America's First Female Foreign Intelligence Agent
While they were in Tehran, Marguerite did not stay with Merian Cooper or Ernest Schoedsack. The men lodged with American vice consul Robert Imbrie and his wife, Katherine. Marguerite stayed with American financial adviser Thomas Pearson and his mother on the outskirts of the city. The arrangement is perplexing. She described the Pearsons as two …
The trek with the Bakhtiari lasted 46 days. Halfway through the trip, Marguerite became severely ill with malaria, forcing the tribe to pause its journey for several days until she could recover well enough to mount her mule. After crossing a river on a goatskin raft and climbing a rugged snow-covered mountain, Marguerite was relieved …
Continue reading "The Americans arrive in mysterious and dangerous Tehran"
The Bakhtiari men ruled harshly over the women, who did most of the work around the camp. While the men gossiped with their neighbors, the women milked the sheep and goats and prepared the meals. Cooper and Schoedsack joined the men, lounging around the tents. Marguerite didn’t work with the women, but she soon found herself busy …
Continue reading "Marguerite tends to ill Bakhtiari, amputating a finger, expelling a leech"
Merican Cooper, Ernest Schoedsack and Marguerite Harrison were thrilled with the prospect of reaching the Bakhtiari, but it was already mid-March, and they hadn’t much time because soon the tribe would be setting out on its journey. A British political officer found the Americans a car to take them to Shushtar, where the Bakhtiari princes were camped. There, they met a young …
Continue reading "Marguerite smokes opium while floating on a barge of goatskins"
British intelligence officers in Bagdad, including Gertrude Bell and Sir Arnold Wilson, advised Marguerite Harrison, Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack to try filming the Bakhtiari, the same tribe Harry Dwight had suggested a year earlier. The Bakhtiari, who lived west of the Zagros Mountains, each spring undertook an arduous journey in search of grass for …
Having no luck filming the Kurds in Turkey, Marguerite Harrison, Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack decided to press on to Persia. The new plan took them by train to Aleppo and then by car to Bagdad, where they arrived at the end of February. Marguerite was disappointed in her first view of the city, which …
Continue reading "On to Bagdad where Harrison meets Gertrude Bell"
At the time Marguerite Harrison, Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack set out to film Grass, Western nations had keen interest in the Middle East. Inspired by the writings of British adventurers, including spies T. E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell, tourism to the region thrived. In addition to the cultural fascination with the area, the American, …
Continue reading "Turmoil in Turkey thwarts plan to film Kurds"
Marguerite Harrison, Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack formed an unusual team as they set off on the Middle East mission worker under the cover of filmmakers. Marguerite, a former Baltimore socialite, knew nothing about film making. What she knew about movies was drawn mainly from her position on the Maryland movie censorship board, that her …
Continue reading "An unusual team sets off for a mission and a movie"
Marguerite’s version of how the movie began probably contains a kernel of truth because she acknowledged that before they left on the expedition, they received advice from U.S. State Department Near East expert Harrison G. Dwight, who had grown up in Persia and Turkey. She said he told them to try to film the Kurds …
Continue reading "Harrison’s expedition inspires a movie scene"
Marguerite Harrison, Merian Cooper, and Ernest Schoedsack kept the Middle East mission secret their entire lives. They wrote books and articles, and they gave lectures and interviews about the expedition. But they never revealed that while documenting the epic journey of a Persian tribe’s search for pasture, they were gathering intelligence for the U.S. Army. …
Continue reading "A mission and a mystery: Harrison in the Middle East"
