become the first FBI Director, “He was diminutive, struggled with a stutter and a fear of germs, and lived with his mother.”
The 2011 movie J. Edgar, which starred Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role, makes light of the fact that Hoover used a practiced cadence of speech to circumvent stuttering. The mention of the nickname “Speed” suggests that fast talking was the result of stuttering. The 1993 book The True Story of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI by Barry Denenberg echoes the origin of the nickname “Speed” in relation to Hoover’s “machine gun-like manner of speaking and states, “In order to overcome an early stuttering problem, he spent hours practicing in front of his bedroom mirror.”
An article on the 2011 biopic entitled “The Making of ‘J. Edgar’” in the November 2, 2011 edition of The Hollywood Reporter stated that director Clint Eastwood wished to confirm with screenwriter Dustin Lane Black certain aspects of Hoover’s life portrayed in the script. Black said about Eastwood, “He wanted to know about the stutter [that Hoover had as a youth]. He said, 'Did you make up the stutter?' Things he thought were really good, he wanted to make sure weren’t just convenient. I really respected that.”
Another 2011 review from the site From the Front Row made mention of Hoover’s stuttering when describing his relationship with his mother: “……. While not an overbearing woman, demanded greatness of her son, and had trained the stutter out of him.”
With speech therapy not advanced during the years of Hoover’s youth, he no doubt practiced one of the many the “home remedy” techniques which were promoted by self-styled speech correctionists of the time. The 1991 biography J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and His Secrets by Curt Gentry gives an insight into the speech exercises practiced by a young Hoover. “As a youth Hoover stuttered. Researching the subject, he found an article which asserted that for some the cure was to talk not slower but faster. Practicing alone in his room
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