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Florida State University Libraries 2017 Setting Hollywood Ablaze: Remembering and Depicting Women Spies in Popular Media Haley McGuyre Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] McGuyre THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES SETTING HOLLYWOOD ABLAZE: REMEMBERING AND DEPICTING WOMEN SPIES IN POPULAR MEDIA By HALEY McGUYRE A Thesis submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with Honors in the Major Degree Awarded: Spring, 2017 McGuyre The members of the Defense Committee approve the thesis of Haley McGuyre defended on April 24, 2017. Dr. G. Kun Piehler Thesis Director dec Outside Committee Member Dr. Charles Upchurch Committee Member McGuyre Acknowledgements This project began with a small idea brought hesitantly to several professors, all of whom very enthusiastically took me on. My research plans were early in their formation, and changed shape during the first few months of the process. My committee gave guidance and offered support in a variety of different ways. When this thesis was pushed a semester longer, they were very cooperative and understanding, as they were during the entire process. For all of this and more, I must first thank Dr. Kurt Piehler, Dr. Whitney Bendeck, and Dr. Charles Upchurch. I gained a fair amount of guidance through their research alone, and their personal advice provided the rest needed to finish this project. They gave me plenty of space to work at my own pace and their patience followed through, for which I am especially grateful. I also need to thank the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program for giving me the experience and confidence to take on an Honors Thesis. Melissa Hughes therefore also needs thanking, for taking me on as her research assistant. Without this experience, I would not have felt comfortable attempting my own research, nor would I have known where to start. Additionally, Hughes’s assistance in helping me network with other professors provided invaluable resources throughout this process. Part of the research required me to visit the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University, an opportunity I am still honored to have been given. The volunteers at the library answered any questions I had and eagerly helped me track down the sources I needed. Thanks also to Jennifer Doody, who gave me a place to stay for the duration of the trip. Without her voluntary help, this project would have been impossible. To the coworkers who picked up shifts, to the managers who scheduled me around my own McGuyre timetable, thank you. Juggling work and school is always hard, and doubly so when writing a thesis. Thanks to the countless friends, particularly Ashley Pate, who proofread my paper and gave constructive feedback, making my research and this thesis infinitely better. Thanks to my amazing support group, especially my sisters Megan and Emaleth, for making me laugh when I needed it most and reminding me to take a break. Last but certainly not least, I need to thank my parents. They gave me the tremendous opportunity to go to college and supported me through all four years in more ways than one. I missed multiple holidays and special events in order to complete my degree and this thesis, and they cooperated each step of the way. For the late-night phone calls, impromptu trips, care packages, intellectual guidance, emotional support, and so much more, thank you. Thank you for believing in me and putting in the time and effort to get me where I am going. I am forever grateful to you for encouraging me to follow my passions. McGuyre Abstract This project will inspect the history of remembrance of female allied spies during the Second World War through media. Here, spying refers both to intelligence gathering, espionage, and sabotage. Comparing movies such as Charlotte Gray (2001), Carve Her Name with Pride (1958) Casino Royale (2006), and Les Femmes de l’Ombre (2008) with the lives of real female spies such as Noor Inayat Khan, Gertrude Sanford-Legendre, Katherine Keene, and Violette Szabo, this paper will explore the discrepancies between images and realities, focusing on the tropes of the Madonna and the Whore. Due to the lack of coverage spies in general receive in the historiography of World War II, many people outside of academia become exposed to spies via Hollywood. Here, I will discuss how this type of exposure changes how we as a society think of espionage both in the past and the present. Depictions of other eras of espionage will also receive some discussion, in order to better understand the effects of popular media covering female espionage during World War II. McGuyre Table of Contents Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One: A Brief History .............................................................................................................. 10 Chapter Two: Early Representations .................................................................................................. 39 Chapter Three: Cold War Images ………………………………………………………………………………………………………54 Chapter Four: Modern Media …………………………………………………………………………………………………………..71 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….94 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…………………………100 McGuyre Introduction Popular images of female espionage from the Second World War consistently draw on sexual tropes, chiefly the Madonna-Whore dichotomy, from which the femme fatale arises. These depictions reduce the grueling work of espionage to a roll in the sheets and red lipstick. The true history of spies shows a spectrum of experiences, from the glamorous, as shown in popular media, to the extremely banal. Regardless of the level of drama found in their stories, the women involved played pivotal roles in winning the war. This thesis argues that, in mischaracterizing and restricting female spies to roles of Madonna and Whore, popular media delegitimizes their work and reduces their motives to maternalistic tendencies or overzealous desires to emasculate and castrate men everywhere. This misrepresentation of women in intelligence stems not from a lack of real life examples, but rather from the historiography and its unsatisfactory coverage of women in the field, combined with longstanding hegemonic perceptions of gender and power. The Second World War acted as a catalyst for women’s entrance into the military, and especially into the intelligence community. Intelligence and counterespionage played significant roles in the Allied victory, without which major campaigns of war would have been lost. Despite its critical nature to the history of World War II, intelligence – and by extension, women’s intelligence – only recently began to gain its own field of study within academia. To support the arguments made by this paper, and to compensate for the lacking historiography, the research for this thesis addresses five different fields of study. The first portion of research, focusing on the history of the war overall, investigated how monographs on World War II covered the intelligence community and its effectiveness in the war. 1 McGuyre When discussed at all, efforts of espionage come up in a cursory manner and usually receive mere mention as part of larger operations. This exclusion of intelligence work undermines the necessity of the field in major points on the war, including Operation Barbarossa, the Battle of Midway, French Resistance, bombings of factories critical for military supplies, and Operation Overlord. Within the general historiography of World War II, the organizations of the Office of Strategic Services, Special Operations Executive, and British Military Intelligence Section 5 (MI5) receive portrayal as inefficient, bureaucratic, and territorial which culminates in an inability to cooperate with other units of intelligence. Lacking a basic understanding of how integral a role these organizations played results in less appreciation for the efforts of women within the field. Gender theory and women’s efforts in war outside of espionage marks the second portion of research. Many of these materials, originating from the early stages of the second wave of feminism, focused on the efforts of women on the Homefront. There they worked twelve-hour shifts in factories and then came home to care for the children and anyone else left behind in the war. Sources from this period covering women’s wartime involvement often approached the topic either as a part of the maternalistic politics of the early 20th century or as a method of self-liberation for women. These works provide context for how women’s wartime work is often perceived, and act as a comparative model for women in the military and espionage fields. Additionally, this section investigates the theory behind these narratives and how they shape public understanding of women’s wartime experiences. Works within this category also look at gender theory as an overall method of investigating history and provide models with which to investigate popular images of female spies more thoroughly. The abstract concepts presented here allow for a more intellectual critique of how military women receive representation, or lack thereof, within popular media. 2 McGuyre The third body of research for the paper is dedicated to intelligence history, in order to see if female spies received significant acknowledgement
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