Toward the end of World War I, it seemed that every dark beauty in the movies was a spy for the Kaiser. Delight Evans, who was seventeen years old when she wrote this piece, runs through the dreary catalogue of clichés in a bit of free verse that’s anything but dreary.
These Lady-Spies!
Have you Seen them?
You Know—
These Curious Creatures
Who Go About
Making the World Unsafe
For Anything but Democracy.
They Act
As if they Started the War,
And their Own Particular Spying
Was Going to End it.
The War
Couldn’t Go On for the Minute
It it weren't for them.
In fact,
Just about the Whole Responsibility
For this Great Struggle
Seems to Rest on their Shoulders;
And goodness knows,
Some of these Brunnette Brunnhildes
Look Strong Enough to Bear it.
They’re Never Blonde—
Every Director Knows
They have to be Kept Dark.
Usually
The Lady-Spy
Has a Difficult French Name—
The Scenario-Writers see to it—
Prefaced always by “Madame”—
They Think it’s Safer.
Have They Ever Really Lived?
I don’t Know.
Their Press-Agents,
The Caption Writers,
Credit them with a Past.
One has Been
A Favorite in the Sultan’s Harem;
And we Understand Also
That Crown Prince Wilhelm
Thought a Whole Lot of her.
They are Always
Stepping In and Out of Motors,
And Meeting Bearded Men
In the Park.
They Lower Window Shades
All the Time—
Signalling
To the Spies Across the Street.
They Put the Papers
In a Safe Place—
For Instance, In Their Pockets,
Or Fastened in the Window Shade—
(No Wonder Wilhelm Sent ’Em!)
There are No Lengths
To Which they Won't Go.
Why, one Even
Laid her Hand on the Hero's Coat-sleeve—
(She Just had to Have those Papers.)
Usually
The Hero
Is an Intelligence Officer—
(He doesn't Look Intelligent.)
The Lady-Spy
Figures Largely
In Scenes showing
A Jeweled Hand
Pouring a Sleeping-Potion
Into a Wine Glass.
(On the Wilhelmstrasse
They Do It.)
She Lets him Come To
In her Own Boudoir; and
Lets Everybody in the Audience
Think There’s Going to Be
Something to Censor.
There Never Is.
She Can’t Spy
In Anything but a Spangled Gown.
For the Close-ups,
She Registers Cunning—
A Curious Kind of Cunning—
It’s Gotta be Different.
The Lady=Spy always
Has an Accomplice, who,
The Sub-titles Insinuate,
Is Part of her Past
Back in Berlin—
(But he Looks to Us
An Awful Lot like
Heinrich Lutz,
The Butcher Around the Corner.)
Spies have Pasts,
But Seldom Futures.
The Lady-Spy
Is Always Led Away
In the Last Scene—
(After the Detectives have Come
And Found the Papers,
And the Girl-who-Loved-the-Hero-All-the-Time
Twines her Arms
Around his Neck, and calls him
“My Hero”—
She Can Have him—)
Why, then the Lady-Spy
Passes Out,
And Throws Back her Head,
And Laughs at them in Passing.
I Don’t Blame her.
And so
She Sweeps out the Door, and
Off the Screen,
And Out of the Picture—
As you Knew all Along she Would—
And you Get Up
And Wander Out,
And thank heaven
We’re Winning this War.
And the Next Night,
You Forget,
And Go to Another Picture-Show,
And there’s the Same Spy,
And the Same Papers—
Just the Same Old Stuff—
And you Think
“To Hell with the Kaiser!”
——From Photoplay, January, 1919
