The Kaleidoscopic Immortality of Jimmy Hoffa

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There are few people in the history of organized labor in America who are as infamous as Jimmy Hoffa. He rose from poverty to become the president of the International Brotherhood of the Teamsters (IBT or just the Teamsters) and helped expand it into one of the most powerful unions in the world. Hoffa rubbed shoulders with gangsters, fought bitterly with Robert F. Kennedy, got convicted of jury tampering and other crimes in 1967, and promised to take back control of the Teamsters after his controversial release from prison in 1971 before he mysteriously vanished in 1975. His disappearance, as well as the fact that his body was never found, continues to fascinate people.

But Hoffa hasn’t lived on in popular culture just because he is at the center of an unsolved mystery. His life and personality have provided fertile material for writers and filmmakers. He has been a character in the work of James Ellroy (American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand), an influence on Treat Williams’s character in Once Upon a Time in America (1984), and even a minor part of a TV film about Jesse Owens (The Jesse Owens Story (1984)). He has also played a pivotal role in several major films as either a prominent supporting or lead character. The directors of those films use the events of Hoffa’s memorable life and interesting persona as a type of canvas onto which they paint their key artistic interests, aided by actors whose fascinating performances as the notorious union leader capture different parts of his life and personality.

The most recent depiction of Hoffa in popular culture was in The Irishman (2019). He doesn’t have appear in a proper scene until 46 minutes into the film. But Hoffa (Al Pacino) is mentioned several times before his fateful interview with truck driver/ hitman Frank Sheeran (Robert DeNiro) to be his bodyguard. One of them is when Mob-connected Teamsters lawyer Bill Buffalino (Ray Romano) tells Sheeran that he is unable to be fired for stealing steaks because of the contract the Teamsters have “thanks to Jimmy Hoffa.” Even before they have met, Hoffa is established as a powerful figure whose activities are intertwined with Sheeran’s life and fate. He only becomes more prominent as the film goes to show why he is important to the world and Sheeran.

The version of Jimmy Hoffa in The Irishman might best be described as “Hoffa the rock star.” When he is trying to describe Hoffa’s great fame, Sheerhan compares him to Elvis Presley and The Beatles. Most of what we see Hoffa do for work as president of the Teamsters isn’t things like sign up new members or organize strikes. Instead, he does things that rock stars do, like perform in front of crowds of adoring supporters (although he recites speeches instead of singing) or conduct interviews with the press. Those scenes of him giving speeches feel like rock concerts, and sometimes his supporters even chant his name like he was their favorite artist, which leads Pacino to dance as many famous musicians do when faced with the love of their followers (albeit with simpler choreography than the average rock star because he was 77 when he played Hoffa). Like many rock stars, a key element of Hoffa’s personality is his charisma. It enables him to charm multiple characters ranging from Sheeran’s daughter Peggy (Lucy Gallina as a child and Anna Paquin as an adult) to mob boss Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci), and especially Sheeran himself. His magnetism and the way he helps his friends (he encourages Sheeran to become the president of a Teamsters local in addition to temporarily helping him have a better relationship with Peggy) helps give you an idea of why he became such a powerful man, and why so many people got caught up in his web to the extent that they did.

This is not to say that the Hoffa of The Irishman is just a likeable man who is devoted to the simple things in life, like his friends and ice cream (although he frequently eats and enjoys it, just like the real Hoffa). He is also given to moments of rage that are familiar to fans of Pacino. In one of my favorite scenes, he rails against his associates for allowing a general organizer to sell insurance to his father’s locals. I’ve seen it at least a dozen times, and Pacino’s performance is just as enthralling every time. He insults his lieutenants, hands gesticulating passionately and with purpose as he describes what they did, until he becomes so angry that he stops talking in mid-speech. He practically crumples at what he considers to be his associates’ stupidity, taking a moment to rest as if they’ve exhausted him, before resuming his rant until he becomes so angry that he hits the table in front of him twice. That tendency to give in to rages against people who he feels have crossed him is one of his greatest weaknesses, as is his inability to recognize that he is vulnerable. In a latter scene, Hoffa hears a veiled threat from Sheeran that he might get killed. His face contorts in confusion, and he replies, “they wouldn’t dare” before he confidently tells Sheeran that he’s not in danger. Hoffa’s sense of indestructibility, and the too-much faith he places in his own importance, is the dark side of his portrayal as a rock star.

