January 19, 2021 • 10 mins
Some people change their identity to hide, while others do it to stand out. Either way, the stories about it are curious.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosity is a production
of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world
is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an
open book, all of these amazing tales are right there
on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to
(00:26):
the Cabinet of Curiosities. What makes a great spy? In
the movies, it's someone sexy or suave, who can blend
in with a crowd or win a pile of money
at baccarat. It's the person who has no family waiting
at home and can dash off to Europe or the
(00:47):
Middle East as soon as their country calls them to duty.
In reality, spies aren't like the movies at all, and
throughout history they have come from the unlikeliest of places.
In his autobiography, Confessions of a Danger Risk Mind game
show host and creator Chuck Barris claimed to have been
an assassin for the CIA during the nineteen sixties and seventies.
(01:09):
Moburg was another unexpected spy. The third child of Bernard
and Roseberg, Moe grew up in Harlem in New York City.
Around nineteen o two, when he was almost four, he
started playing catch with the neighborhood policeman who would patrol
his block. Of course, he didn't want to spend all
his time playing with grown ups, so Berg asked his
mother if he could go to school with other children instead.
(01:31):
His family moved out of Harlem just across the river
to Newark, New Jersey. His father had bought a pharmacy there,
starting a new chapter of their lives. Berg did eventually
attend school, and he was a modest student, but his
passion was split between his studies and the sirens call
of baseball. From his time on his high school's nineteen
eighteen dream team to his championship winning years at Princeton,
(01:55):
Berg became an all star player. However, they weren't playing
baseball in the war, and Burg was more than just
a talented athlete. He also studied seven languages, including Greek, Sanskrit,
and German. His mind made him a valuable asset to
American intelligence agencies. He was tasked with gathering photos of
enemy territories for the US, after which he was stationed
(02:17):
in South America to keep an eye on how American
troops were faring there. With no clear threat coming from
that part of the World, Berg was moved once again,
this time to the Office of Strategic Services, which would
eventually evolve into the United States Central Intelligence Agency the CIA.
Berg helped plan paramilitary operations in Yugoslavia, as well as
(02:38):
the abduction of Italian rocket scientists on a mission known
as Project Larson. In fact, he spent much of his
middle years traveling the world, jumping out of planes and
persuading nuclear physicists to defect from their countries and build
bombs for the United States. Though despite his brilliant mind
and charming personality, this spy didn't get his start in
(03:00):
government work during World War One. He volunteered after the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in nineteen forty one, the
start of America's involvements in World War Two. So what
did the man in his forties who studied seven languages
do before the war? Why play baseball? Of course. Recent
college graduate mo Burgh signed up with the Brooklyn Robbins
(03:21):
in June of nineteen three, almost ten years before they
would change their name to the Brooklyn Dodgers. He played
one season with the Robbins, then moved to Paris, where
he attended over thirty classes at the Sorbonne. Along the way,
he developed a strict routine of reading ten newspapers a day,
from first page to last. Though he loved baseball, it
was not his main focus. He spent much of his
(03:42):
time touring Europe while his teammates began training for the
next season, and the Robins manager Wilbert Robinson took notice.
Burg wasn't much of a hitter anyway, so he was
moved to the Minneapolis Miller's, then to the Toledo mud Hens,
until finally the Chicago White Sox took him on as
a catcher in nineteen twenty six, and Berg refused to
give up the kind of life he'd grown accustomed to.
(04:04):
He told his new owners that he wouldn't start with
the team until May, as he had to finish his
first year of Columbia Law school. Ever, the overachiever, it seems,
they offered him a bigger paycheck the following year if
he would abandoned law school and attend spring training with
the rest of the team. Berg refused, punished for his
decision by spending much of the next season on the bench.
(04:25):
It wasn't until an August game against the Yankees when
he finally got his chance to shine as catcher. He
went up against the heaviest hitters of the time, including
Babe Ruth and Lou Garrig. His performance from that point
on helped him earn a spot as the White Sox
starting catcher. Unsurprisingly, as his sports career continued to trend upward,
his legal education suffered. He did not graduate with his
(04:48):
class in ninete, but he did pass the bar exam
in New York and earned his law degree the following year.
