American Boogeyman: 4 times the complex closeted story of Roy Cohn was brought to the screen
This weekend, controversial Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice opens in theaters across the country, despite legal troubles and vocal pushback from the MAGA crowd.
The film tells the story of the disgraced former president’s early days as a New York City businessman, largely under the tutelage of notorious American lawyer and prosecutor Roy Cohn.
But “The Man Who Created Trump” was just one of many chapters in the life of the infamous Cohn, a con artist who made a name for himself aiding Senator Joseph McCarthy’s harmful anti-communist fear-mongering in the ’50s, and later worked for the Reagan campaign, while also bribing and blackmailing his way through a legal career.
When he died in 1986 of complications from AIDS, it was after a lifetime of not just vehemently denying his own sexuality, but actively pushing an anti-LGBTQ+ agenda through his work with conservative politicians. Needless to say, Cohn was a very, very complicated man.
Perhaps that’s why his story’s been explored, time and again, in popular media, from theater to film and television. Inspired by The Apprentice‘s theatrical premiere, let’s take a glance black at notable screen portrayals of this fraught, fearful, and frightening real-life American ghoul.
