- Entertainer/spy, there's a career combo
you don't see every day.
Spies work in the shadows
while entertainers seek the limelight.
The following ladies excelled at both,
putting their lives on the line
and bringing new meaning to triple threat.
It's the famous women you didn't know
were secretly spies.
Beginning in the 1960s,
Julia Child was a world-famous chef,
introducing Americans to French cuisine
in cookbooks and on her TV shows.
But before she appeared on screen,
she was working behind the scenes
at the Office of Strategic Services,
a World War II era spy agency
that would eventually become the CIA.
When Julia first applied to the military
after getting fired from an advertising job,
she was turned away for being too tall.
She was 6'2",
but the OSS accepted her application.
Her interviewer noting she made a good impression,
pleasant, alert, capable, very tall.
Julia wasn't the type of spy as we know them;
wearing wigs and using secret gadgets,
she worked behind a desk.
However, the job did bring her
to exotic locales like Sri Lanka and China.
Her greatest accomplishment at the OSS
was her participation
in the development of a shark repellent
that the government still uses today.
Ironic that the first thing she ever cooked up
was made to prevent eating.
Marlene Dietrich was a famous actress and singer
during the silent movie era of the 1930s.
She was nominated for an Oscar
and was one of the highest paid actresses of her time.
It seems she was also acting suspicious
because the FBI was convinced she was a German spy.
That's mostly because Marlene was born and raised
in Berlin and launched her career in Germany,
only coming to the U.S. in the 1930s.
She made many trips back to Europe during World War II
to entertain American GIs.
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was so suspicious of her
that he ran a formal espionage investigation,
tracking her every move and opening her mail
for three years from 1942 through 1944.
The FBI acted more like TMZ in this case,
producing zero evidence that Marlene was a spy
and only gaining insight into her busy love life.
Marlene was actually so eager
to prove her allegiance to America
that she became an enthusiastic performer
in USO shows for U.S. troops abroad,
recorded songs for the OSS to use in propaganda,
and even agreed to be a spy for the U.S.,
collecting observations about subversive activities
in Europe while entertaining abroad.
Although it doesn't seem she uncovered much.
In the early 1900s,
Mata Hari was an exotic dancer
who was born in a sacred Indian temple
and taught ancient dances of seduction
by a priestess who gave her her name.
At least that's what Margaretha Geertruida Zelle,
a.k.a. Mata Hari wanted people to believe.
In reality, she was born in Holland
and acquired her knowledge of East Asian culture
while living in the Dutch East Indies
or present day Indonesia with an ex-husband.
However, none of that mattered
to the thousands of people throughout Europe
who packed dance halls and opera houses
to watch her slowly strip nude.
She became a famous courtesan or escort,
and once World War I broke out,
her list of lovers consisted largely
of high ranking military officers.
She was arrested in 1916 by the French
for being a German spy.
Mata admitted that a German officer had paid her
to gather information,
but she insisted that the intel
she gave him was useless.
The French claimed that Mata had shared information
about a new weapon the Allies were developing
called The Tank,
resulting in deaths of thousands of soldiers
and had her executed.
There is virtually no evidence
that Mata committed espionage of any consequence,
and it's widely believed
the French exaggerated her story to distract people
from how badly they were being beaten in the war.
Alice Marble was a Hall of Fame tennis player,
the first female to win
both the British and U.S. women's singles,
doubles, and mixed doubles championships
in the same year,
and was the Associated Press's
Athlete of the Year in 1939 and 1940.
She also tried her forehand at a little espionage.
According to Marble's autobiography,
towards the end of World War II,
she was recruited to be a spy for the Allies.
One of her former lovers was a Swiss banker
believed to be providing financial services
to high ranking Nazi officers.
Alice went to Switzerland
to play in a highly publicized tennis tournament.
Her handlers banking on her ex to reach out.
He did, and Alice was able to discover
a ton of information about his dealings
before being shot in the back while fleeing.
Alice survived the mission
and continued to play tennis
and even went on to coach Billie Jean King.
Needless to say,
she was an ace in more ways than one.
Audrey Hepburn is one of the most iconic
film actresses of all time,
best known for her starring roles
in "Breakfast at Tiffany's," "My Fair Lady,"
and winning an Oscar for her performance
in "Roman Holiday" in 1953.
- Making "Roman Holiday" is certainly
one of the happiest experiences of my life.
- But in the 1940s,
before all the glitz and glam,
she was a teenager living in the Nazi occupied Netherlands.
Her mother was actually a Nazi sympathizer
until her uncle was arrested and executed
by the Nazis in 1942.
Around this time, Audrey met local
resistance leader Dr. Hendrik Visser't Hooft,
who found Audrey to be a great asset
because her age allowed her to go virtually undetected
by the Gestapo.
Fittingly, she made her debut
for the Resistance as a performer.
Dancing ballet at secret fundraisers
called Black Evenings.
To avoid detection, nobody could make a sound,
and Hepburn later remarked...
Her other duties included a job fit for a child spy;
riding her bike on a paper route,
delivering napkin-sized resistance newspapers
that she hid in her socks.
She also delivered food and messages to allied pilots
who had been shot down
and became so trusted
that she and her mother hid a paratrooper
in their basement for a week.
Josephine Baker was the classic triple threat:
singer, dancer, actress
and one of the biggest celebrities
of the 1920s, '30s and '40s.
She was the first Black woman
to star in a major motion picture,
and for a long stretch was the richest Black woman alive.
On top of all of that,
she was a full-on spy during World War II.
By the time the Nazis occupied Paris in 1940,
Josephine was 34,
and had been a citizen of France for several years.
She accepted her invitation
to join the French Resistance, saying...
Her spy resumé is a lengthy one.
She rented a chateau in the French countryside
where she would harbor German refugees.
But the real spy stuff took place on the road.
While performing around Europe,
she was invited to embassy parties at every stop.
She would flirt with high ranking Axis officials
who were in attendance,
easily disarming them with her sensual celebrity.
She'd get them chatting on military subjects
like troop movement or active airfields,
while her assistant,
who was actually a French secret agent,
recorded everything on Josephine's sheet music
with invisible ink.
After the war, she was named
Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur,
the highest honor of merit
for military and civil action.
These were just some of the heart-pounding stories
about these amazingly courageous women.
Maybe they'll make a movie about them one day,
and then maybe those actresses will be spies
and then they'll have a YouTube video about them.
Ah, one can dream.
♪ ♪