![]() ![]() However, the film failed to appeal to audiences during the Roaring Twenties. Eight of the Union spies were ultimately hanged another eight escaped rebel custody and made it back to the North. "The General" was a mix of physical comedy and drama based upon Andrews' Raid, which took place in 1862 in Georgia and Tennessee. In real life, Bazna unsuccessfully sued postwar West Germany for his cash. In the movie, Diello laughed hysterically at this news. However, he then got a rude shock: his payments from the Germans had been made in counterfeit British pounds from the Nazis' counterfeiting operation, Operation Bernhard. When his Nazi contact's secretary (who could identify him as the spy) defected in early 1944, Cicero decided to take his money and quit. Meanwhile, the British were searching at the embassy for a spy, though they generally believed Bazna/Diello too stupid to be one. ![]() ![]() However, the Nazis didn't believe that his documents were real for months - until the Allies bombed Sofia, Bulgaria at the time and in the manner discussed in one of his documents - and even after that, the Germans generally failed to act on his information. During late 1943 and early 1944, the Nazis paid him £300,000, and he provided them with copies of just about every important British diplomatic document, which he photographed from the ambassador's safe. Gunton subsequently played a similarly duplicitous role in "The Shawshank Redemption."Ĭicero (portrayed by James Mason) was the valet to the British ambassador to Turkey, Sir Hughe Montgomery Knatchbull-Hugessen. The end monologue noted (correctly) that Lively was the leader of a company gang that murdered the local sheriff (a Hatfield) in broad daylight a couple of years later and that he was acquitted of the murder charges on the grounds of self-defense because townspeople, fearing for their lives, wouldn't testify against him. The plan almost worked, but its failure forced Lively to flee for his life. In the film, he progressed from trying to lead the unionl into illegal activities (so the company could arrest the leaders) to convincing an ignorant, needy girl from the hill country to give false evidence of rape against union organizer Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper). He rented space at the UMW meeting hall for his restaurant, so that he could keep up with all union activity. In real life (not mentioned in the film), Lively had been an undercover agent with the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency since 1912 or 1913. ![]() Set against the backdrop of the Hatfield-McCoy feud, this movie was loosely based on a real struggle (culminating in the Battle of Matewan in 1920) between pro-union and anti-union forces. Nevertheless, the idea of Mata Hari as an real-life Lady de Winter captured the public's imagination, and the movie was Garbo's biggest hit. The French army sealed its documents about the case for 100 years, until the year 2017, and perhaps some of the questions will be resolved then. In real life, Mata Hari was recruited by the French as a spy, but her "reveal" as a double agent in a decoded German message (sent in a code that the Germans weren't then using, as they knew the French had broken it) may have been an attempt by a real double agent - perhaps the French spy who had recruited her - to divert attention from himself. Although Mata Hari was the stage name of a real person (Margaretha Zelle) who was executed for espionage during WWI, the movie was almost entirely fictional, telling the story of a beautiful seductress who pretended to work for the French but who actually manipulated her lovers into providing vital secrets for her German masters before her capture. ![]()
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