FILM · 1992 · USA
Hoffa
42 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
31 Interesting Facts About Hoffa
- #002
Jack Nicholson's daughter plays the young nun in the hospital scene where Billy Flynn is dying from his burns. According to Danny DeVito on the DVD commentary, Nicholson had asked him to give his daughter a small role. DeVito initially suggested she play the prostitute in the hotel room in a later scene, and Nicholson raised his trademark eyebrow. DeVito, of course, softened because he was joking and cast her as the nun.
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When the verdict in Rodney King's beating trial was announced, filming was taking place at the old Ambassador Hotel. That evening riots broke out in Los Angeles, but filming continued until late at night. The next morning things in Los Angeles appeared relatively calm, so filming continued as planned. By two in the afternoon, however, the riots had intensified so much that the City of Los Angeles revoked the production's filming permit. Cast, crew and hundreds of extras made their first screening to get home amid columns of smoke, gunfire and gridlocked freeways. About three weeks later, the cast, crew and extras returned to the Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard to complete filming of the scenes that had been interrupted.
- #006
According to Danny DeVito on the DVD commentary, his young son was on set the day the scene was shot in which Hoffa yells at D'Allesandro about taking control of the union back from Fitzimmons. The tirade included the line "I'm gonna do what I gotta do!" According to DeVito, months later, when he asked his son to do something (such as clean his room, take out the trash, do his homework, etc.), his son would imitate Jack Nicholson and say, "Dad… I'm gonna do what I gotta do!"
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In this film, the diner where Jimmy Hoffa waits for his meeting and where he ultimately disappears is depicted as a truck-stop café in the middle of the country briefly referred to as "the Roadhouse." In real life, the restaurant where Hoffa disappeared was called the Machus Red Fox Café and was located in a Detroit suburb.
- #011
In this film, Jimmy Hoffa (Jack Nicholson), Bobby Ciaro (Danny DeVito) and Carol D'Allesandro (Armand Assante) meet in the woods. The scene begins with Bobby sitting in a wooden railcar and placing an empty beer bottle on a post before coming down to meet Hoffa. In a following scene that was cut, Bobby gave D'Allesandro a shotgun. D'Allesandro then tried to knock the beer bottle off the post and failed. Hoffa then knocks the bottle off in one throw, leaving D'Allesandro behind.
- #012
Jimmy Hoffa's death in this film is probably far more dramatic than what actually happened in real life. According to historians and FBI investigators, Hoffa was waiting in his car with his driver and Teamster Charles "Chuckie" O'Brien. A car pulled up, probably used by the Mafia bosses he was to meet, or more likely by Mafia assassins. Hoffa then got out and walked to the arriving car. The car, registered in the name of one of the Mafia bosses he was supposed to meet, was later seized, and the FBI found small droplets of Hoffa's blood and hair in it, leading them to believe that he may have realized what was about to happen as he got into the car and was knocked unconscious and loaded into it, after which it quietly drove away. Although they cannot prove it, the FBI believes O'Brien helped the Mafia trap Hoffa and led him to his death. As for what happened to Hoffa's body, the theories are too varied to address here.
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- #025
Although stories usually focus on how Jimmy Hoffa courted organized crime within the Teamsters union, organized crime actually began to take root during the tenure of one of his predecessors, Daniel J. Tobin. Before Tobin, the founding president was Cornelius P. Shea. Shea was notorious for corruption and was connected to the Chicago Outfit presided over by Giacomo "Big Jim" Colosimo. Shea ultimately lost his bid for re-election as president of the Teamsters union to Tobin. Although historians are in broad agreement that Tobin was an honest leader and he was never personally accused of corruption, Tobin tended to turn a blind eye to gangsters and racketeers seizing control of key IBT locals in New York, Chicago and other cities.
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In 1976, a year after Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance, a reform group was formed from the ranks of grassroots members: Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) within the IBT. TDU was founded to address, to some degree, corruption within the union, including the misuse of pension funds and collusion between union officials and employers. TDU also fought for grassroots members to vote directly for union officers and against the imposition of contracts that did not reflect the will of the union's members.
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