Citizen Cohn is a 1992 made-for-TV movie covering the life of Joseph McCarthy's controversial chief counsel Roy Cohn. James Woods, who starred as Cohn, was nominated for both an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his performance. Citizen Cohn also stars Joe Don Baker (as McCarthy), Ed Flanders (as Cohn's courtroom nemesis Joseph Welch), Frederic Forrest (as writer Dashiell Hammett), and Pat Hingle (as Cohn's onetime mentor J. Edgar Hoover). It was directed by Frank Pierson. The movie was based on the 1988 book of the same name by Nicholas von Hoffman; it was filmed on location in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Synopsis

The film spans Cohn's life from childhood through his initial rise to power as McCarthy's right-hand man in the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearings and his eventual public discrediting a month before his death in 1986 from AIDS. It is told mostly in flashback as Cohn lies dying at a hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, hallucinating that his many enemies (from Robert F. Kennedy to Ethel Rosenberg, a convicted Communist spy he sent to the electric chair) are haunting him. It concerns aspects of Cohn's life such as his closeted homosexuality and the measure of his culpability in the "Red Scare" of the 1950s. While the movie portrays Cohn in a decidedly unsympathetic light, it also depicts episodes in his life, such as the death of his beloved mother, in which he showed a more humane, compassionate side.

Cast

Score

Thomas Newman composed the largely minimalist film score.

Awards and nominations