‘I was a Hollywood agent’: Cinematic representations of the office of strategic services in 1946

Abstract

In 1946, not long after the Office of Strategic Services was dissolved, three Hollywood feature films were released that dramatized the agency's operations during World WarII: O.S.S. (ParamountPictures, 13 Rue Madeleine (Twentieth Century‐Fox), and Cloak and Dagger (Warner Bros. Pictures). Although officials in the War Depatment wre often disturbed by many of the technical details that these, three films revealed bout the military, the intelligence establishment generally benefited from the largely positive publicity and box‐office success that these films received in the early years of the Cold War.