While this film’s depiction of Hoffa tries to stick to the historical record (and Pacino rose to the task by listening to recordings of him giving speeches on set right until he heard the call for “action”), it is also indebted to the artistic interests of its director. The Irishman is the latest in a long line of films Martin Scorsese has made in which a level-headed guy tries and fails to save his hot-headed best friend. Scorsese’s interpretation of Hoffa is reminiscent of his other fiery men who practically run around asking for punishment, like Johnny Boy from Mean Streets (1973) or any character Pesci played for him in the 1990s. You could imagine all of them having a loud and enjoyable dinner before getting into an explosive argument over who’s going to pay the check. That type of conflict – a rational man trying and failing to save a beloved yet volatile rogue – is a personal one for Scorsese. In Martin Scorsese: A Retrospective, author Tom Shone writes that Scorsese had a paternal uncle named Joey, “a colorful loudmouth” who “…was always in trouble of some sort, always in debt to some mobster he had borrowed money from,” with the result that the young Scorsese spent years listening to “…a lot of family sit-downs to make sure Joey wasn’t killed by the Mob.” Scorsese thus recreates this primal conflict in the relationship between Sheeran and Hoffa. In addition, the climactic action of the film is a betrayal, which is something that has fascinated Scorsese for his entire life and been depicted in his work since his days as a graduate student at NYU when he made his underrated and hilarious crime short It’s Not Just You, Murray! All these things make Scorsese’s depiction of Hoffa as much a window into what fascinates him as an artist as it is a portrait of a historical figure.

Scorsese’s take on Hoffa is a far cry from how another director depicted him in a prominent film. In contrast to the portrait of him in The Irishman, in which he is the president of the Teamsters and spends more time giving speeches than organizing workers, Danny DeVito’s biopic Hoffa (1992) spends a good portion of its running time following his rise to become president. The focus here is less on the relationships that Hoffa (Jack Nicholson) has with gangsters (to the extent that DeVito refers to the gangsters with whom Hoffa does business on the DVD commentary as being a part of “the organization” instead of the Mafia or even the Mob) and more on him as a fighter for working people. Scorsese’s Hoffa is a man with whom you’d like to have a beer. DeVito’s Hoffa is a man who you’d want to salute.

DeVito’s film depicts a version of its titular character that I like to call “Hoffa the hero.” This is fitting since DeVito told an interviewer that he thought that Hoffa was heroic in an interview shortly before the film’s release. “He put bread on the table of the working man. That to me is a hero,” DeVito said. To that end, DeVito and screenwriter David Mamet include many scenes of Hoffa fighting on behalf of working people. Whether it’s changing a tire for a driver as he gives him his pitch for why he should join the Teamsters, leading a march in defiance of his superiors in the union and the wishes of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, or comforting the mother of a slain Teamster, DeVito spares no effort to depict his protagonist as an authentic working-class hero. Nicholson leans into this side of the character in his performance. While his version of Hoffa isn’t perfect (he frequently uses homophobic and anti-Italian slurs much like Pacino’s Hoffa), he captures what DeVito saw as his commanding presence and passion for improving the lives of working people. Nicholson also does a very accurate impression of Hoffa’s voice (albeit one that slips every now and again) and looks a lot like him, even without the help of some old age makeup (“dig those jowls,” as DeVito says on the DVD commentary) that he wears later in the film. He may lack the sheer charisma of Pacino’s performance, but Nicholson delivers exactly what you’d expect from a biopic which seeks to valorize Hoffa as a hero of organized labor.

Hoffa might seem like the odd film out in DeVito’s body of work as a director up until that point in time. He had previously directed Throw Momma from the Train (1987) and The War of the Roses (1989), both black comedies that focus more on making you laugh than want to shake a union organizer’s hand. But Hoffa does reflect DeVito’s artistic interests, just as The Irishman did for Scorsese. His positive portrayal of Hoffa reflects his own labor-based politics, which in more recent years have led him to support Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn. While DeVito says on the DVD commentary that some of the deals Hoffa made were “very extreme,” he goes on to note that “you can do anything for the furtherment of the cause,” and that sense of being willing to do whatever is necessary to achieve something important feels like a justification for the great lengths that the protagonists of his previous films had gone to achieve their goals, such as getting rid of a reviled mother or an annoying spouse. While Hoffa isn’t a comedy, it does end with a punchline that is as dark as anything DeVito put in his previous two films. Hoffa associate Bobby Ciaro (a fictionalized character played by DeVito) tells a Teamster trucker credited only as Young Kid (Frank Whaley), who is grateful to him for helping him, to go thank Hoffa instead. Composer David Newman’s score swells sentimentally as Young Kid slowly walks towards Hoffa, like he’s going to meet his hero and thank him on behalf of all Teamsters for what he has done for the union. But instead, Young Kid whips out a gun and murders Hoffa, whose body (along with that of a murdered Ciaro) is taken away in a truck. It’s an ignominious ending for Hoffa the hero, but it is also one that is totally in keeping with DeVito’s artistic voice.

