OSS 1946 Spy Thiller
I enjoy watching espionage movies, spy flicks, or techno-thrillers. I am not sure if it originated when I first saw James Coburn in “In like Flint” or Ian Fleming’s 1960s James Bond movies at one of the downtown theaters in the town where I grew up. What an adventure: riding the bus up Market Street, watching the movie while grabbing a “Big Boy” double burger, window shopping in the Army surplus stores full of soldiers from nearby Fort Knox, and finally the bus ride forty blocks back to the west side of town. The spy movies became one of my favorite genres along with the military movies — sometimes one and the same.
The spy movie has been around since the invention of the motion picture and has sometimes been used as a government propaganda tool. As an example, The German Peril, described as “an inspired piece of propaganda,” was released in 1914 when Britain thought World War I could spill across the channel to the British Isles. In the 19 minute film, a “hero, barred from enlisting on health grounds, overhears German spies planning to blow up the Houses of Parliament, and vows to stop them.”
World War II brought longer movies to the screen. The US involvement saw more movies made in Hollywood, where many stars like Ronald Reagan found themselves in uniform making movies that would inspire a nation at war. Hollywood continued making WWII movies after the war, through the Cold War, and occasionally one still hits the silver screen today.
Recently, flipping through the cable channels I found the OSS, a 1946 release described in the New York Times review as “a superior spy story” and later by a reviewer (in 2011) as a “World War II patriotism picture.” The film’s story is centered on an OSS team codenamed “Applejack” assembled to go behind German lines in France. Unable to find a suitable female soldier to join the team, a Navy officer, played by Jack Knowles, approaches and recruits a young beautiful French-speaking sculptor, played by Geraldine Fitzgerald, to join the team.
The story pulls the romantic struggle between Fitzgerald’s character Ellen Rogers / Elaine Duprez and Allan Ladd’s character John Martin as they move around France avoiding capture to carry out the mission. Fitting the times, the idea of a female agent operating behind enemy lines shows the sexism that existed in the world at that time. Even though many of the operatives and OSS officers were, in fact, women.
The movie was made with the cooperation of OSS director General William “Wild Bill” Donovan and several OSS officers served as consultants. The movie follows the lines of war, love, and death that were popular at the time and can be seen in most of the WWII movies. The movie does little to show the story of US espionage at the time, however, because during and after World War II secrets were kept and not headline news.
Although the OSS was known to recruit from the Ivy League schools and had a Wall Street “old boy” feel, the movie ends trying to cast the American spy as the person next door. Ladd is asked if he would like to know where she was from and he laments, “No, she might have lived around the corner.”
If you like post-World War II period films, this is a good film to see. However, don’t expect for it to tell you the secrets of Donovan’s Inglorious Bastards!
Dave Mattingly is a writer and national security consultant. He retired from the U.S. Navy with over thirty years of service. He is a member of the Military Writers Guild.
