I remember Hoover had a Marilyn Monroe calendar hanging over the bar and when I went over to look at one of his leather chairs, I picked up the doyley that was draped on the back and there was a crack in the leather. It was the same with the other furniture; I lifted up one cushion and underneath there was a visible tear. It was obvious to me that this was an old
man’s house and not a gay old man’s house.

  What about the lingering rumours of Hoover’s transvestism?

  The story about Hoover’s cross-dressing is another total lie. It was claimed in a book by Anthony Summers, a British writer, whose previous credits included a biography of Marilyn Monroe. Summers had to put something in his book in order to sell it, so he filled it with regurgitated information from other books. There was one section consisting of maybe ten or fifteen pages that contained this woman’s ridiculous testimony that she had attended a party at the Waldorf Astoria where Hoover had appeared in ladies clothing. This woman was an alcoholic, who had once been in jail on Riker’s Island for committing perjury. Her story is staggering in its insanity and there is absolutely no corroboration of it. To think that J. Edgar Hoover, the most infinitely private and guarded person one could imagine, would appear in a public place in that condition is ludicrous. That woman was a complete liar and a fraud. Any historian who has written a book since that time which has touched on Hoover’s life, discounts all of this nonsense. It’s a stupid story that makes no sense whatsoever.