Sexuality
Since the 1940s, rumors have circulated that Hoover was homosexual. The historians John Stuart Cox and Athan G. Theoharis speculated that Clyde Tolson, who became an associate director of the FBI and Hoover's primary heir, may have been his lover.
Hoover hunted down and threatened anyone who made insinuations about his sexuality. He also spread 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, as well as material on presidents' liaisons, including those of John F. Kennedy.
Some scholars have dismissed the rumors about Hoover's sexuality, and his relationship with Tolson in particular, as unlikely, while others have described them as probable or even “confirmed”. Still other scholars have reported the rumors without expressing an opinion.
Hoover described Tolson as his alter ego: the men worked closely together during the day and, both single, frequently took meals, went to night clubs and vacationed together. This closeness between the two men is often cited as evidence that they were lovers, though some FBI employees who knew them, such as W. Mark Felt, say that the relationship was “brotherly”. The former FBI official Mike Mason suggested that some of Hoover's colleagues denied that he had a sexual relationship with Tolson in an effort to protect his image.
Hoover bequeathed his estate to Tolson, who moved into the house. He accepted the American flag that draped Hoover's casket. Tolson is buried a few yards away from Hoover in the Congressional Cemetery.
Hoover's biographer Richard Hack does not believe that the director was gay. Hack notes 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 reported 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.
In his 1993 biography Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, the journalist Anthony Summers quoted "society divorcee" Susan Rosenstiel as claiming to have seen Hoover engaging in cross-dressing in the 1950s at homosexual parties. 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. 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”.
Skeptics of the cross-dressing story point to Susan Rosenstiel's poor credibility (she pled guilty for attempted perjury in a 1971 case and later served time in a New York City jail). 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. 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.
The attorney Roy Cohn, an associate of Hoover during the 1950s investigations of Communists and known to be a closeted homosexual, opined that Hoover was too frightened of his own sexuality to have anything approaching a normal sexual or romantic relationship. In his 2004 study of the Lavender Scare, the historian David K. Johnson attacked the speculations about Hoover's homosexuality as 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 appear in compromising situations.
Some people associated with Hoover have supported the assertion of his homosexual tendencies. Actress and singer Ethel Merman, who was a friend of Hoover's since 1938, said in a 1978 interview: "Some of my best friends are homosexual. Everybody knew about J. Edgar Hoover, but he was the best chief the FBI ever had”. An FBI agent who had gone on fishing trips with Hoover and Tolson said that the director liked to "sunbathe all day in the nude”. Hoover often frequented New York City's Stork Club. Luisa Stuart, a model who was 18 or 19 at the time, told Summers that she had seen Hoover holding hands with Tolson as they all rode in a limo uptown to the Cotton Club in 1936.
The novelist William Styron told Summers that he once saw Hoover and Tolson in a California beach house, where the director was painting his friend's toenails. Harry Hay, founder of the Mattachine Society, one of the first gay rights organizations, said that Hoover and Tolson sat in boxes owned by and used exclusively by gay men at the Del Mar racetrack in California. One medical expert told Summers that Hoover was of "strongly predominant homosexual orientation", while another medical expert categorized him as a "bisexual with failed heterosexuality”.
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