Movie Monday: O.S.S.

Movie Monday: O.S.S.

Everyone loves a good spy flick, and throughout the 1930s and 1940s Hollywood put out their fair share, but as soon as World War II ended, executives scrambled produce a film about the O.S.S., the Office of Strategic Services and precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency. Paramount won the race with the May 1946 release of O.S.S. Written by Richard Maibum, a WWII veteran who later wrote twelve of the first fifteen James Bond movies. Maibum also narrates O.S.S.

The movie stars Alan Ladd and Geraldine Fitzgerald, a prolific Irish American actress who unfortunately has been long forgotten despite winning a Daytime Emmy Award and nominations for an Academy Award, a Tony award, and a Primetime Emmy Award. Initially studying painting at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, she was inspired to move into acting in 1932 by her aunt actress Shelah Richards. Relocating to London she was successful almost immediately and appeared in several films before crossing “the pond” to America where she went to Hollywood and was cast in many well-known films such as Wuthering Heights (1939), Dark Victory (1939), and Watch on the Rhine (1943). Her portrayal of Elaine Dupress in O.S.S. is strong with just enough “braininess and class to get the job done.”(1)

O.S.S. was Alan Ladd’s first film after The Blue Dahlia that released in April 1946.

, and he does a brilliant job as an undercover agent working in occupied France during the war. In intriguing twist to his character is that he is sent to work for the OSS after being arrested for espionage while attempting to steal an electric circuit from a Baltimore, Maryland manufacturing plant. Apparently, thievery was a skill in demand for the organization! His character isn’t quite Bondesque but as one source put it, the flavor of the film suggests later Bond elements.

John Hoyt, who would go on to star in many film noir, makes his noteworthy debut in O.S.S. as a darkly twisted Gestapo agent who falls for Fitzgerald and manipulates her into romantic relationship (or so he thinks). He manages to live after she attempts to kill him and spends the remainder of the movie trying to find the woman “who did him wrong.”

The movie is directed by Irving Pichel who began his acting career when studios were hiring theater-trained actors for the “new fangled” talkies. He secured a contract with Paramount and worked extensively through the 1930s as a character actor. He also performed on radio and narrated two of Hollywood’s most popular movies, How Green was my Valley and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. When acting jobs began to dry up just before WWII commenced, he turned to directing and was tapped to direct several B-movies before moving to 20th Century Fox to direct their leading actors and actresses. Many of his movies were pro-British and anti-Nazi. Tragically, he would later be part of the “Hollywood Nineteen” who refused to name suspected Communists to the House Un-American Activities Committee, were blacklisted, and saw their careers implode as a result.

Alan Ladd and Richard Benedict reprised their roles in a 60-minute adaptation for the “Lux Radio Theater” broadcast that aired on November 18, 1946.

Have you seen this classic?

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Dutch Dawn

Will they survive the 500-mile journey to freedom?

Isak Westgard is only six missions short to be rotated stateside. Then the unthinkable happens, and he crashes in the occupied Netherlands where the chances of him making it back to England are slim to none. The beautiful and tough-as-nails resistance courier begs to differ and claims she hasn’t lost anyone yet. The problem is the longer they’re together, the less he wants to escape.

 
Annaliese Claasen has escorted her fair share of refugees and downed Allied pilots to safety - too numerous to remember. Until now. There’s something different about the Norwegian-American lieutenant, and it’s more than his good looks. Can she get him out of the country before losing her heart?

Purchase Link: https://books2read.com/u/bMjoxV

Photo credits:

Movie Poster: By Unknown - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038794/, Fair use

Movie Stills: Courtesy Paramount Pictures

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O.S.S._(film)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038794/
https://mikestakeonthemovies.com/2020/02/15/o-s-s-1946/

(1) https://mikestakeonthemovies.com/2020/02/15/o-s-s-1946/

Wartime Wednesday: Secret Agent Stephanie Czech Radar

Wartime Wednesday: Stephanie Czech Radar

Pixabay/F. Muhammad

How well do you know your neighbors? I can honestly answer: Not too well. We moved into our current house three years ago, and our “across the street” neighbors stopped to introduce themselves, and we’ve spoken several times since then, but usually about incidentals. We met the next-door neighbor when our tree fell, and have never even seen the neighbor on our right. Turns out we’re not alone in that.

Imagine the shock when Alexandria, Virginia resident, Michael Golden discovered that his neighbor Stephanie Czech Radar was a former agent with the Office of Strategic Services during WWII. An unassuming lady, she never once talked about her work with the organization. The child of Polish immigrants, she grew up to graduate from Cornell University with a degree in Chemistry. She worked in the cafeteria, and her parents sold their wedding rings to afford tuition.

She remained fluent in Polish, so joined the Women’s Army Corps as a translator. Near the end of the

Courtesy Cornell Univ.

war, the OSS recruited her to take advantage of her fluency. Her accent, appearance, and mannerisms were just what they needed. Sent to Europe in 1945, Captain Czech arrived at the U.S. embassy in Berlin wearing civilian clothes and delivered the report she’d been carrying. She made her way to Poland where she claimed to be a clerk for the embassy in Warsaw and searching for distant relatives in her spare time.

In reality, she was one of only two members of the OSS stationed in the country, working for the counterintelligence section known as X2 (a department so secretive some who served in the group didn’t even know the name). She wandered the countryside spying on Soviet troop movements and gathering information on their intelligence services. She blended in easily but lived under constant fear of being arrested by the Soviets who were rounding up people right and left. Later she would say, “They gave me a gun, but I never carried a gun. What the heck was I gonna do with a dumb gun?”

She also told of her last mission…approaching the checkpoint, she saw the Soviet security agents acutely aware of the documents hidden under her clothes. If she was caught, she'd be sent to the gulag, perhaps worse. If she ran, they’d chase her. If she kept the papers, they’d find them. She took out the papers and calmly handed them to the man next to her, someone she was confident wouldn’t alert suspicion. “Take these,” she mumbled as she gave him the name of the recipient.

As feared, she was detained, but the Soviets found no evidence, so had to release her. She walked free, hopeful that the secret papers were on their way to their destination.

Courtesy Cornell Univ.

Because of her work, she was nominated for the Legion of Merit twice, but the request was denied each time. No one seems to know why. It wouldn’t be until nearly seventy years later when friends and family campaigned to have her recognized that she would be awarded this prestigious medal. She passed away in 2016 at 100 years of age and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Learn more about Stephanie who won the Virginia award for her service: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIFW3xEYvvw&list=WL&index=1

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Spies & Sweethearts

She wants to do her part. He’s just trying to stay out of the stockade. Will two agents deep behind enemy lines find capture…or love?

1942: Emily Strealer is tired of being told what she can’t do. Wanting to prove herself to her older sisters and do her part for the war effort, the high school French teacher joins the OSS and trains to become a covert operative. And when she completed her training, she finds herself parachuting into occupied France with her instructor to send radio signals to the Resistance.

Major Gerard Lucas has always been a rogue. Transferring to the so-called “Office of Dirty Tricks” to escape a court-martial, he poses as a husband to one of his trainees on a dangerous secret mission. But when their cover is blown after only three weeks, he has to flee with the young schoolteacher to avoid Nazi arrest.

Running for their lives, Emily clings to her mentor’s military experience during the harrowing three-hundred-mile trek to neutral Switzerland. And while Gerard can’t bear the thought of his partner falling into German hands, their forged papers might not be enough to get them over the border.

Can the fugitive pair receive God’s grace to elude the SS and discover the future He intended?

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