We finish up our look at Mike Canning’s book on movies in DC with another recent movie with strong Hill connections. It is the story of one of the most notorious people ever born here. Where last week’s entry described the birth of the CIA, here is the story of another famous three-letter-agency.
John Edgar Hoover was born on Capitol Hill on January 1, 1895. He lived with his parents in a house on Seward Square, sadly no longer standing. If you want to see where it was, look to the right of the church on the south side of the square. Hoover’s home was just under the concrete overhang there.
Hoover graduated from Central High, and went on to George Washington University. During this time, he worked at the Library of Congress, learning how to organize information, a skill that became quite useful to him in his later career.
Straight out of law school, Hoover joined the Justice Department, and soon was in charge of what later became the Federal Bureau of Investigation, an agency he would run until the day he died. Along the way, he picked up accolades for the number of lawbreakers he captured, and earned many brickbats for the way he went about rooting out supposed Communist agents within the US.
He is thus just the sort of interesting character whose life story lends itself to a biopic. It is thus unsurprising that multiple attempts have been made over the years to capture Hoover’s life on film. The most famous of the lot is the most recent, the Clint Eastwood-directed J. Edgar, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Hoover.
The most important Hill scene takes place in the Library of Congress, which the crew took over for a weekend for a brief scene involving Hoover, Helen Gandy, and the library’s card catalog. The Library of Congress’s in-house newsletter, the Gazette, described the scene thus:
The script called for scenes to be shot in the Great Hall and the Main Reading Room. In the film, Hoover escorts Gandy through the Great Hall and into the Main Reading Room for an after-hours demonstration of the efficiency of a card-cataloging system he says he helped develop.
Setting the scene took a lot of work: Building a fake set of card catalogs (the real ones have been banished to a back room) the removal of modern books and signs, the introduction of helium balloon-lights to illuminate the scene, as well as all the usual equipment necessary in a modern film shoot.. From late Saturday – when the library closed to the public – until 12:45 AM on Monday, the cast and crew labored to make this short scene look authentic.
The card catalogs were converted to digital many years ago, but were not thrown away. Instead, they’re in a back room just off the main reading room, and available to double-check the computerized information (RSP)
It may be brief, but it is important, in that Hoover fails in his quest to make Gandy his wife, but wins her over as his secretary, a job she held until his death.