A Review of J. Edgar: An Enigmatic Gay Man?

Many people are aware of the unusual relationship J. Edgar Hoover had with Clyde Tolson, his longtime associate at the FBI. But he had another longtime confidant who played an important part in his life, his personal assistant, Helen Gandy. Gandy was there beside Hoover from the start, and she was the one who was in charge of his personal files. Hoover’s secret files have become notorious. It is widely assumed that he gathered information--often employing illegal means to do so--on many powerful and influential people in America during his tenure as the head of the FBI, and it is widely believed that he used this information to bully those he didn’t like and those who threatened his authority. We’ll never know just how much dirt he had on people like First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, President John Kennedy or the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. That’s because Helen Gandy destroyed nearly all of Hoover’s personal files before they fell into the “wrong” hands following Hoover’s death in 1972. In a way, those destroyed files could serve as a metaphor for Hoover’s relationship with Clyde Tolson.

We know neither Hoover nor Tolson married or had long-term relationships with women. We know that they were very close for decades. They worked together, and they spent a lot of time together when they weren’t working. They ate lunch and dinner together nearly every day. They went to the racetrack together. They went to nightclubs together. They attended movie premieres together. They went on vacations together. And when Hoover died, Tolson inherited the bulk of his estate and moved into his house.

Of course there were rumors, and there may be people who claim to know for sure that the two men were lovers, but we don’t really know the details. We don’t know how Hoover and Tolson defined their relationship for themselves. Did they privately proclaim their love? Did they think of themselves as romantic partners? Did they ever have sex? Were they even consciously aware of the nature of their attraction to one another? In this respect, Hoover and Tolson are representative of the overwhelming majority of gay couples in history. If these two had a romantic relationship, it was never publicly proclaimed, never acknowledged, and little in the way of direct evidence was left behind. We can only speculate, and those inclined to do so in our heterosexist society feel justified in insisting that they were “just friends.”

When writer Justin Lance Black and director Clint Eastwood set out to tell the story of Hoover’s life in the film J. Edgar, they could have stuck closely to the facts. They could have presented Hoover and Tolson as two men whose lives were so intertwined it is more than likely that they were a romantic couple. Or they could have rushed headlong into fiction and shown us what they believe might have went on between Hoover and Tolson behind closed doors. But what they gave us is a rather unusual hybrid. J. Edgar is neither a factual biography or a fictionalized romance based on the lives of Hoover and Tolson. We get a story which leaves little doubt that Hoover and Tolson were in love. The film makes it clear that they were aware of their love. And in the film they acknowledged this love in private. They hold hands in the backseat of cars. Hoover admits that he needs Tolson and that he knew this from the first moment he met him. Tolson admits that he loves Hoover while holding his hand in a hotel room. Tolson flies into a jealous rage when Hoover suggests he might marry a Hollywood starlet, and he kisses Hoover on the lips following a scuffle. He then warns Hoover that he’ll never enjoy his company again if he ever mentions another lady friend. It’s all made pretty plain and obvious. But the two never cuddle, never kiss in a sweet, tender way, never directly talk about their relationship, and we’re left wondering if they ever had sex. I’m not sure why Black and Eastwood went halfway into fiction but decided to not go all the way, but it doesn’t seem quite right. I wish they had either told us a love story or let us come to our own conclusions.

J. Edgar is an interesting film. It’s well worth watching in my opinion. But the makers were neither true to the facts as we know them or bold enough to tell an unabashed love story of two closeted gay men.