(Slight Spoilers) Behind the scenes story of America's "Top Cop" J. Edger Hoover played by both, as a young man, James Waingwright and, as the J Edger Hoover that we all got to know over the years, Broderick Crawford. The story of the FBI Chief is told to us intermittently throughout the movie by one of his former agents Dwight Webb, Rip Thorn. It was Agent Webb who after seeing the things he pulled over the years finally realized what a danger Hoover was to the Constitution of the United States that he in fact was sworn to uphold.
Getting the dirt on anyone he felt to be a danger to his reign as FBI Chief Hoover was able to survive eight presidential administrations both Republican and Democratic and die in bed with his legacy fully assured as one of the, if not the, greatest American lawmen of all times. That's until six weeks after his death when the infamous Watergate scandal broke. It's not that Hoover really had anything to do with it, he may or may not have, but it was the sleazy tactic's of the Nixon crowd, illegal wiretaps spying and blackmailing, that finally exposed to the American public all the things that Hoover did for almost all of his career as FBI Chief; And , by never being called on it, did it with impunity!
We get to see Hoover's rise as a government lawyer until he became the most powerful man in America. Having to answer to no one not even the presidents, whom he had enough dirt on to bury, that he served Hoover had really nothing to worry about until John F. Kennedy, William Jordan, was elected President in 1960 and put his kid brother Bobby, Michael Parks, in charge of the Justice Department as its Attorney General. It was both Bobby's shabby and disrespectful treatment of him as well as him reaching the age of retirement-70-that had Hoover go all out in reinforcing his hold on his coveted job as America's "Top Cop" in being the head of the FBI.
Luckily for Hoover he outlasted both the Kennedy boys with them ending up dead from assassin's bullets but the worst was yet to come in 1968 when Richard M. Nixon got elected President of the United States. More paranoid then even Hoover Nixon was determined to get back at all those who've been kicking him around all these years and wanted Hoover, with his vast amount of both political and sexual dirt on them, to help him do it. It may well have been the stress of trying to keep Nixon from grabbing his precious private files that in the end lead to the 77 year old Hoover's untimely death. What the movie "The Private Files of J. Edger Hoover" brings out but not that all convincingly is that in him dying Hoover was thus able to single handedly bring down the Nixon Presidency. That's by having Nixon overreach himself in trying to cover up the Watergate break-in that lead to his own demise.
There's also also the rumors in the film that dodged Hoover all his life about his sexuality that is said to have been used by organized crime to blackmail-the master blackmailer-into laying off them. Hoover who should have known better even went so far as publicly admitting that the Mafia was just a myth and not worth investigating! Yet privately Hoover used the knowledge of JFK's involvement with the Mob, in getting him elected president and supplying him with call-girls, in blackmail President Kenndey into not having him removed, through retirement, as FBI Chief.
Despite the lack of sympathy the film has for Hoover he still does comes across as the best of a bad lot in those that he dealt with. In that Hoover was, in his own somewhat naive and bizarre way, far more interested in the national security of the United States then in his own personal career! Even though he had a strange way of showing it!
P.S "The Private Files of J. Edger Hoover" turned out to be the last film both Dan Dailey & Jack Cassidy were to be in.
Getting the dirt on anyone he felt to be a danger to his reign as FBI Chief Hoover was able to survive eight presidential administrations both Republican and Democratic and die in bed with his legacy fully assured as one of the, if not the, greatest American lawmen of all times. That's until six weeks after his death when the infamous Watergate scandal broke. It's not that Hoover really had anything to do with it, he may or may not have, but it was the sleazy tactic's of the Nixon crowd, illegal wiretaps spying and blackmailing, that finally exposed to the American public all the things that Hoover did for almost all of his career as FBI Chief; And , by never being called on it, did it with impunity!
We get to see Hoover's rise as a government lawyer until he became the most powerful man in America. Having to answer to no one not even the presidents, whom he had enough dirt on to bury, that he served Hoover had really nothing to worry about until John F. Kennedy, William Jordan, was elected President in 1960 and put his kid brother Bobby, Michael Parks, in charge of the Justice Department as its Attorney General. It was both Bobby's shabby and disrespectful treatment of him as well as him reaching the age of retirement-70-that had Hoover go all out in reinforcing his hold on his coveted job as America's "Top Cop" in being the head of the FBI.
Luckily for Hoover he outlasted both the Kennedy boys with them ending up dead from assassin's bullets but the worst was yet to come in 1968 when Richard M. Nixon got elected President of the United States. More paranoid then even Hoover Nixon was determined to get back at all those who've been kicking him around all these years and wanted Hoover, with his vast amount of both political and sexual dirt on them, to help him do it. It may well have been the stress of trying to keep Nixon from grabbing his precious private files that in the end lead to the 77 year old Hoover's untimely death. What the movie "The Private Files of J. Edger Hoover" brings out but not that all convincingly is that in him dying Hoover was thus able to single handedly bring down the Nixon Presidency. That's by having Nixon overreach himself in trying to cover up the Watergate break-in that lead to his own demise.
There's also also the rumors in the film that dodged Hoover all his life about his sexuality that is said to have been used by organized crime to blackmail-the master blackmailer-into laying off them. Hoover who should have known better even went so far as publicly admitting that the Mafia was just a myth and not worth investigating! Yet privately Hoover used the knowledge of JFK's involvement with the Mob, in getting him elected president and supplying him with call-girls, in blackmail President Kenndey into not having him removed, through retirement, as FBI Chief.
Despite the lack of sympathy the film has for Hoover he still does comes across as the best of a bad lot in those that he dealt with. In that Hoover was, in his own somewhat naive and bizarre way, far more interested in the national security of the United States then in his own personal career! Even though he had a strange way of showing it!
P.S "The Private Files of J. Edger Hoover" turned out to be the last film both Dan Dailey & Jack Cassidy were to be in.