by Master of Deceit: J. Edgar Hoover;America in the Age of Lies
On November 27, the Chicago office got word that Baby Face Nelson had been spotted speeding along on a nearby highway. Cowley and fellow agent Herman Hollis rushed to find him, insisting that Purvis remain behind. That saved his life. A furious gun battle on Highway 12 left Hollis dead and Cowley mortally wounded. When Purvis got the terrible news, he raced to his colleague’s bedside and swore, “If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll get Baby Face Nelson — dead or alive.” Nelson was indeed soon found dead — from wounds received in the initial shoot-out. But that sensational vow — so perfect for the press — was also the end of Purvis’s career.
The one man the press wanted suddenly became invisible. Hoover decreed that “he is not to come to the office.” The missing man was demoted, taken off any case involving surviving members of the Dillinger gang, given unimportant jobs, and then, finally, transferred out of the Chicago office. Melvin Purvis was being erased from the Bureau. In July 1935, he resigned. But that made him much more dangerous to Hoover. As long as Purvis had worked for the Bureau, he could be muzzled. Now the media could have as much of him as it wanted. The war of images was going to be fought everywhere — from cereal boxes to movies — and only one hero would be left standing.
Purvis wrote the “inside story of America’s most famous man-hunting organization” in a series of magazine articles, then a book; Gillette signed him up to sponsor razor blades, Dodge to promote cars. But his biggest score came on the breakfast table, where Post Toasties made him the center of their advertising campaign — complete with secret codes, a fingerprint kit, and a Junior G-Man badge, which in turn inspired Parker Brothers to create a board game called Melvin Purvis’ “G”-Man Detective Game.
Post Toasties went all out in its Melvin Purvis campaign — offering kids badges and comics like this one, promoting a real-life detective hero.
J. Edgar Hoover struck back — brilliantly. First he used whispers, hinting to gossip columnists that Purvis was money hungry. The more famous Purvis became, the more that rumor trailed behind him. Hoover seemed to confirm the rumors when, in his own book, he lied, claiming that Purvis had not resigned but had instead been fired. Then Hoover swamped the public with his official version of the Dillinger story. G-Men, a radio series that began in the summer of 1935, cut both Purvis and the Woman in Red out entirely. Instead, the faceless technicians of the Bureau’s crime lab identified Dillinger through his fingerprints; Cowley led the battle with the aid of a newly invented agent named Nellis, who lit the all-important cigar. While Purvis appeared on cereal boxes, Hoover spoke to young people in G-Men comic strips, and his photograph began showing up on the society pages.
This short profile of Hoover appeared in 1935 and shows how his publicity minders wanted his story to be told. He was called Speed as a child, but that was because as a twelve-year-old, he started hustling for tips as a grocery-store delivery boy. His men generally did have training in both marksmanship and the law and had broken some spectacular kidnapping cases.
Hoover on the set of the 1931 movie Little Caesar with Edward G. Robinson
“Did you know?” “Have you heard?” People have always loved learning hot secrets and juicy rumors about neighbors, rivals, and especially the great and famous. Up until the 1920s, gossip was shared in person, friend to friend. Today, every trip to the supermarket can tell you which celebrity is “showing” or snuck out for a wild party with an ex-girlfriend. Sites like TMZ keep you up to the tweeting second on the so-called private lives of movie stars, music stars, and people who are stars simply because their lives are constantly filmed and photographed. We owe this whole buzzing world of seamy secrets — as addictive as popcorn — to one man: Walter Winchell.
When Winchell began writing for newspapers in the 1920s, the press treated the private world as off-limits. You could not say that a woman was pregnant, could not report on marital infidelity unless that came out in a court case. You could not mention a politician’s affairs, no matter how often he appeared in public with a favored mistress. Winchell changed the rules. He wrote in a new style: short sentences . . . separated by ellipses . . . punchy and telegraphic.
