It may be another banner year for the LGBT community at the Academy Awards in 2011. Warner Bros. just announced the release date for J. Edgar, its biopic of J. Edgar Hoover, the controversial first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations. He served in the position from 1935 until 1972 and, amid accusations of overstepping his boundaries, is the reason that directors of the FBI are limited to 10-year terms.
The biopic is the latest project from director Clint Eastwood, and it stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Arnie Hammer, and Judi Dench. It will be released on November 9 and will go into wide release on November 11. The fall is always prime Oscar bait time, and between Eastwood, DiCaprio, Dench, and the word "biopic" being attached to the project, J. Edgar is already considered a front-runner for some big Oscar nominations.
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It's going to be an academy-award-making-effort to attempt to make DiCaprio look as ugly as Old Bulldog Face. And didn't Ugly's sidekick croak from AIDS? If you want to read a great book about Bulldog's and the FBI's terrible treatment of a Gay FBI agent, check out: A Special Agent, Gay and Inside the FBI, an autobiography by Frank Buttino.
Adam,
What evidence is there that J. Edgar Hoover was gay? I did a little bit of research on the topic awhile back and the strongest evidence comes from a statement made by Susan Rosenstiel who perjured herself in a 1971 case and had established motivation to defame Hoover.
Furthermore, his relationship with Clyde Tolson while suggestive, hardly constitutes proof. Most people who knew them described the relationship as brotherly. Also, there is much better evidence that while also not conclusive that Hoover had a sexual relationship with Dorothy Lamour.
Is there something you know that I've overlooked?
-Jeremy
Jeremy,
Whether Hoover was gay is an issue of debate among historians. But the most often cited claims come from the 1993 book "The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, where Anthony Summers discusses the relationship between Hoover and Tolson.
This movie, as I said, takes the claims in this book as fact and will be incorporating a romance between Hoover and Tolson.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAhooverE.htm
a banner year for lgbtq community? j edgar hoover was the architect of some of the most oppressive attacks against dissenters and radical activists in u.s history to include Cointelpro designed to specifically target black liberation activists, MLK jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, civil rights and anti war activists, and labor activists. activists were murdered for dissenting and organizing in opposition to oppressive u.s policy and practice as a result of FBI programs created and instituted by hoover's FBI. his being gay does not erase that. and we should be questioning any impulse to embrace him as "one of us".