Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosity is a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world
Speaker 1: is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an
Speaker 1: open book, all of these amazing tales are right there
Speaker 1: on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities. What makes a great spy? In
Speaker 1: the movies, it's someone sexy or suave, who can blend
Speaker 1: in with a crowd or win a pile of money
Speaker 1: at baccarat. It's the person who has no family waiting
Speaker 1: at home and can dash off to Europe or the
Speaker 1: Middle East as soon as their country calls them to duty.
Speaker 1: In reality, spies aren't like the movies at all, and
Speaker 1: throughout history they have come from the unlikeliest of places.
Speaker 1: In his autobiography, Confessions of a Danger Risk Mind game
Speaker 1: show host and creator Chuck Barris claimed to have been
Speaker 1: an assassin for the CIA during the nineteen sixties and seventies.
Speaker 1: Moburg was another unexpected spy. The third child of Bernard
Speaker 1: and Roseberg, Moe grew up in Harlem in New York City.
Speaker 1: Around nineteen o two, when he was almost four, he
Speaker 1: started playing catch with the neighborhood policeman who would patrol
Speaker 1: his block. Of course, he didn't want to spend all
Speaker 1: his time playing with grown ups, so Berg asked his
Speaker 1: mother if he could go to school with other children instead.
Speaker 1: His family moved out of Harlem just across the river
Speaker 1: to Newark, New Jersey. His father had bought a pharmacy there,
Speaker 1: starting a new chapter of their lives. Berg did eventually
Speaker 1: attend school, and he was a modest student, but his
Speaker 1: passion was split between his studies and the sirens call
Speaker 1: of baseball. From his time on his high school's nineteen
Speaker 1: eighteen dream team to his championship winning years at Princeton,
Speaker 1: Berg became an all star player. However, they weren't playing
Speaker 1: baseball in the war, and Burg was more than just
Speaker 1: a talented athlete. He also studied seven languages, including Greek, Sanskrit,
Speaker 1: and German. His mind made him a valuable asset to
Speaker 1: American intelligence agencies. He was tasked with gathering photos of
Speaker 1: enemy territories for the US, after which he was stationed
Speaker 1: in South America to keep an eye on how American
Speaker 1: troops were faring there. With no clear threat coming from
Speaker 1: that part of the World, Berg was moved once again,
Speaker 1: this time to the Office of Strategic Services, which would
Speaker 1: eventually evolve into the United States Central Intelligence Agency the CIA.
Speaker 1: Berg helped plan paramilitary operations in Yugoslavia, as well as
Speaker 1: the abduction of Italian rocket scientists on a mission known
Speaker 1: as Project Larson. In fact, he spent much of his
Speaker 1: middle years traveling the world, jumping out of planes and
Speaker 1: persuading nuclear physicists to defect from their countries and build
Speaker 1: bombs for the United States. Though despite his brilliant mind
Speaker 1: and charming personality, this spy didn't get his start in
Speaker 1: government work during World War One. He volunteered after the
Speaker 1: Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in nineteen forty one, the
Speaker 1: start of America's involvements in World War Two. So what
Speaker 1: did the man in his forties who studied seven languages
Speaker 1: do before the war? Why play baseball? Of course. Recent
Speaker 1: college graduate mo Burgh signed up with the Brooklyn Robbins
Speaker 1: in June of nineteen three, almost ten years before they
Speaker 1: would change their name to the Brooklyn Dodgers. He played
Speaker 1: one season with the Robbins, then moved to Paris, where
Speaker 1: he attended over thirty classes at the Sorbonne. Along the way,
Speaker 1: he developed a strict routine of reading ten newspapers a day,
Speaker 1: from first page to last. Though he loved baseball, it
Speaker 1: was not his main focus. He spent much of his
Speaker 1: time touring Europe while his teammates began training for the
Speaker 1: next season, and the Robins manager Wilbert Robinson took notice.
Speaker 1: Burg wasn't much of a hitter anyway, so he was
Speaker 1: moved to the Minneapolis Miller's, then to the Toledo mud Hens,
Speaker 1: until finally the Chicago White Sox took him on as
Speaker 1: a catcher in nineteen twenty six, and Berg refused to
Speaker 1: give up the kind of life he'd grown accustomed to.
Speaker 1: He told his new owners that he wouldn't start with
Speaker 1: the team until May, as he had to finish his
Speaker 1: first year of Columbia Law school. Ever, the overachiever, it seems,
Speaker 1: they offered him a bigger paycheck the following year if
Speaker 1: he would abandoned law school and attend spring training with
Speaker 1: the rest of the team. Berg refused, punished for his
Speaker 1: decision by spending much of the next season on the bench.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until an August game against the Yankees when
Speaker 1: he finally got his chance to shine as catcher. He
Speaker 1: went up against the heaviest hitters of the time, including
Speaker 1: Babe Ruth and Lou Garrig. His performance from that point
Speaker 1: on helped him earn a spot as the White Sox
Speaker 1: starting catcher. Unsurprisingly, as his sports career continued to trend upward,
Speaker 1: his legal education suffered. He did not graduate with his
Speaker 1: class in ninete, but he did pass the bar exam
Speaker 1: in New York and earned his law degree the following year.