He invented words that almost said what you couldn’t say, as if he were speaking in whisper, confiding a secret just to you — and his millions of other readers. A couple dating was “closerthanthis”; when they married, he wrote of a “slight case of merger,” which soon enough led the wife to be “infanticipating.” When the couple later split up, they became “the Mister and Miseries” who began “sharing separate teepees.” Writing six columns a week, Winchell became the voice of Broadway and of all New York: every star . . . every flirtation . . . every mobster . . . every pretty new chorus girl . . . the characters in the musical and film Guys and Dolls. That was Winchell’s world. Secrets leaking, the conversation of the street, now in print.
“Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea.” By 1930 Winchell had his own radio show, which he began with that call to the nation. He was speaking directly to all Americans, talking about politics, exposing Nazi spies and sympathizers. Hoover knew secrets but always wanted to know more. He put Winchell on a list of favored reporters who got the earliest and best stories of Bureau exploits. Hoover assigned an agent to listen to every Winchell broadcast to gather more secrets. It was a perfect circle: Winchell lavished praise on Hoover, Hoover made sure Winchell knew more than his rivals, and America listened in.
If you wanted to be seen in the 1930s, there was just one place to go: the Stork Club at 3 East Fifty-third Street, just off Fifth Avenue, in New York City. You were let into the club only if its owner, the ex-bootlegger Sherman Billingsley, wanted you there. You had to be rich, well known in society, a famous artist, an equally famous criminal, a favored reporter, or a special friend.
The Stork was all about being special. Not only did you have to get past the doorman to be allowed in, but there was a separate space, the Cub Room, for the real elite. Table 50 in the inner sanctum was reserved for Walter Winchell, who held court there, eating food specially prepared to his liking and gathering the nation’s secrets. Billingsley made sure that every chosen patron felt at home: he “found out his favorite drink, his favorite cigar . . . his friends, his relatives, everything about everybody.” While only the favored few (which meant no blacks and few Jews) could actually get into the club, Winchell and the news photographers kept the eyes of the waiting public trained on the glamour and celebrity buzz that filled the Stork every night. As Hoover became more famous, he took weekend trips up from Washington to New York, where he was guaranteed his own seat in the inner room. In the popping of flashbulbs and the buzz of the gossip columns, the whole nation could see its top cop, its strong man, smiling alongside millionaires and movie stars.
Hoover celebrating New Year’s Eve 1935 at the Stork Club, seated with Tolson. Nightclubs were places for adults to have fun — with music, dancing, and silly hats — and Hoover’s participation increased his celebrity.
Indeed, the final showdown between Hoover and Purvis took place at the movies. Hollywood liked Purvis, but Hoover made sure that it loved the Bureau. In the early 1930s, the film industry was in trouble with critics who felt that movies were too racy and celebrated the wrong kinds of heroes. Hollywood agreed to police itself but still wanted as much shoot-’em-up action as it could get. Hoover provided the perfect answer: as he fed stories directly from the Bureau’s files to Hollywood, he offered heroism, crime-does-not-pay messages, and the crackle of gunfire. “See Uncle Sam draw his guns to halt the march of crime,” the movie ads screamed.
The media is fickle. It will blaze the image of the latest hero across the sky, then ignore him completely. For a moment Melvin Purvis was the great detective every American knew. And then he was gone: not the hero, not the pitchman, not on cereal boxes, not in the Bureau, not even able to find work providing security for businesses. Each time he applied for a new job, Hoover got there first with private warnings that Purvis was not reliable. The di
rector’s revenge was endless and relentless. In 1960, Purvis took out his Bureau revolver, walked off alone, and killed himself.
Hoover’s system was indeed more powerful than any individual; the arms of the Bureau could crush even the most popular hero in America. He won the war of images, erasing the “mincing step” story by appearing on movie billboards with guns blazing, ending the popular reign of the Public Enemy by gunning down Dillinger, and eclipsing the star of his lawman rival.
