Trailer
Plot summary
John Michael Hardesty, known as Chip, speaks about his years as an agent, recalling his career from its start. In May 1924 he was a government clerk for the young bureau in Knoxville, Tennessee, and he proposed to Lucy Ann Ballard, a librarian who believed his abilities were wasted there and wanted him to practice law. They married with that plan in mind. A speech by the bureau's new director, J. Edgar Hoover, persuaded him to stay, and Lucy Ann, expecting a child, asked him for one more year. His assignments took him to the South to look into the Ku Klux Klan. Then he was sent to Ute City, in Wade County, Oklahoma, where Native Americans who owned oil-rich land were being murdered.
Cast
- Paul Gengeas "Whitey"
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The FBI Story (1959)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- J. Edgar Hoover acted as a co-producer of sorts on The FBI Story: he had director Mervyn LeRoy re-shoot several scenes he felt portrayed the FBI badly, had to approve every frame, kept two special agents on set throughout filming, and had a say in the casting.
- The film's clothes-cleaner half-dollar came from the real Hollow Nickel Case: in 1953 a Brooklyn newspaper boy was paid with a nickel that felt wrong, and only KGB agent Reino Häyhänen's 1957 defection linked it to spies including Vilyam Fisher, four years rather than the film's few days.
- The Baby Face Nelson gunfight in the film took place in reality at the Little Bohemia Lodge, just outside Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin, where Nelson was hiding out with John Dillinger.