Since these films bear the artistic stamps of both Scorsese and DeVito, you might wonder how Hoffa would have told his life story in his own way. He did, but not in the form of a film. Instead, Hoffa helped create an autobiography that was ghostwritten by journalist Oscar Fraley, who had done most of the work in writing Elliot Ness’s book The Untouchables. Fraley conducted extensive interview sessions with Hoffa and finished it after he disappeared. Their book bears the promising yet self-serving title of Hoffa: The Real Story. It follows its titular protagonist from his childhood until shortly before his disappearance.

A major goal of Hoffa: The Real Story (which is written in the first-person from Hoffa’s perspective) is to provide readers with what its authors seemed to have hoped would be an honest portrait of “Hoffa the man.” This is clear from the punchy quote mid-way through the book that he “wrote this book because I’m going to have my say, and I’m damned well going to say what I think.” That leads to part of the appeal of the book, which is the punchy language created by Hoffa in collaboration with Fraley. He writes that his enemy, former Special Counsel to President Nixon Charles Colson, “proved himself to be a no-good liar. Because he’s no good and no good at lying…” He goes on to remark that when he saw a hated foreman get angry, he thought “hopefully, that he was going to have a heart attack.” He refers to prison as “hell on earth, only hell couldn’t be this bad.” Though Hoffa repeatedly denies that he is linked to organized crime (despite knowing gangsters), his pulpy language helps his autobiography feel like a true crime book. Indeed, it seems that Hoffa intended it that way, but with him as the victim of a crime instead of a perpetrator.

Hoffa’s hate-filled relationship with Robert F. Kennedy was depicted in The Irishman (he frequently calls him “Booby” and he’s played by an understated Jack Huston) as well as Hoffa (in which he has more screentime and is played by a sneering Kevin Anderson). But it’s hard to get the full measure of Hoffa’s hatred for the man until you read Hoffa: The Real Story. The chapter where he first meets him is called “The Spoiled Brat.” In it, Hoffa writes that when he first encountered Kennedy (when he was counsel for the McClelland committee) he tried to get documents from him when he was in a meeting. Hoffa, angered that someone would interrupt him, “shoved him back into the hallway so hard that he almost fell down.” Later in this chapter, after Kennedy has repeatedly annoyed Hoffa, he calls him to his hotel room. After interrogating him, he suggests that they arm wrestle. Hoffa goes on to beat Kennedy in two consecutive arm-wrestling matches and writes that “I’m damned certain in my heart that Robert F. Kennedy became my mortal enemy that night.”

It is stories like that–unverifiable, petty, and downright bizarre–which ironically helps make Hoffa’s autobiography feel like the most unlikeable and arrogant representation of him out of the three considered here. All his stories make him out to be the hero who has done nothing wrong. He’s simply a victim of bad luck (a running gag consists of people arresting him for no reason during his organizing days) and the ambitions of Robert F. Kennedy, who he insults with a wide variety of terms such as “vicious bastard” and “greedy little rich kid.” But Hoffa’s stories also reveal character failings and prejudices which he doesn’t address. When describing his aborted first date with his future wife Jo, he notes that it turned into a disaster when he honked his car for her to leave the house, like Kyle (Timothée Chalamet) in Lady Bird (2017). He also notes that, when he was in Lewisberg prison and tried to organize the prisoners to reform it, he refused to include complaints about racial and ethnic discrimination when he went to the warden. “We’re not here to talk about discrimination. We’re here to get the prison straightened out for everybody,” Hoffa said. His more problematic side is confirmed by Fraley in his epilogue, in which he noted that his co-writer supported capital punishment, opposed gun control, and busing, and believed that you could make cities safer if you could “crack down on the hoodlums; shoot their asses off.” Despite his attempts to win the reader over to his side, complete with quotations of news articles that are friendly to him and critical of Kennedy, the real Hoffa – violent, boorish, and petty – can’t help but be less likeable than the ones played by Pacino and Nicholson.

Hoffa continues to linger on in popular culture, both because of what he achieved while he was alive and the ongoing mystery of his fate. There are plenty of books that try to find out what happened to him and, late as June 2022, the FBI was still pursuing leads related to the case. But it is Hoffa’s pro-union life, and what he built despite the charges of corruption and his own personal failings, that continue to resonate because we live in a period of renewed interest in and approval of unions. A recent poll showed that Americans approval of unions is at its highest point since 1965. Millions of people are joining them or starting ones at companies such as Starbucks. More recently, the Teamsters are about to conduct massive contract talks with UPS on behalf of 330,000 workers it represents. At a time like this, as workers try to assert their rights, it can be useful for them to look at previous representations of Hoffa in popular culture for inspiration. They can learn how to inspire a crowd with sheer charisma like Pacino’s Hoffa, or about the basics of organizing from Nicholson’s Hoffa. But perhaps most importantly, they can learn what not to do from the real Hoffa.

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