Baker later I wrote down a note and hid it in my underwear so no one would find it. In her 1977 autobiography, Josephine, she describes how these secrets were made to be “secured with safety pins” and passed through checkpoints to the French Resistance. I wrote Tanoka.
This American-born performer has worked with the likes of escapist artist Harry Houdini, baseball catcher Moe Berg, film actress Marlene Dietrich, spy novelist Ian Fleming, chef Julia Child, and Hollywood aficionado Cary Grant. , was one of a surprising number of famous people involved in espionage in the 20th century. .
“When it comes to spies, celebrities have the ability to hide in plain sight,” said Amanda Ohelke, director of adult education at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. Because of their fame. They often find things difficult for real spies to learn. ”
Baker, an African American, moved to Paris in the 1920s to escape the racism she encountered at home. She became a big star in France and was able to capitalize on her fame when war broke out across Europe.
“Josephine was charming and charismatic,” Olke said. After gleaning information from a tipsy German official, “she wrote her secret notes in invisible ink on her sheet music and hid messages inside her clothes.”
After the war, Baker was awarded the Resistance Medal by the French National Liberation Committee and the Croix de Guerre by the French Army for his volunteer espionage efforts. She was also appointed Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur by General Charles de Gaulle.
When Houdini wasn't thrilling audiences with his amazing escapes, he turned to espionage. He was scouted by spymaster William Melville, head of intelligence at the British War Office. While performing in Germany and Russia in the years leading up to World War I, the magician noted troop movements and military equipment and submitted regular intelligence reports to London.
“Houdini had a lot to report,” William Kalsch and Larry Sloman wrote in The Secret Life of Houdini, published in 2006. “One area of particular interest was heavier-than-air flying machines. Houdini took keen note of German advances in this field.”
One of the more unusual celebrity spies is Berg, who was a major league baseball player from 1923 to 1939. Although he was primarily a backup catcher, he excelled in other areas as well. He speaks his seven languages and graduated with honors from Princeton University.
During World War II, the retired catcher joined the Office of Strategic Studies, a precursor to the CIA, which hired foreign scientists to work in the United States. In 1942, his espionage efforts almost turned into an assassination when he attended a lecture in Switzerland by Werner Heisenberg, a German physicist involved in the Nazi nuclear weapons program.
“Moe Berg was given orders to kill Heisenberg if he learned that the Germans were close to developing an atomic bomb,” Olke said. “Now that he knows that's not the case, he doesn't have to go through with it.”
The most famous German actress in Hollywood in the 1930s was Dietrich. When war broke out across Europe, she opposed the Nazi regime and supported her adopted homeland, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1941. Although she wasn't technically a spy, she volunteered to help the OSS by producing a propaganda radio show that was broadcast for the Axis powers.
Those programs featured Dietrich's famous song “Lili Marlene,” which German soldiers were forbidden to listen to. After receiving numerous letters of protest, Nazi officials rescinded the order and her song was played at the end of German broadcasts, according to the CIA website.
It's no secret that Fleming used his experience in Royal Naval Intelligence during World War II to write the popular James Bond spy novels. But before Fleming became his author, he concocted a plan used by British special forces to undermine the German war effort. One of his ideas, planting false plans on corpses, was used to mislead the Nazis before the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943.
Another plan may have been the basis for the disastrous Dieppe Raid in 1942, a hit-and-run attack on the French coast. According to historian David O'Keeffe, Fleming devised the attack as a cover to steal Enigma, the Nazis' super-secret code machine, from a German naval office in a French seaside town. However, the mission was a failure, and approximately 1,000 British, Canadian, and American suicide bombers were killed.
“There is no doubt about this.” [Fleming’s] O'Keeffe wrote in his 2020 book, “One Day in August: Ian Fleming, Enigma, and the Fatal Attack on Dieppe.” “Hiring him as the broadcast anchorman tasked with bringing home the stolen goods was, in retrospect, a huge risk, and an irresponsible risk that I would not have taken unless the stakes were high. .”
Before she became famous, Child worked for the OSS during World War II. She helped research many projects before taking on the larger task of creating shark repellent recipes. The child made a “cake” with copper acetate and black dye that smelled like dead sharks, scaring living sharks.
“The child wasn't just a secretary or a file clerk,” Olke said. “She worked directly for the head of her OSS registry.”
There is perhaps no more famous spy than Grant. The two authors describe how the movie star worked for the FBI and British intelligence during World War II to help uncover Nazi sympathizers in Hollywood and people who might have ties to the German regime. He claimed that he had done so.
Charles Higham wrote in his 1980 book Errol Flynn: The Untold Story that Grant exposed Errol Flynn as an alleged Nazi agent. The author claimed to have found government records related to this movie legend, but no one else has substantiated the claim. Some historians and Flynn's family deny the accusations.
In 1980, the Washington Post reported that Flynn's former secretary believed her employer was a spy. Jane Chesis claimed that in Flynn's file she found letters from known Nazis. She recalled telling her husband when she heard about Higham's book. She said, “Oh, I finally found out about Flynn.”
According to Mark Elliott's 2004 book Cary Grant: A Biography, Grant was also married to Count Kurt von Haugwitz-Hardenberg-Reventlow, the German-born husband of heiress Barbara Woolworth Hutton. It is said that he was also spying on him. It's unclear whether his oversight revealed anything, but it led to a different kind of success. The actor married Hutton in 1942 after divorcing the Earl.
Mr. Elliott claimed that Mr. Grant may have served as a “volunteer” spy for J. Edgar Hoover during World War II and had to keep an eye on his wife. “There is little doubt that Cary Grant was the FBI special agent or contact tasked with spying on Barbara Hutton before and during the war,” the authors write, adding that Grant was a red-hater. He pointed out that he was not investigated by the FBI during the incident. He may have been protected by Hoover in the 1950s, even though he had “known communist connections.”
Spy work can be dangerous, but many celebrities and budding stars wanted to do their part during an international crisis. “They were patriotic and determined to help their country,” Olke said. “It was wartime, so they volunteered to do whatever they could to help fight the enemy.”