Berg continued to play ball until the late nineteen thirties,
ending his career with the Boston Red Side. He went
on radio game shows where he demonstrated his intelligence, and
he helped his country win World War Two. Sadly, Berg
didn't do much after the war. He lived with his
(05:10):
siblings and was asked to write a memoir about his
time as both and athletes and a spy. He declined.
Moburg died in a hospital bed in New Jersey in
nineteen seventy two. The nurse who had been attending him
recalled his last words as being, how did the Mets
do today? For those wondering they won? Just in case
(05:31):
you are curious, As we move up in the world,
it's important to remember where we came from, our roots,
the people who raised us and shaped our lives. For many,
(05:52):
those people might be our parents. For others, they could
be an uncle's grandparents or neighbors. For Archie Leech, all
he had to do was look down from the top
of his stilts. Archie was born in Bristol, England, in
nineteen o four. His father, Elias, worked at a clothing factory,
and his mother, Elsie, made ends meet as a seamstress.
(06:13):
He also had an older brother who had died of
tuberculosis before he was born. Archie had a rough childhood
growing up and avoided his father, who tended to drink
to excess. His domineering mother, on the other hand, pushed
him toward the arts. She sometimes took him to the movies,
where he'd stare up at the slapstick antics of Charlie
Chaplin or the death defying feats of Buster Keaton. He
(06:35):
cherished those moments a break from his otherwise melancholy life.
When he wasn't in school or at the cinema, Elsie
made him take piano lessons. She had been suffering from
clinical depression since the death of her first son, A
condition she'd never gotten treatment for, and so it festered
inside her, slowly destroying her relationship with Archie. Though deep
(06:56):
down she loved her son, she had trouble showing it.
Later in life. Archie believed her behavior stemmed from a
fear of losing him, as she had with her firstborn.
Mr Leach admitted Elsie to a mental facility when Archie
was just nine years old. He told his son that
his mother was away on what he called a long holiday,
one she would never come back from. Archie's already strained
(07:17):
relationship with his mother was destroyed by her sudden vacation,
and when it was reported that she had died, he
was unable to get the closure he desperately needed. It
wasn't until his father was on his deathbed years later
when he finally learned the truth Elsie was still alive.
As Archie got older, he returned to the one place
(07:38):
he felt safe, the arts, specifically the theater. By nineteen seventeen,
he was working in theaters all over Bristol as a
production assistant. Though he'd been a smart student, he had
gotten expelled from school for getting caught in the girl's bathroom.
Not to worry though Archie had a plan. He had
become friendly with the troop of acrobatic dancers known as
(07:58):
the Penders thanks to his time working in theater. He
had no intention of continuing his education. Instead, he wanted
to be a performer, and Bob Pender was only too
happy to oblige. So Archie's father, Elias, worked out a
deal with Mr. Pender, who would take Archie under his
wing and train him as a stilt walker. He teach
him how to dance, provide room and board while on tour,
(08:20):
and pay him for his performances. By nineteen twenty, Archie
and the Penders had made the jump from small English
playhouses to the New York Hippodrome. The venue could hold
almost six thousand people who filled the seats twelve times
a week for nearly a year to watch Archie and
the Pender's leap and dance across the stage. That was
the young leeches introduction to the world of vaudeville. For
(08:43):
the next several years, he toured with different groups in
places like St. Louis and Cleveland. It wasn't long before
he was starting in major Broadway productions and getting noticed too.
The next logical step for the up and coming actor
was a jump from the stage to the screen. He
did a screen test for Paramount, which led to a
studio contract pain four hundred and fifty dollars a week.
(09:06):
There was just one problem. His name, Archibald Leach, wasn't
going to draw people to the movies. Paramount manager B. P.