Everywhere you looked, there was Hoover, playing the part of the G-man hero. “You Can’t Get Away with It!” announced one film based on real cases. And that is the message he was eager to convey. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI, as the Bureau was renamed in 1935, was the thin but strong skeleton of vigilance and science that stood behind good old-fashioned American life — always there, always watching, always ready. Hoover himself was a media star; photographers snapped shots of him enjoying baseball games and rooting at horse races; chatting at the Stork Club; showing off shotguns to film stars, spelling-bee winners, and Boy Scout troops at the FBI shooting gallery. He and Clyde Tolson pranced about in their identical suits — so well dressed and full of high-spirited fun that they could laugh at what people might make of them. But the next challenge Hoover faced was more daunting than Collier’s, Dillinger, and Purvis combined: popular Communism.
The poster says it all — the film sells Hoover, just as Hoover’s approval allows the movie studio to fill the screen with nonstop action.
Young people enjoyed visiting headquarters and having their picture taken with Hoover, and every local paper carried the story.
Hoover takes a group of Hollywood actors to the FBI rifle range. His own shooting pose is as staged as theirs; he made only two arrests in the field, both carefully set up so that he could arrive to bring in the criminal to the pop of flashbulbs.
Hoover and Tolson in close conversation with Walter Winchell. Winchell made sure the public kept reading and hearing about Hoover’s triumphs.
Shirley Temple was just one of an endless parade of movie stars photographed with Hoover. The publicity was as good for the actors, who wanted to be seen as good citizens, as it was for Hoover, who was selling the power and prestige of his organization.
The breadlines and shattered dreams of the Great Depression gave the Communist Party its golden opportunity to win over Americans and start the revolution. Proof of Marx’s theories shone in every headline about collapsing banks, skyrocketing unemployment, and desperate, angry men. Where capitalists seemed at best ineffectual and at worst heartless, Communism offered an answer. Not only that but the Communists had a nation, Russia, where the future was on display for all to see. As Joseph Freeman, an American Communist put it, “At the very moment when our own country, to the surprise of all except the Marxists, was sliding into a social-economic abyss, the new social-economic system of the Russian workers and peasants showed striking gains.”
In 1931, for the first and only time in American history, more people were leaving the country than arriving at its shores. Over one hundred thousand of those Americans seeking better opportunities applied to move to Russia in the first eight months of the year alone. Just as Marx had predicted, workers were fleeing from the crisis of capitalism and flocking to the land where the future was being built by their own hands.
The people in front of the billboard in this photo are lining up for bread after a flood in Louisville, Kentucky. The famous photo was taken in 1937 by Margaret Bourke-White and speaks volumes about the contrast between the all-white, prosperous, image of America and the harsh realities of the time.
When Americans arrived in Moscow with their families, they were full of optimism. Their kids went to a special Anglo-American school that was stocked with books by authors they knew and liked, such as Jack London, Mark Twain, and Charles Dickens. Their slightly older brothers formed baseball teams, which were so popular that Russians began to take up the sport. In 1933, for example, thirteen-year-old Lucy Abolin moved from Boston to Moscow, where her father took a job as a metalworker. She quickly became a star at the Anglo-American school. Her brothers, Arthur and Carl, played for the Moscow Foreign Workers baseball team. The Abolins were a poster family for the appeal of being Americans in the Workers’ Paradise.
Back in America, the Communists were famously well organized and fearless, which made them ideal union organizers. In the 1930s, they spread out to help workers fight for their rights. Even if a factory hand did not care about Marx or Lenin, he was glad to have a strong, effective voice on his side, arguing for better wages or shorter hours. Communists pushed to organize automobile plants, waterfront docks, and Mexican-American and Asian-American farmworkers. Wherever there were Americans in need, Americans ignored, neglected, or oppressed, the Communists sought them out and offered a helping hand.
