J. Edgar is a 2011 American biographical drama film based on the career of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, directed and produced by Clint Eastwood.^[4] Written by Dustin Lance Black, the film focuses on Hoover’s life from the 1919 Palmer Raids onward. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role along with Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts, Josh Lucas, and Judi Dench, and features Adam Driver in his film debut.

J. Edgar opened the AFI Fest 2011 in Los Angeles on November 3, 2011, and had its limited release on November 9, 2011, followed by wide release on November 11. The film received mixed reviews from critics, although DiCaprio’s performance was widely praised, and it grossed $84 million worldwide. It was chosen by the National Board of Review and American Film Institute as one of the top ten films of 2011, while DiCaprio earned a nomination for a Golden Globe Award and both he and Hammer earned Screen Actors Guild Award nods (Hammer was nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role).

PLOT

The film uses a nonlinear narrative, alternating between J. Edgar Hoover‘s role in establishing the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and his later years trying to safeguard it against perceived threats. As a frame story, the aging Hoover narrates the events of the Bureau’s early years to a series of agents he has assigned to ghostwrite a book about it.

In 1919, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer survives an assassination attempt by anarchists and assigns Justice Department employee Hoover to a division dedicated to purging radicals. Helen Gandy rejects Hoover’s awkward advances, but becomes his personal secretary and confidant. By arranging to make the anarchist Emma Goldman eligible for deportation, Hoover creates legal precedent to deport numerous other radicals. Following the Palmer Raids, Palmer loses his job and his successor, Harlan F. Stone, appoints Hoover as director of the department’s Bureau of Investigation. Hoover has Gandy create a confidential file in which he collects incriminating information on people in power.

With the First Red Scare over, Hoover focuses the Bureau on fighting gangsters. When the Lindbergh kidnapping captures national attention in 1932, he urges passage of the Federal Kidnapping Act, increasing the Bureau’s power. He establishes the FBI Laboratory, applying forensic science techniques to the investigation, and has the registration numbers on the ransom bills monitored. Though Charles Lindbergh Jr. is found dead, these techniques lead to the arrest and conviction of Bruno Richard Hauptmann for the crime.

Well into adulthood, Hoover continues to live with his mother, who is his moral guide. He hires Clyde Tolson to the Bureau in 1930; the two develop a close personal relationship, and Hoover promotes Tolson to associate director. When Hoover confesses to his mother that he is uncomfortable in romantic situations with women, she says she would rather have him dead than gay. When Tolson tells Hoover that he loves him, Hoover panics and claims that he wants to marry actress Dorothy Lamour. Tolson becomes infuriated and the two fight, culminating in Tolson kissing Hoover and threatening to end their association if Hoover ever talks about another woman again. Hoover’s mother dies, and he is grief-stricken.

Following an embarrassing line of questioning by Senate Appropriations Committee chair Kenneth McKellar in 1933, Hoover becomes increasingly vengeful against those who challenge his reputation and the Bureau’s. He uses covert listening devices to collect compromising information which he uses to blackmail key political figures over the years, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, protecting his position and increasing the Bureau’s power. He starts an illegal counterintelligence program to fight what he perceives as a new wave of radicals, culminating in his unsuccessful attempt to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr. into declining the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 via the FBI–King letter.

Tolson suffers a stroke, and Hoover’s strength declines with age. Fearing that President Richard Nixon will acquire his confidential files and use them to ruin the FBI’s reputation, he asks Gandy to keep them out of Nixon’s hands. Tolson urges Hoover to retire and accuses him of exaggerating his involvement with key events in the Bureau’s history. Hoover admits his feelings for Tolson before dying at home. Gandy destroys Hoover’s files before Nixon’s men can seize them.