Rumor in LGBTQ History: Bibliography and Timeline

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Studying the Role of Rumor in LGBTQ History

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Bibliogrpahy, Alphabetical

Hoover, J. Edgar

From Wikipedia, accessed March 20, 2011

Hoover hunted down and threatened anyone who made insinuations about his sexuality. He also spread destructive, unsubstantiated rumors that Adlai Stevenson was gay to damage the liberal governor's 1952 Presidential Campaign. His extensive secret files contained surveillance material on Eleanor Roosevelt's alleged lesbian lovers, speculated to be acquired for the purpose of blackmail.[1]


Hoover's biographer Richard Hack reported that Hoover was romantically linked to actress Dorothy Lamour in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and that after Hoover's death, Lamour did not deny rumors that she had had an affair with Hoover in the years between her two marriages. Hack additionally reports that during the 1940s and 1950s, Hoover so often attended social events with Lela Rogers, the divorced mother of dancer and actress Ginger Rogers, that many of their mutual friends assumed the pair would eventually marry.[2]


Since the 1940s, rumors have circulated that Hoover was homosexual.[3]


It has been suggested that Clyde Tolson, an associate director of the FBI who was Hoover's heir, may have been his lover.[4]


Some authors have dismissed the rumors about Hoover's sexuality and his relationship with Tolson in particular as unlikely.[5]


Others have described them as probable or even "confirmed".[6]


Sill others have reported the rumors without stating an opinion.[7]


Hoover described Tolson as his alter ego: the men not only worked closely together during the day, but also took meals, went to night clubs and vacationed together.[8]


This closeness between the two men is often cited as evidence that they were lovers, though some FBI employees who knew them, such as Mark Felt, say that the relationship was merely "brotherly". Tolson inherited Hoover's estate and moved into his home, having accepted the American flag that draped Hoover's casket. Tolson is buried a few yards away from Hoover in the Congressional Cemetery. Attorney Roy Cohn, an associate of Hoover during the 1950s investigations of Communists and himself a closeted homosexual, opined that Hoover was too frightened of his own sexuality to have anything approaching a normal sexual or romantic relationship.[9]


In his 1993 biography Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J Edgar Hoover, journalist Anthony Summers quoted a witness, "society divorcee" Susan Rosenstiel, (who later served time at Rikers Island for perjuring herself in a 1971 case) who claimed to have seen Hoover engaging in cross-dressing in the 1950s; she claimed that on two occasions she witnessed Hoover wearing a fluffy black dress with flounces and lace, stockings, high heels and a black curly wig, at homosexual orgies.[10]


In 1958 the bisexual millionaire distiller and philanthropist Lewis Solon Rosenstiel asked Susan Rosenstiel, his fourth wife, if—having been previously married to another bisexual man for nine years—she had ever seen "a homosexual orgy". Although she had once surprised her sixty-eight-year-old husband in bed with his attorney, Roy Cohn, Susan told Summers that she had never before been invited to view sex between men. With her consent, the couple went one day, soon after this odd question, to Manhattan's Plaza Hotel. Cohn, a former aide to Senator Joseph McCarthy and a Republican power broker, met them at the door. As she and her husband entered the suite, "Susan said, she recognized a third man: J. Edgar Hoover", director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), whom she had met previously at her New York City Upper East Side townhouse. Hoover, Lewis had explained, gave him access to influential politicians; he returned these favors, in part, by paying the director's gambling debts.[40][11]


Summers also said that the Mafia had blackmail material on Hoover, which made Hoover reluctant to aggressively pursue organized crime. Although never corroborated, the allegation of cross-dressing has been widely repeated, and "J. Edna Hoover" and "Gay Edgar Hoover" have become the subject of humor on television, in movies and elsewhere.[citation needed] In the words of author Thomas Doherty, "For American popular culture, the image of the zaftig FBI director as a Christine Jorgensen wanna-be was too delicious not to savor."[12]


Skeptics of the cross-dressing story point to Susan Rosenstiel's poor credibility and say recklessly indiscreet behavior by Hoover would have been totally out of character whatever his sexuality. Most biographers consider the story of Mafia blackmail to be unlikely in light of the FBI's investigations of the Mafia.[13]


Truman Capote, who helped spread salacious rumors about Hoover, once remarked that he was more interested in making Hoover angry than determining whether the rumors were true.[14]


