The discussion about Anna Chapman, the alleged femme fatale of the Russian spy ring, shows that our spy narratives have changed very little in sixty years, especially for women. There always has to be a dead drop, a furtive exchange of bags in a subway station, and a femme fatale, preferably with red hair and a Russian accent. That’s how it works, even when it doesn’t.
In the 1940s and 1950s, the news media and the FBI insisted on shoving all the accused female Red spies into familiar roles from film noir, even when these roles were patently inappropriate. In 1948, some newspapers described KGB case officer Elizabeth Bentley, for example, as a “svelte young blonde” in a “form-fitting black dress” who had enticed naïve New Dealers into revealing their secrets. If she was attractive, see, then she must be telling the truth. To discredit her story, her critics called her a frumpy, middle-aged spinster and emphasized her preference for flowered dresses and funny hats. And, they pointed out many times, she wasn’t even a real blonde.
Judith Coplon, a Justice Department employee who passed some documents to the Russians in 1949, fit more neatly into the femme fatale role, though the papers couldn’t decide if lethal women were hot or frigid. Coplon was described by the New York World Telegram as “an attractive dark-haired girl with full lips and a shapely figure” encased in a “black form-fitting sweater” who whispered her not guilty plea “though lips brilliantly marked with lipstick.” Sometimes, according to the press, Coplon’s eyes “stared hotly” and “burned,” while at other times they spouted “cool hate” that “flowed out, like a black river jetting into the eyes of the prosecutors.” She was hysterical, just like a communist; no, she was expressionless, just like a communist. Then there was her “bosom,” which “heaved,” “quivered,” and, best of all, was inadequately obscured by her thin blouse.
Married women received the “black widow” treatment. The Hearst press ran an article headlined “Mrs. Rosenberg Was Like a Red Spider” which explained that Ethel, a “homely girl,” had early on “felt a need to dominate a man.” “There is a saying that in the animal kingdom, the female is the deadlier of the species,” the reporter continued. “It could be applied to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.” Alger Hiss’s wife, Priscilla, was similarly described as a hard-eyed femme fatale who manipulated her mousy husband into doing her ideological bidding.
These stereotypes weren’t confined to the press. FBI documents refer to Priscilla Hiss as “the bitch in the case” and Bentley as a slut (though definitely not a lying slut). Whenever Bentley stopped cooperating with her FBI handlers, they wrote memos about how difficult it was to deal with women in menopause.
However powerful, these narratives of man-eating temptresses and man-hating wives and spinsters often obscured the messier truth. Bentley was neither svelte nor spinsterish; but she was one of the most important Soviet spies ever in North America, and her defection was an unmitigated catastrophe for Soviet intelligence. The silly press coverage about her hair color made it easy to miss her significance. Ethel Rosenberg was merely an accessory to her husband’s crimes, but it was much easier for American officials to execute her if they believed that she dominated Julius. And that she was a menopausal, promiscuous spiderwoman with a heaving bosom.
12 comments
July 1, 2010 at 5:49 pm
Student
Going to read your blog post soon… But as soon as I saw that you had posted I wanted to say that I had been waiting anxiously for your take on the situation… Now off to read what you actually said… :)
July 1, 2010 at 5:50 pm
PM
Nice post, but shouldn’t you have mentioned Mata Hari?
July 1, 2010 at 6:36 pm
rea
I must confess I was somewhat nonplussed to find among my late mother’s papers a series of phtographs of her dancing with a gentleman not my father–skinny guy, somewhat receding hairline, glasses. They each had written on the back, “Klaus–Los Alamos–’44.” My mother, a medical technologist, had been on the suppot staff for the Manhattan Project during the war.
The guy in the picture looked a bit like this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Fuchs
July 1, 2010 at 6:37 pm
Vance
Or Aphra Behn? ;-) Actually I appreciated the avoidance of the obvious there — the stories of these women take place against a recognizable background, which is part of the point.
What’s novel, to me, is the disintermediation of the exotic-objectification here — Chapman’s Facebook pictures are a normal enough activity today, but are perfect grist for what turns out to be the same old scandal mill from the world of our grandparents.
July 1, 2010 at 6:38 pm
Vance
(my response, obviously enough, was to PM, not to rea’s awesome anecdote)
July 1, 2010 at 7:11 pm
kid bitzer
so it was really rea’s mother who manipulated klaus fuchs into doing her ideological bidding?
by using her full figure, shapely heaving, and bosomy lips?
this changes everything. i feel so sorry for klaus fuchs. he was clearly just another naive nude eeler.
July 1, 2010 at 7:32 pm
Matt
preferably with red hair and a Russian accent.
The funny thing is that red hair, or at least natural red hair, isn’t super common in Russia. Maybe a bit more than in the US, but not much. What is common in Russia is dye-jobs, including fire-engine red on old women, or at least it was when I lived there. But natural red isn’t a very common hair color there and not one that actual Russians would think of as typically Russia, I’m pretty sure.
July 2, 2010 at 12:40 am
ajay
…which is strange, given the derivation of the name “Russia”.
July 2, 2010 at 2:06 am
Ben Alpers
Or at least one folk-etymology of the word “Russia.”
The name “Russia” comes from the Rus’, a people who lived in what is today Ukraine, Belorus and a part of Russia during the 9th-12th centuries CE.
There are literally volumes written about the possible origins of the name “Rus’.” One of the theories involves hair-color. But it’s apparently a minority view, and the hair color in question is not red, but light brown.
More at the always unimpeachable Wikipedia.
July 2, 2010 at 10:58 am
dave
It’s more interesting to consider how far this “Anna Chapman” person may have been inspired by the legends of female wonder-spies, able to captivate mere men with their mysterious charms. Because the whole “ring” seem like dorks to me.
July 2, 2010 at 11:07 am
mario
I was surprised you couldn’t work in a reference to “bombshell” (as in blonde), which according to an undergraduate class I took had its origins in the atomic bomb testing in the 50s…:-)
July 4, 2010 at 9:47 pm
Bill
Bombshell was used as early as 1933 in a movie called… Bombshell with a blond leading actress. Nothing to do with Soviets or the cold war or atomic bomb testing. I suggest you go to your undergrad college and ask for your money back.