Jack Valenti

Jack Valenti died two years ago at age 85, he was playing the role of intermediary between Washington and Hollywood as the theatrical, snowy-haired president of the Motion Picture Association of America. But back in 1964, Valenti was a Houston ad executive newly installed at the White House as a top aide to President Lyndon B. Johnson. And J. Edgar Hoover's FBI found itself quietly consumed with the vexing question of whether Valenti was gay.

Fascinating piece in the Washington Post today about how the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover investigated the sexual orientation of Jack Valenti, who led the Motion Picture Association of America for many years. It was all part of the smears and witchhunts of the era by Hoover (who of course has been described in the gossipy book by British author Anthony Summers -- though it was never really proven -- to have been a gay crossdresser.) According to the Post the Republican Party too was conducting its own such "investigation" of Valenti.

Previously confidential FBI files show that Hoover's deputies set out to determine whether Valenti, who had married two years earlier, maintained a relationship with a male commercial photographer. Republican Party operatives reportedly were pursuing a parallel investigation with the help of a retired FBI agent, bureau files show. No proof was ever found, but the files, obtained by The Washington Post under the federal Freedom of Information Act, provide further insight into the conduct of the FBI under Hoover, for whom damaging personal information on the powerful was a useful tool in his interactions with presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Richard M. Nixon.