MI5 thought Odeon cinema was front for Russian spies
THE Odeon cinema chain came under suspicion of being a front for Russian agents, newly-released files reveal.
MI5 grew worried after it was discovered that Arnold Deutsch – who recruited the Cambridge spy ring – was the cousin of the millionaire owner of the cinema company, Oscar Deutsch.
The top secret Security Service file, dated 1940, notes that a number of suspected Russian spies gave the cinema chain owner as a reference when they came to Britain.
‘Now we find that a highly important Soviet agent is a cousin of Oscar Deutsch, and through Oscar Deutsch obtained permission to remain here,’ it adds.
Further memos – released by the National Archives at Kew, west London, today – reveal that the Odeon owner had sought permission to employ his cousin as an industrial psychologist on a salary of £250 a year.
He said that his cousin had made ‘an intensive study of psychology in relation to the cinema’ though the files reveals they had never met.
But the Home Office rejected the application on the grounds that there should be ‘no difficulty in obtaining a qualified British psychologist for this post and therefore it was not considered that the employment of the alien should be recommended’.
Civil servants also questioned what an industrial psychologist would do in a cinema. Arnold Deutsch, codename Otto, recruited Kim Philby, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess.
Variously described as Austrian, Czech or Hungarian, he was an academic who studied psychology at graduate level at the University of London, as his cover for espionage work.
Oscar Deutsch was born in Balsall Heath, Birmingham, the son of a Hungarian scrap metal merchant. He opened his first cinema in Brierley Hill, West Midlands, in 1928, and his chain grew rapidly, but he died from cancer in 1941 aged only 48.
Odeon publicists liked to claim that the name of the cinemas was derived from his motto, ‘Oscar Deutsch Entertains Our Nation’, but it had been used for cinemas in France and Italy in the 1920s. Another memo reveals that the Ministry of Information employed Oscar Deutsch to circulate a questionnaire to his managers – including suspected Soviet spies – asking how they felt about aliens and fifth columnists.
It adds: ‘I have for some times suspected Oscar Deutsch, not perhaps of himself carrying on Soviet military espionage activity, but deliberately obtaining permits for this country for persons who were with or without his knowledge engaged on that work.’
A report from 1940, addressed to a Mr Turner, states: ‘It might be interesting to find out whether [Oscar] Deutsch offered his services, or was approached by Ministry of Information. If he offered them I’ll [be] still more suspicious of him.’
‘Offered his services’