CELEBRITIES WHO SPIED

A magician, a chef and a children’s author all hid a secret.

Harry Houdini

THE MAGICIAN WHO SPIED HIS WAY TO STARDOM

At the start of his career in the late 19th century, Harry Houdini gained notoriety by waltzing into police stations and demanding officers lock him up. It was a great publicity stunt, making headlines and catching the eye of American and British intelligence

agencies. According to a 2006 biography, both Scotland Yard and the Secret Service used him to gather sensitive information for them during his tours across Europe and Russia.

In return for his services, the book says, Houdini asked for publicity. Scotland Yard superintendent William Melville helped him organise escape stunts in front of London theatre managers.

Julia Child

THE CHEF WITH A TASTE FOR DANGER AND ADVENTURE

Julia Child wasn’t always into French cooking. As she famously recounted in her autobiography, My Life in France, it wasn’t until she lived in Paris in her mid-30s that she learned what good food tasted like.

How did Child keep busy before that? By performing equally inventive work for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), precursor to the CIA. Child joined the spy outfit in 1942 after discovering that the Women’s Army Corps had a height limit; at 1.8 m, she was too tall to serve. One of Child’s first assignments was to help cook up a shark repellent to prevent underwater explosives used to target German U-boats from being set off by curious creatures. By all accounts, she excelled at her work. Child then went to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and then China, where she worked as chief of the OSS Registry, enjoying top security clearance and even a little danger. (The CIA remains mum about exactly what she did.)

Working at the OSS also turned out to be a recipe for love, with Julia falling for fellow officer Paul Child and marrying in 1946. Within two years, Paul was transferred to the US Information Agency in France, where Julia, who had quit her job, took up cooking to occupy her time. The rest, as they say, is culinary history.

Roald Dahl

THE LADIES’ MAN WHO FELL IN LOVE WITH WRITING

Long before he wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl was a fighter pilot for the Royal Air Force during World War II. But after sustaining injuries in a 1940 crash, he was transferred to a desk job at the British embassy in Washington. He charmed his way into high society and became so popular among DC ladies that British intelligence decided he should seduce powerful women and use them to promote Britain’s interests in the US.

It wasn’t all fun and games. Clare Boothe Luce, a member of the US House of Representatives married to Time magazine founder Henry Luce, was so frisky in the bedroom that Dahl begged to be let off the case. In the end, however, his work with the ladies paid off. Dahl not only rallied support for Britain at a time when many Americans didn’t want the country to enter the war, he also managed to pass valuable stolen documents to the British government. While penning propaganda in US papers, Dahl discovered something else: his own talent for writing.

She was so frisky in the bedroom that Dahl begged to be let off the case