Joan Crawford Dies (1977) & J Edgar Hoover named Acting Director of FBI (1924)

On this date in 1977, legendary actress Joan Crawford dies at her New York City apartment.

Born Lucille Fay Le Sueur (her birth year has been variously recorded as 1904 or 1908), Crawford was a nightclub dancer who broke into Broadway musicals in the Jazz Age of the 1920s. She first twisted her way into Hollywood stardom as a vivacious flapper in the 1928 silent film Our Dancing Daughters. She made a series of similar pictures, including Dancing Lady (1933), which co-starred Fred Astaire in his silver-screen debut. Crawford’s seamless transition into the sound film era made her one of the most popular and by the late 1930s was one of the highest-paid leading ladies in Hollywood. She fought for more varied and less stereotypical parts, winning dramatic roles in films such as The Women (1939), Susan and God (1940), Strange Cargo (1940) and A Woman’s Face (1941). In 1945, just when her career appeared to be on the wane, Crawford turned in the performance for which she would most be remembered, playing the title role in Mildred Pierce. As the waitress and single mother who makes her fortune with a chain of restaurants, Crawford won an Academy Award for Best Actress and established herself as a respected dramatic actress. She would be nominated for another Best Actress Oscar for 1947’s Possessed and a third for 1952’s Sudden Fear.  

By the late 1950s, Crawford had become a representative for the Pepsi-Cola Company, whose board chairman and chief executive, Alfred N. Steele, she married in 1955. Three previous marriages--to the actors Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Franchot Tone and Phillip Terry--had ended in divorce. When Steele died in 1959, Crawford was named the first female director of Pepsi-Cola’s board. In 1962, the tenacious actress made a celebrated foray into the horror genre with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, co-starring Bette Davis. Having always enthusiastically welcomed and cultivated her fame, Crawford published her autobiography, A Portrait of Joan, that same year. She went on to make a number of thrillers in the last years of her career, as well as occasional appearances in television dramas. Less than two years after Crawford’s death in 1977, her adopted daughter Christina published Mommie Dearest, in which she alleged that the famous actress had been emotionally and physically abusive to Christina and her adopted brother. The book was later made into a critically panned film, starring Faye Dunaway as Crawford. 

On this date in 1924, J. Edgar Hoover is named acting director of the Bureau of Investigation (now the FBI).

By the end of the year he was officially promoted to director. This began his 48-year tenure in power, during which time he personally shaped American criminal justice in the 20th century. Hoover first became involved in law enforcement as a special assistant to the attorney general, overseeing the mass roundups and deportations of suspected communists during the Red Scare abuses of the late 1910s. After taking over the FBI in 1924, Hoover began secretly monitoring any activities that did not conform to his American ideal. Hoover approved of illegally infiltrating and spying on the American Civil Liberties Union. His spies could be found throughout the government, even in the Supreme Court. He also collected damaging information on the personal lives of civil rights activists, including Martin Luther King Jr. While Hoover's success at legitimate crime fighting was modest, his hold over many powerful people and organizations earned him respect and kept him in power. He was extremely successful at attracting attention and favorable press to the FBI. It wasn't until after his death in 1972, right before the beginning of the Watergate scandal, that Hoover's corruption became known.

J Edgar Hoover Dies - 1972

On this date in 1972, after nearly five decades as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), J. Edgar Hoover dies.

He leaves the powerful government agency without the administrator who had been largely responsible for its existence and shape. Educated as a lawyer and a librarian, Hoover joined the Department of Justice in 1917 and within two years had become special assistant to Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Deeply anti-radical in his ideology, Hoover came to the forefront of federal law enforcement during the so-called “Red Scare” of 1919 to 1920. The former librarian set up a card index system listing every radical leader, organization, and publication in the United States and by 1921 had amassed some 450,000 files. More than 10,000 suspected communists were also arrested during this period, but the vast majority of these people were briefly questioned and then released. Although the attorney general was criticized for abusing his authority during the so-called "Palmer Raids," Hoover emerged unscathed, and on May 10, 1924, he was appointed acting director of the Bureau of Investigation, a branch of the Justice Department established in 1909. 

During the 1920s with Congress' approval, Director Hoover drastically restructured and expanded the Bureau of Investigation. He built the corruption-ridden agency into an efficient crime-fighting machine, establishing a centralized fingerprint file, a crime laboratory, and a training school for agents. In the 1930s the Bureau of Investigation launched a dramatic battle against the epidemic of organized crime brought on by Prohibition. Notorious gangsters such as George "Machine Gun" Kelly and John Dillinger met their ends looking down the barrels of Bureau-issued guns, while others, like Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, the elusive head of Murder, Incorporated, were successfully investigated and prosecuted by Hoover's "G-men." Hoover, who had a keen eye for public relations, participated in a number of these widely publicized arrests, and the Federal Bureau of Investigations, as it was known after 1935, became highly regarded by Congress and the American public. 

With the outbreak of World War II, Hoover revived the anti-espionage techniques he had developed during the first Red Scare, and domestic wiretaps and other electronic surveillance expanded dramatically. After World War II, Hoover focused on the threat of radical, especially communist, subversion. The FBI compiled files on millions of Americans suspected of dissident activity, and Hoover worked closely with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and Senator Joseph McCarthy, the architect of America's second Red Scare. In 1956, Hoover initiated Cointelpro, a secret counterintelligence program that initially targeted the U.S. Communist Party but later was expanded to infiltrate and disrupt any radical organization in America. During the 1960s the immense resources of Cointelpro were used against dangerous groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, but also against African American Civil Rights organizations and liberal anti-war organizations. One figure especially targeted was civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., who endured systematic harassment from the FBI. 

By the time Hoover entered service under his eighth president in 1969, the media, the public, and Congress had grown suspicious that the FBI might be abusing its authority. For the first time in his bureaucratic career, Hoover endured widespread criticism, and Congress responded by passing laws requiring Senate confirmation of future FBI directors and limiting their tenure to 10 years. On May 2, 1972, with the Watergate affair about to explode onto the national stage, J. Edgar Hoover died of heart disease at the age of 77. The Watergate affair subsequently revealed that the FBI had illegally protected President Richard Nixon from investigation, and the agency was thoroughly investigated by Congress. Revelations of the FBI's abuses of power and unconstitutional surveillance motivated Congress and the media to become more vigilant in future monitoring of the FBI.