Coward in ‘Stars & Spies’
GUEST POST: Dr Julius Green
There is a growing interest in Coward’s work as a ‘spy’ during the war. Following on from last month’s Object of the Month post “I’m A Spy”, we asked Dr Julius Green to tell us more about his new book which shows Coward was one of a long line of actor-spies…
“My new book, Stars and Spies (written with MI5’s official historian Professor Christopher Andrew) explores the historic links between espionage and show business. Intelligence agencies throughout history have engaged performers on secret missions. Entertainers regularly travel internationally, enjoying “access all areas” privileges which allow them to network with politicians and royalty. If they keep their ear to the ground, they can be in a good position to gather and report back vital information.
Medieval minstrels and Elizabethan strolling players were employed as intelligence gatherers and as couriers transporting secret documents. Nobody suspects that an attention-seeking performer is actually an undercover agent, and a court jester is well positioned to eavesdrop at the tables of the mighty.
Noël Coward’s was originally recruited to intelligence work in 1938 by Sir Robert Vansittart, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, as one of his network of unofficial agents - businessmen and celebrities who had legitimate reasons to travel to European cities gathering information about the Nazi threat. Vansittart, like Coward, was an opponent of appeasement, and was himself a published and performed playwright.
In August 1939, Coward joined the Secret Intelligence Service’s ‘D’ Section and was dispatched to Paris to set up a Bureau of Propaganda. At first enthusiastic about his new role, he became increasingly frustrated by the tedium of the work. Then, in April 1940, he was sent on a one-month trip to the U.S. On this expedition, Coward was twice invited to meet with President Roosevelt, and it became apparent that this was the country where his intelligence gathering and propagandist skills could be used to best effect, as an “agent of influence” in support of British efforts to persuade the Americans to join the war against Germany.
On returning to London, Coward met with the Canadian businessman William “Little Bill” Stephenson, and the two would meet again a few months later in New York, whence Stephenson had been sent to head up British intelligence operations in the US, and Coward had gone at the suggestion of Minister for Information Duff Cooper. To what extent Coward subsequently reported to Stephenson, as he later claimed to have done, remains open to question.
The Ministry of Information paid for his passage, and, according to Coward, the British Ambassador in Washington, Lord Lothian, “assured me that I could be of considerable service if I travelled about the United States and talked to key citizens, notably news editors and tycoons in various cities, about England and the British war effort.” Over the next five years Coward would travel throughout the U.S., South America, and the Middle East, purportedly on behalf of the US-based British War Relief Society.
In an interview which he gave shortly before his death in 1973, Coward notes that, “My celebrity value was wonderful cover. So many career intelligence officers went around looking terribly mysterious – long black boots and sinister smiles. Nobody ever issued me with a false beard… My disguise was my own reputation as a bit of an idiot…. I was never terribly good at wearing a jewel in my navel like Mata Hari…I was the perfect silly ass. Nobody in South America or among other neutrals considered I had a sensible thought in my head, and they would say all kinds of things I would pass along …” Coward was effectively adopting the role of the court jester, hidden in plain sight.
The Noël Coward archive contains copies of a number of typewritten reports documenting his meetings with leading American industrial and political figures. Although not dated or addressed, these are clearly intended to be read by the British authorities. Of transport tycoon Errett Cord he observes, “He has fought all his life for what he believed in, but I had a suspicion that he hadn’t believed in enough”. The verdict on Paul Smith, editor of the San Francisco Chronicle was, “If appealed to in the right way he would do anything in his power to help us, either specifically or generally.” Former President Herbert Hoover was less inspiring: “I am not very favourably impressed by Mr Hoover…he must have been the hell of a dull President.”
Coward’s intelligence gathering activities met with political and media opposition in the UK and came to the attention of the FBI, which opened a file on him. For all his commitment to playing the part of a spy, however, he never got to wear a jewel in his navel and his efforts fail to garner so much as a mention in the 300-page section on the Second World War in the official history of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). Coward’s most memorable role in British intelligence would come in the Cold War, as a star rather than a spy: the satirical portrayal of a fictional SIS officer in the 1959 film Our Man in Havana.
Barry Day’s masterfully edited The Letters of Noël Coward (Methuen Drama, 2008), is referenced in the relevant section of Stars and Spies.”
