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OSS files are being opened…will we finally learn details about Nelson Eddy’s WWII spy work?

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At last – the many thousand of folks – many of them celebrities – that participated in spy work for the US government are finally to get their due.

On August 14, 2008, the National Archives made public all the secret OSS files.

We are waiting to see the entire list because it should have the name of Nelson Ackerman Eddy on it!

WASHINGTON — Famed chef Julia Child shared a secret with Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and Chicago White Sox catcher Moe Berg at a time when the Nazis threatened the world.

They served in an international spy ring managed by the Office of Strategic Services, an early version of the CIA created in World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt.

The full secret comes out Thursday, all of the names and previously classified files identifying nearly 24,000 spies who formed the first centralized intelligence effort by the United States. The National Archives, which this week released a list of the names found in the records, will make available for the first time all 750,000 pages identifying the vast spy network of military and civilian operatives.

They were soldiers, actors, historians, lawyers, athletes, professors, reporters. But for several years during World War II, they were known simply as the OSS. They studied military plans, created propaganda, infiltrated enemy ranks and stirred resistance among foreign troops.

Some of those on the list have been identified previously as having worked for the OSS, but their personnel records never have been available before. Those records would show why they were hired, jobs they were assigned to and perhaps even missions they pursued while working for the agency.

Among the more than 35,000 OSS personnel files are applications, commendations and handwritten notes identifying young recruits who, like Child, Goldberg and Berg, earned greater acclaim in other fields _ Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a historian and special assistant to President Kennedy; Sterling Hayden, a film and television actor whose work included a role in “The Godfather”; and Thomas Braden, an author whose “Eight Is Enough” book inspired the 1970s television series.

Other notables identified in the files include John Hemingway, son of author Ernest Hemingway; Quentin and Kermit Roosevelt, sons of President Theodore Roosevelt, and Miles Copeland, father of Stewart Copeland, drummer for the band The Police.

The release of the OSS personnel files uncloaks one of the last secrets from the short-lived wartime intelligence agency, which for the most part later was folded into the CIA after President Truman disbanded it in 1945.

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Charlie Ruggles profile – Jeanette and Nelson mentioned

If you enjoy actor Charlie Ruggles you will enjoy this interesting biography about him:

Whether appearing in an elegantly crafted Ernst Lubitsch film such as Trouble in Paradise (1932) or Rouben Mamoulian’s Love Me Tonight (1932) or Howard Hawks’ brilliant Bringing Up Baby (1938) or in a series of fourteen fitfully funny domestic comedies with Mary Boland (seen below at the right with Charlie), the actor delivered his neatly polished performances with a captivatingly casual air. His versatility as a supporting player lightened everything from a 1939 pastiche of a Russian musical in Balalaika with Nelson Eddy to an early ’60s sex farce with Sandra Dee, called I’d Rather Be Rich (1964)–all made more palatably entertaining by his honeyed voice and gentle presence. He was often asked to play put upon, hapless and occasionally beaten men, (a character that probably evoked a feeling of sympathy among struggling audiences in the ’30s). Yet there was invariably a remarkably consistent equanimity to his portrayals. Playing henpecked husbands, butlers, valets, rejected suitors, or occasionally lecherous fellows, he remained a man who hung onto his civilized identity–sometimes by a thread. Ruggles seemed to derive real pleasure from his portrayals of would-be lotharios the most; gently mocking the unprepossessing, not so rampant male of the species.

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Nelson Eddy remembered…still a Mountie!

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Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald may have made the Royal Canadian Mounties famous but the plaudits for the horsemen are fading away. The rigid standards that an aspiring recruit had to reach to become a Mountie once upon a time have long gone, sadly diminished by the many concessions made to meet recruitment goals.

In the writer’s opinion, this once elite force no longer ranks as such. Consider the shameful action of the Mounties at a major airport in 2007 when a poor, Polish immigrant, waiting in the International Arrival area for his mother, unable to speak English, confused and agitated after a long wait was tasered and jumped on by no less than 3-4 officers. He died.

And news reports about the recent atrocity that occured on a Greyhound Bus travelling in Western Canada indicates that a witness who sat next to the accused killer and was a friend of the victim, could only be later identifed by the Mounties as ” Stacey”.

And no, they didn’t know her name, address or where she was.

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Ft. Worth, Texas, August 16: Theater screening of Jeanette MacDonald in “The Love Parade”

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Still Moving: Classic Films from MoMA, Aug. 14–24 at Fort Worth’s Modern, draws upon the permanent collections of NYC’s Museum of Modern Art — a vital archive of more than 21,000 theatrical prints. MoMA established its film division in 1935 with a dedication to what MoMA founder Alfred Barr had called “the only great art form peculiar to the 20th century.”

In New York, MoMA’s Still Moving series is a weekly filmgoing attraction. The Fort Worth version will deploy 35-millimeter primary-source prints. The box-office tariff for each showing is $8.50 ($6.50 for members of the Modern).

The schedule follows:

• 7 p.m. Aug. 14: Frank Borzage’s Street Angel (1928) boasts an Oscar-winning performance from Janet Gaynor as a “good girl forced to go bad.?

• 6 p.m. Aug. 15: The Iron Mask, with Douglas Fairbanks, holds up stunningly well as an adaptation of Dumas? novel.

• 8 p.m. Aug. 15: John Wayne, at 23, stars in Raoul Walsh’s The Big Trail (1930), which will play in its original widescreen edition — a pioneering ancestor of Cinemascope, called the Grandeur process.

• 4 p.m. Aug. 16: Robert Flaherty’s Moana (1926) is a dramatized documentary filmed in Samoa.

• 5 p.m. Aug. 16: Ernst Lubitsch? The Love Parade (1932) provides a musical-screen début for Jeanette MacDonald.

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Auction for actress Ruth Roland’s diary includes Jeanette MacDonald, Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard’s Autographs

Interesting live auction – Jeanette MacDonald is one of the celebrities who wrote in actress silent film actress Ruth Roland’s diary. Roland, along with Pearl White, was the queen of early film serials. She pretty much retired in 1925 (apparently made only 3 films after that) and died in 1937. Here’s some information about her diary:

http://community.livejournal.com/carole_and_co

and the auction itself is here:

http://cgi.liveauctions.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=52933&item=260257431944

It’s a live Ebay auction that ends on Friday. No data as to whether Jeanette personalized her autograph. Bidding is at about $3000 as of today. It’ll be interesting to see what this diary brings!

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