The opening of Soviet archives revealed evidence that there was a Soviet campaign to discredit the United States which used allegations of homosexuality to discredit Hoover.[15]


In his 2004 study of the Lavender Scare, gay historian David K. John attacked the notion of Hoover's homosexuality for relying on "the kind of tactics Hoover and the security program he oversaw perfected–guilt by association, rumor, and unverified gossip." He views Rosenstiel as a liar who was paid for her story, whose "description of Hoover in drag engaging in sex with young blond boys in leather while desecrating the Bible is clearly a homophobic fantasy." He believes only those who have forgotten the virulence of the decades-long campaign against homosexuals in government can believe reports that Hoover would allow himself to be seen in compromising situations.[16]


McCarthy, Joseph

Whitman, Walt

Timeline

Latest source first first


Notes

  1. ↑ "J. Edgar Hoover: Gay marriage role model?". Salon. Date of publication?Pages ?
  2. ↑ Hack, Richard Puppetmaster: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover. (2007). Phoenix Books. ISBN1597775126
  3. ↑ Terry, Jennifer (1999). An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society. University of Chicago Press. p. 350. ISBN 0-226-79366-4.
  4. ↑ Cox, John Stuart and Theoharis, Athan G. (1988). The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition. Temple University Press. p. 108. ISBN 0-87722-532-X.
  5. ↑ For example, Felt, W. Mark and O'Connor, John D. (2006). "A G-man's Life: The FBI, Being 'Deep Throat,' And the Struggle for Honor in Washington". Public Affairs, p. 167. ISBN 1-58648-377-3., Jeffreys-Jones, Rhodri (2003). Cloak and Dollar: A History of American Secret Intelligence. Yale University Press. p. 93. ISBN 0-300-10159-7., Cox, John Stuart and Theoharis, Athan G. (1988). The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition. Temple University Press. p. 108. ISBN 0-87722-532-X. "The strange likelihood is that Hoover never knew sexual desire at all."
  6. ↑ For example, Percy, William A. and Johansson , Warren (1994). Outing: Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence. Haworth Press. pp. 85+. ISBN 1-56024-419-4., Summers, Anthony (1993). Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J Edgar Hoover. Pocket Books. ISBN 0-671-88087-X, page ?.
  7. ↑ For example, Theoharis, Athan G., editor, The FBI: A Comprehensive Reference Guide. Oryx Press (1998), pp. 291, 301, 397. ISBN 0-89774-991-X., Doherty, Thomas (2003). Cold War, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture. Columbia University Press. pp. 254, 255. ISBN 0-231-12952-1.
  8. ↑ Cox, John Stuart and Theoharis, Athan G. (1988). The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition. Temple University Press. p. 108. ISBN 0-87722-532-X.
  9. ↑ Hack, 2007
  10. ↑ Summers, Anthony (1993). Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J Edgar Hoover. Pocket Books. ISBN 0-671-88087-X. Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (February 15, 1993). "Books of The Times; Catalogue of Accusations Against J. Edgar Hoover.". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-04-16. Claire Bond Potter, Wesleyan University (July 2006). "Queer Hoover: Sex, Lies, and Political History". Journal of the History of Sexuality (Texas: University of Texas Press) 15 (3): 355–381. 10.1353/sex.2007.0021. ISSN 1535-3605. Claire Bond Potter, Wesleyan University, asks: What does the history of sex look like without evidence of sexual identities or proof that sex acts occurred? And how might an analysis of gossip, rumors, and perhaps even lies about sex help us to write political history".
  11. ↑ Claire Bond Potter, Wesleyan University (July 2006). "Queer Hoover: Sex, Lies, and Political History". Journal of the History of Sexuality (Texas: University of Texas Press) 15 (3): 355–381. doi:10.1353/sex.2007.0021. ISSN 1535-3605.
  12. ↑ Doherty, Thomas (2003). Cold War, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture. Columbia University Press. p. 255. ISBN 0-231-12952-1.
  13. ↑ See for example Kessler, Ronald (2002). The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI. St. Martin's Paperbacks. pp. 120+. ISBN 0-312-98977-6.
  14. ↑ ]Hack, 2007
  15. ↑ Source?
  16. ↑ David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government (University of Chicago Press, 2004), 11-13.


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