Inspiration from Ellen & Clint
Writers are often asked where we get ideas for novels. Frequently for me, the answer is “I have no idea.” But for my current novel, a run-for-your-life thriller called Flight of the Fox published by Down & Out Books, there’s a definite answer: Ellen DeGeneres and Clint Eastwood.
It happened way back in 2011, during a foray into the zone of cerebral vegetation, aka, daytime television. Ellen was interviewing Clint Eastwood about his new biopic J. Edgar. She naturally posed the question about longstanding rumors that Hoover was gay. My recollection is that Clint dodged the question by saying, “The jury is still out.”
My first impulse was to yell: “C’mon, use your brain, the jury is not out.”
My second impulse was to pounce on a sudden inspiration for a political thriller with historical roots. Hoping for ideas on that very subject, I’d been re-reading Ken Follett’s brilliant use of “what if” scenarios in the Eye of the Needle and The Key to Rebecca. Thanks to Clint and Ellen, I found my “what if.”
Here are the known facts:
– John Edgar Hoover became FBI director in 1924 and held the job a staggering 48 years until his death in 1972. He never married and, by most legitimate accounts, never even dated a woman.
– Clyde Anderson Tolson, who also never married or dated women, was Associate Director of the FBI from 1930 until Hoover’s death. He retired from the Bureau two days after Hoover passed away.
– Tolson lived in an apartment a short distance from Hoover’s house in Washington.
– They regularly lunched together, by some accounts every weekday, at the Mayflower Hotel.
– They regularly had private dinner together in Hoover’s house.
– They always vacationed together.
– When Hoover died, Tolson inherited his half-million-dollar estate, moved into his house, and accepted the flag that draped Hoover’s coffin.
– As early as the 1940s, it was generally accepted in government circles that the two were “life partners.”
Thus, the jury is not out. But, so what? They were merely deeply closeted because of vicious social intolerances of the era. It was their private business.
True. I totally agree.
But consider that for five decades under Hoover’s stewardship, the FBI was an intensely racist and homophobic agency. No blacks allowed. No gays allowed. It was a force answerable to no one. With its many domestic spying, illegal wiretapping and blackmail operations, it functioned more like Gestapo Lite. In 1945, President Truman penned a handwritten note for his memoirs that read, “We want no Gestapo or Secret Police. FBI is tending in that direction.”
It was still that way as late as 1977, five years after Hoover’s death. While working an office job at GW University, I witnessed my supervisor being grilled for four hours by an FBI agent because she volunteered to be a reference for a friend seeking a secretarial job in the Bureau. Her friend was a lesbian. The FBI pressed my boss until she conceded that, yes, the job applicant very likely was gay. I don’t know if she got the job. But I do know it was then public policy that no gays were allowed.
Yet for half a century, the two top men were themselves obvious gay partners. It is a mean irony that for all those decades, all those white male agents enforced racist, anti-gay polices, while buying the lie that the two top directors were platonic gentlemen living mutually celibate lives.
Thus, the “what ifs” of my narrative:
– What if an encoded private journal between lovers surfaced many years later?
– What if, when decoded, that diary revealed not only the truth of their orientation, but also implicitly revealed that the Hoover years were vastly more criminal than anyone ever imagined?
– What if it revealed that FBI criminality of that era included black ops license-to-kill programs that promoted U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and undermined advancement of the Civil Rights movement?
These scenarios may seem farfetched. But consider two certain realities: 1) The FBI did commit crimes during this period. 2) The depth and breadth of those crimes remain unknown and uninvestigated. Therein lay the roots of my alternate history novel where we the people, finally learn the truth.
So, to Ellen and Clint, thank you.
To see how far the “what ifs” really go, check out Flight of the Fox, out today from Down & Out Books.
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