The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover

The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover is a 1977 film directed by Larry Cohen and starring Broderick Crawford and James Wainwright. The cast includes Jose Ferrer, Michael Parks, Celeste Holm, Ronee Blakely, Tanya Roberts in a cameo role, and in final screen appearances, Jack Cassidy and Dan Dailey. Both Cassidy and Dailey met with then First Lady Betty Ford and helped director Cohen get permission to do the film's on location cinematography in Washington, D.C., in locales where the real Hoover visited or worked. The film was shown at the Kennedy Center in Washington to a mixed response from Republicans and Democrats who did not like the dark visions Cohen evoked on American politics and the portrayals of Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Richard M. Nixon: actor Howard Da Silva played Roosevelt, and "Richard M. Dixon" plays Nixon. After it was shown in Washington, the film took a limited nationwide release to theaters, and got a full release to video and television into the 1980s and 1990s.