As a prosecutor in the 1951 espionage case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Roy Cohn played a major role in the electrocution deaths of the so-called “atomic spies”—the only civilians executed by the US government for spying during the Cold War. Although many now question the evidence behind the conviction of Ethel, in Matt Tyrnauer’s new documentary, “Where’s My Roy Cohn?”, we see Cohn telling interviewer Mike Wallace, “If I could have pulled the switch, I’d have done it myself.”
Cohn, who died of complications from AIDS in 1986, is revealed in this riveting 97-minute nonfiction biopic as a cruel, ruthless, and mean-spirited closeted homosexual whose long legacy of shameful behavior includes persecuting gays during the Red and Lavender Scares.
The film unspools like a Hollywood drama, complete with an expressive original score by Grammy Award-winner Lorne Balfe, whose movie credits include “Mission Impossible — Fallout” and “The Dark Knight.” Through archival footage and original interviews, Tyrnauer chronicles the rise and fall of Cohn, who manipulated Reds-under-the-beds hysteria and reactionary politics, and mastered Rube Goldbergian legal maneuvers to defend mobsters, to become a political powerbroker whose influence is still felt at the very height of imperial America’s ruling class.
A son of a well-connected elite Bronx family (his great-uncle founded the Lionel Corporation, which produced toy trains, until, according to the film, Cohn derailed the company), Roy was a mommy’s boy who lived with his mother until her death in 1967. The film doesn’t paint a pretty portrait of her—Dora disliked her son’s schnozz, which was disfigured by a botched nose job, resulting in a lifelong scar, despite more than one attempt at plastic surgery.
Academically and for much of his legal career, Cohn was a whiz kid, graduating from Columbia Law School at age twenty. One of his first cases working for the US Attorney’s office in Manhattan was a 1948 Smith Act trial against Communist Party leaders. Cohn went on to play a dubious role in the Rosenberg trial. According to the documentary, he discussed the case and sentencing with Judge Irving Kaufman via calls from a pay phone—a clear conflict of interest.
The cunning Cohn parlayed his rabid anti-communism into becoming, at age 26, chief counsel for Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, a position to which he was recommended by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. As the junior Senator of Wisconsin’s right (literally) hand man, Cohn doggedly pressed McCarthy’s witch-hunting campaign against communists and others suspected of being leftists.
“Where’s My Roy Cohn?” focuses on the Army-McCarthy hearings from March to June 1954, with the military claiming that “Tailgunner Joe” and Cohn were seeking preferential treatment for their former staffer David Schine after he was drafted. It suggests that the ulterior motive was Cohn’s crush on the handsome Schine, with detractors directing not-so-coded homophobic language such as “fairy” and “pixie” at McCarthy’s sidekick during the hearings, which were partially televised.
On June 9, Army counsel Joseph Welch rebuked McCarthy’s despicable, underhanded tactics, famously declaring: “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” Welch received an ovation from the Senate gallery. The hearings, plus Edward R. Murrow’s “See It Now” broadcasts on CBS, resulted in Cohn’s resignation from the Senate Subcommittee, while McCarthy was censured by the Senate in December 1954.
Although Cohn’s infamy reached its apotheosis during the McCarthy era, the film goes on to document his continued unscrupulous career in private practice and in the public sphere, from New York to Washington, D.C. In cahoots with dirty trickster Roger Stone, Cohn helped engineer Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election by helping contender John Anderson win the nomination of New York’s Liberal Party, thereby splitting the Empire State’s vote.
Ever the master manipulator, Cohn helped Reagan’s 1984 reelection by spreading allegations that the Democrats’ vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro had mob ties. This was especially rich, as the unethical Cohn defended and was reputedly a “consigliere” to underworld figures in the Gambino and Genovese crime families, including “Dapper Don” John Gotti, Tony Salerno, and Carmine Galante.
Over the years, Cohn also courted the rich, famous, and trendy, and he’s shown hanging out at the Stork Club, the 21 Club, and Studio 54 with members of the glitterati who, alas, are unidentified onscreen. It seems inevitable that, by the early 1970s, Cohn’s world would collide with that of realtor Donald Trump, whom journalist David Cay Johnston tells viewers in an interview was also mobbed-up. Cohn aggressively fought Justice Department charges that Trump’s corporation was guilty of housing discrimination. Later, Trump Tower’s dubious construction is depicted.
As a personal lawyer and fixer, Cohn takes on The Donald as a protégé, teaching him attack-dog tactics, such as to be aggressive to the point of recklessness, and never apologize or admit wrongdoing. Clearly, Trump learned these lessons well.
Decades later, when he was besieged by the Russia inquiry and aggrieved by Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal of himself, Trump reportedly cried out, “Where’s My Roy Cohn?” Tyrnauer presumably took the title for his film from this Trumpian cri de coeur.
Tyrnauer’s well-executed excursion into the seamy side of politics is compelling and entertaining. In clips or stills we see Rupert Murdoch (to whom Cohn reportedly introduced Trump), Richard Nixon, Tom Snyder, Andy Warhol, George Steinbrenner, Larry King, and Gore Vidal, who valiantly takes Cohn on in TV debates. Interviewees include several of Cohn cousins, historian Thomas Doherty, gossip columnist Liz Smith, The New Yorker’s media critic Ken Auletta, Cohn’s purported boyfriend Wallace Adams, and Trump associate Roger Stone, among others.
With their dirty tricks, Stone and Cohn helped Nixon and McCarthy’s rise to pinnacles of power. Both men assisted Donald Trump scale the heights, but what the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue seems to have forgotten is that Tricky Dick and Tailgunner Joe also experienced spectacular downfalls. Time will tell if Trump-ty Dumpty has one in store.
“Where’s My Roy Cohn?” theatrically opened in New York and Los Angeles Sept. 20.
L.A.-based film historian/reviewer Ed Rampell is author of “Progressive Hollywood, A People’s Film History of the United States” and co-authored “The Hawaii Movie and Television Book,” now in its third edition. This first appeared at Progressive.org.
From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2019
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