Speaker 1: Berg continued to play ball until the late nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: ending his career with the Boston Red Side. He went
Speaker 1: on radio game shows where he demonstrated his intelligence, and
Speaker 1: he helped his country win World War Two. Sadly, Berg
Speaker 1: didn't do much after the war. He lived with his
Speaker 1: siblings and was asked to write a memoir about his
Speaker 1: time as both and athletes and a spy. He declined.
Speaker 1: Moburg died in a hospital bed in New Jersey in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two. The nurse who had been attending him
Speaker 1: recalled his last words as being, how did the Mets
Speaker 1: do today? For those wondering they won? Just in case
Speaker 1: you are curious, As we move up in the world,
Speaker 1: it's important to remember where we came from, our roots,
Speaker 1: the people who raised us and shaped our lives. For many,
Speaker 1: those people might be our parents. For others, they could
Speaker 1: be an uncle's grandparents or neighbors. For Archie Leech, all
Speaker 1: he had to do was look down from the top
Speaker 1: of his stilts. Archie was born in Bristol, England, in
Speaker 1: nineteen o four. His father, Elias, worked at a clothing factory,
Speaker 1: and his mother, Elsie, made ends meet as a seamstress.
Speaker 1: He also had an older brother who had died of
Speaker 1: tuberculosis before he was born. Archie had a rough childhood
Speaker 1: growing up and avoided his father, who tended to drink
Speaker 1: to excess. His domineering mother, on the other hand, pushed
Speaker 1: him toward the arts. She sometimes took him to the movies,
Speaker 1: where he'd stare up at the slapstick antics of Charlie
Speaker 1: Chaplin or the death defying feats of Buster Keaton. He
Speaker 1: cherished those moments a break from his otherwise melancholy life.
Speaker 1: When he wasn't in school or at the cinema, Elsie
Speaker 1: made him take piano lessons. She had been suffering from
Speaker 1: clinical depression since the death of her first son, A
Speaker 1: condition she'd never gotten treatment for, and so it festered
Speaker 1: inside her, slowly destroying her relationship with Archie. Though deep
Speaker 1: down she loved her son, she had trouble showing it.
Speaker 1: Later in life. Archie believed her behavior stemmed from a
Speaker 1: fear of losing him, as she had with her firstborn.
Speaker 1: Mr Leach admitted Elsie to a mental facility when Archie
Speaker 1: was just nine years old. He told his son that
Speaker 1: his mother was away on what he called a long holiday,
Speaker 1: one she would never come back from. Archie's already strained
Speaker 1: relationship with his mother was destroyed by her sudden vacation,
Speaker 1: and when it was reported that she had died, he
Speaker 1: was unable to get the closure he desperately needed. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until his father was on his deathbed years later
Speaker 1: when he finally learned the truth Elsie was still alive.
Speaker 1: As Archie got older, he returned to the one place
Speaker 1: he felt safe, the arts, specifically the theater. By nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: he was working in theaters all over Bristol as a
Speaker 1: production assistant. Though he'd been a smart student, he had
Speaker 1: gotten expelled from school for getting caught in the girl's bathroom.
Speaker 1: Not to worry though Archie had a plan. He had
Speaker 1: become friendly with the troop of acrobatic dancers known as
Speaker 1: the Penders thanks to his time working in theater. He
Speaker 1: had no intention of continuing his education. Instead, he wanted
Speaker 1: to be a performer, and Bob Pender was only too
Speaker 1: happy to oblige. So Archie's father, Elias, worked out a
Speaker 1: deal with Mr. Pender, who would take Archie under his
Speaker 1: wing and train him as a stilt walker. He teach
Speaker 1: him how to dance, provide room and board while on tour,
Speaker 1: and pay him for his performances. By nineteen twenty, Archie
Speaker 1: and the Penders had made the jump from small English
Speaker 1: playhouses to the New York Hippodrome. The venue could hold
Speaker 1: almost six thousand people who filled the seats twelve times
Speaker 1: a week for nearly a year to watch Archie and
Speaker 1: the Pender's leap and dance across the stage. That was
Speaker 1: the young leeches introduction to the world of vaudeville. For
Speaker 1: the next several years, he toured with different groups in
Speaker 1: places like St. Louis and Cleveland. It wasn't long before
Speaker 1: he was starting in major Broadway productions and getting noticed too.
Speaker 1: The next logical step for the up and coming actor
Speaker 1: was a jump from the stage to the screen. He
Speaker 1: did a screen test for Paramount, which led to a
Speaker 1: studio contract pain four hundred and fifty dollars a week.
Speaker 1: There was just one problem. His name, Archibald Leach, wasn't
Speaker 1: going to draw people to the movies. Paramount manager B. P.
Speaker 1: Schulberg told him to change it to something more all American,
Speaker 1: and so Archie, borrowing a page from Gary Cooper, came
Speaker 1: up with the perfect name, one that would grace the
Speaker 1: pages of magazines and newspapers for years to come. The
Speaker 1: star of Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday would
Speaker 1: no longer go by Archie Leech from Bristol. He would
Speaker 1: be forever immortalized as Carrie Grant. I hope you've enjoyed
Speaker 1: today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for
Speaker 1: free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show
Speaker 1: by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created
Speaker 1: by me Aaron Manky in partnership with How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, end television show, and you can
Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the World of Lore.
Speaker 1: Dot com and until next time, stay curious yeah h