This poster for the American Communist Party was designed by Hugo Gellert, whose images of muscular workers influenced the creators of Superman. Ben Gitlow, named here as a vice-presidential candidate, worked with John Reed on radical papers and was arrested during the November 7, 1919, raid Hoover organized.
In addition to its direct attacks on injustice, the Communist Party backed numerous organizations devoted to good causes: foster parents for children caught up in foreign wars, the American Youth Congress, the Abolish Peonage Committee to fight for the rights of southern farmworkers. To well-meaning citizens, these groups provided a way to help others, and the fact that the Party was somehow involved with them hardly mattered.
The strong, active organizers combined with the seeming death throes of capitalism brought newcomers to the Party. Membership quadrupled from around ten thousand in the mid-1920s to forty thousand in 1936, then doubled to eighty-two thousand in 1938. How could the Party grow further? Back in 1920, John Reed had urged the Second Congress of International Communism to reach out to American blacks, “an enslaved and oppressed people.” A decade later, Moscow told American Communists to follow that lead. The Communist Party ticket in the 1932 presidential election featured James W. Ford as its vice-presidential candidate — the first American of African descent to be nominated for national office. Ford had been head of the Harlem branch of the Party. Benjamin Davis, his successor, went on to be elected to New York’s City Council.
Earl Browder and James W. Ford first ran together in 1932, when they received just over 100,000 votes — not close to the millions needed to win, but more than twice the 48,000 votes the Party had earned in 1928.
Hoover’s deepest belief was that Communists were calculating liars. He was certain that all the “front” groups they created, which claimed to help workers, farmers, orphaned children, were just props in their plot to destroy the America he knew and loved. As he saw it, the Party was using apparently good causes to suck people in, brainwash them, and turn them into its robotic agents. People who joined such groups but never actually became Communists were, to him, “fellow travelers”— dupes who helped the Party achieve its ends.
Was Hoover right? Were the Communists just using foolish or mushy-brained liberals who refused to recognize the Party’s cynical calculations? Or were the Communists right? Were their clear thinking and tight organizational structure a lifeline to helpless people in a time of crisis? One test case was the black community, which leads to what may have been Hoover’s third secret.
Hoover mistrusted everything the Communists did, but there was something deeper, more sinister, more personal in his reactions to any effort to improve the lives of black people. He viewed black Americans as a kind of sleeping beast that could be ignited into blind, destructive fury. Even before the Depression, he had sent his agents out to bring down the black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey. Hoover saw Garvey as a potential “Negro Moses”— a kind of Antichrist who would dazzle black people and mislead them into attacking whites. He managed to have Garvey imprisoned and then deported. “The colored people,” he said as late as 1965, “are quite ignorant, mostly uneducated, and
I doubt if they would seek an education if they had the opportunity.”
Why did Hoover react so strongly to the issue of black rights? He was hardly alone in his views, and it may be that his upbringing in segregated Washington explains enough. Yet rumors, family legends, and intriguing-but-inconclusive genealogical records suggest that Hoover’s family was partially African American but “passing” as white. Indeed, when you browse through endless files of Hoover photographs, he comes across as a racial chameleon — sometimes very dark, sometimes much lighter; in the rare cases when he was photographed in left profile, he distinctly resembles fair-skinned African Americans such as Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. This is a mystery that only a dedicated researcher armed with DNA samples and assisted by Hoover family relatives can fully resolve. And even if there were a secret African-American root in his family tree, we have no evidence that he was aware of it.
The one thing we can say about Hoover’s possible secrets — the tensions in his childhood home, the question of his sexuality, and the rumors about his mixed ancestry — is that something was so close to boiling over inside him that he needed to maintain total control. Hoover had no tolerance for ideas or emotions that threatened his world. All too often he assumed that anyone seeking to improve the lot of American blacks was a Communist. A master of deceit himself, he was keenly aware of the plots and deceptions his enemies might well be hatching.