Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1504875
45 F A L L Q 3 I S S U E B O O K R E V I E W were associated with spying. When talkies arrived in cinemas, at least three Hollywood stars vied for the title of "most glamorous screen spy." Greta Garbo ("Mata Hari" [1931]), Marlene Dietrich ("Dishonored" [1931]), and Madeleine Carroll ("I Was a Spy" [1933]) all starred as femme fatales. Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, whose stage name during her career as an exotic dancer was Mata Hari, is probably the best-known female spy. Along with her sensational dancing, she had a decadent, if not very successful, career as a spy for Germany in World War I. She also at one time claimed to be a double agent working for France, but her main interest seemed to have been seducing military officers and getting money from them. She once stated: "I love officers. I have loved them all my life…My greatest pleasure is to go to bed with them without thinking of money and then, I like to make comparisons among the different nationalities." She did do some ineffectual spy work for Germany in WWI and for that was executed by a French firing squad in 1917. Mata Hari lives on in books, on stage, and in the movies. In 1964, she was played by Jeanne Moreau in the f ilm "Mata Hari Agent H-21," and in a 1993 episode of the TV show "The Young Indiana Jones Chroni- cles," she seduces and takes the virginity of 17-year-old Indy. Other women were more successful as spies, and "Stars and Spies" details their careers, paying special attention to French singer and dancer Jeanne Bourgeois, stage name Mistinguet. She was the main at- traction successively at the Moulin Rouge, Follies Bergère, and Casino de Paris and also starred in 48 silent films. During the First World War, she volunteered to spy for the French army, using her star power to move freely across Europe, gathering information from royalty and high-placed officials. In- formation she supplied about the location of Germany's last major attack was key in assuring a French victory. O p e r a t i n g i n t h e s a m e m o d e a s Mistinguet, African-American star Jose- phine Baker served without pay for the Free French in World War II, forwarding information, reputedly sometimes written in invisible ink between the lines of sheet music. She had a lifelong allegiance to France, where she found that Blacks were far more accepted than in the US. Along with her risqué stage shows, Baker made more than 10 f ilms, most notably "Zou Z o u" ( 1 9 3 4 ) a n d " P r i n c e ss Ta m Ta m" (1935). Her secret intelligence was espe- cially useful in the North African theater of operations and in France's relations with Moscow. Charles de Gaulle wrote to her praising "[t]he enthusiasm with which you have put your magnificent talent at the dis- posal of our cause." For this service, Baker was made Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur. WWII brought expansion of spy net- works. Getting the United States to enter the war was critical to saving Britain, and the film "That Hamilton Woman" (1941), produced and directed by Alexander Korda and starring newlyweds Lawrence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, was designed to play a part in that. Korda was sent to Hollywood b y E n g l a n d's M i n i s te r o f I n fo r m a t i o n specifically to create an "American pro- paganda film" as part of the effort to win support from the American public. Korda received advice directly from Winston Churchill during production, and it be- came Churchill's favorite film. The plot of "That Hamilton Woman," a love story set against Admiral Nelson's perseverance and ultimate victory over Napoleon, was meant to parallel Britain resisting Hitler. After the film was released, the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations called Korda to appear on December 12th, 1941, to answer charges of "inciting the American public to war." When Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7th, that hearing was canceled. At the urging of Churchill, Korda became the first film producer to receive a knighthood. The second half of the 20th century is the period many people think of when they think of the definitive spy. Chapters 12 through 14 cover this era with the same detail and precision that characterize the first 11 chapters. The tremendous advances in spying and in codebreaking that came with the war also created a large espionage infrastructure. The successes at Bletchley Park in breaking the German Enigma code meant that the British had more informa- tion about the Germans than any previous combatant had about an enemy. After the coding operations of the U.S. and the U.K. were combined, 3000 to 4000 German sig- nals were decoded each month, along with more from the Japanese and Italians. The Germans never deciphered an Allied code. The other wartime advance that became a lasting fixture in intelligence work was the double cross. The first to suggest becoming an official double agent was a former WWI RAF pilot who became an actor and then a stunt pilot. He was approached by Germans asking him to provide information on the RAF, and he immediately sought to use this invitation to spy on them for Britian. His career as a spy was a failure, but it brought about the systematic use of double cross through which the British turned around 120 enemy spies into agents for the Allied cause. The Allies' uneasy partnership with the USSR that began in 1941 created problems not only during World War II, but after. The 1930s had seen socialist movements sweep Britian and the US. England especially was fascinated with everything Russian, and many highly educated young people there became directly involved with the Commu- nist Party. The Soviets recruited some of these new followers, the most famous being the Cambridge Five spy ring which included one of history's most successful spies, Kim Philby. Harold "Kim" Philby was a senior of- ficer in Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, who became a spy for the USSR in 1934 and spent the next 54 years spying for the KGB. His complex story and that of other Josephine Baker served without pay as a spy for France.