Schulberg told him to change it to something more all American,
and so Archie, borrowing a page from Gary Cooper, came
up with the perfect name, one that would grace the
pages of magazines and newspapers for years to come. The
(09:26):
star of Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday would
no longer go by Archie Leech from Bristol. He would
be forever immortalized as Carrie Grant. I hope you've enjoyed
today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for
free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show
by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created
(09:51):
by me Aaron Manky in partnership with How Stuff Works.
I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
a podcast, book series, end television show, and you can
learn all about it over at the World of Lore.
Dot com and until next time, stay curious yeah h
Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosity is a production
of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world
is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an
open book, all of these amazing tales are right there
on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to
(00:26):
the Cabinet of Curiosities. What makes a great spy? In
the movies, it's someone sexy or suave, who can blend
in with a crowd or win a pile of money
at baccarat. It's the person who has no family waiting
at home and can dash off to Europe or the
(00:47):
Middle East as soon as their country calls them to duty.
In reality, spies aren't like the movies at all, and
throughout history they have come from the unlikeliest of places.
In his autobiography, Confessions of a Danger Risk Mind game
show host and creator Chuck Barris claimed to have been
an assassin for the CIA during the nineteen sixties and seventies.
(01:09):
Moburg was another unexpected spy. The third child of Bernard
and Roseberg, Moe grew up in Harlem in New York City.
Around nineteen o two, when he was almost four, he
started playing catch with the neighborhood policeman who would patrol
his block. Of course, he didn't want to spend all
his time playing with grown ups, so Berg asked his
mother if he could go to school with other children instead.
(01:31):
His family moved out of Harlem just across the river
to Newark, New Jersey. His father had bought a pharmacy there,
starting a new chapter of their lives. Berg did eventually
attend school, and he was a modest student, but his
passion was split between his studies and the sirens call
of baseball. From his time on his high school's nineteen
eighteen dream team to his championship winning years at Princeton,
(01:55):
Berg became an all star player. However, they weren't playing
baseball in the war, and Burg was more than just
a talented athlete. He also studied seven languages, including Greek, Sanskrit,
and German. His mind made him a valuable asset to
American intelligence agencies. He was tasked with gathering photos of
enemy territories for the US, after which he was stationed
(02:17):
in South America to keep an eye on how American
troops were faring there. With no clear threat coming from
that part of the World, Berg was moved once again,
this time to the Office of Strategic Services, which would
eventually evolve into the United States Central Intelligence Agency the CIA.
Berg helped plan paramilitary operations in Yugoslavia, as well as
(02:38):
the abduction of Italian rocket scientists on a mission known
as Project Larson. In fact, he spent much of his
middle years traveling the world, jumping out of planes and
persuading nuclear physicists to defect from their countries and build
bombs for the United States. Though despite his brilliant mind
and charming personality, this spy didn't get his start in
(03:00):
government work during World War One. He volunteered after the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in nineteen forty one, the
start of America's involvements in World War Two. So what
did the man in his forties who studied seven languages
do before the war? Why play baseball? Of course. Recent
college graduate mo Burgh signed up with the Brooklyn Robbins
(03:21):
in June of nineteen three, almost ten years before they
would change their name to the Brooklyn Dodgers. He played
one season with the Robbins, then moved to Paris, where
he attended over thirty classes at the Sorbonne. Along the way,
he developed a strict routine of reading ten newspapers a day,
from first page to last. Though he loved baseball, it
was not his main focus. He spent much of his
(03:42):
time touring Europe while his teammates began training for the
next season, and the Robins manager Wilbert Robinson took notice.
Burg wasn't much of a hitter anyway, so he was
moved to the Minneapolis Miller's, then to the Toledo mud Hens,
until finally the Chicago White Sox took him on as
a catcher in nineteen twenty six, and Berg refused to
give up the kind of life he'd grown accustomed to.
(04:04):
He told his new owners that he wouldn't start with
the team until May, as he had to finish his
first year of Columbia Law school. Ever, the overachiever, it seems,
they offered him a bigger paycheck the following year if
he would abandoned law school and attend spring training with
the rest of the team. Berg refused, punished for his
decision by spending much of the next season on the bench.
(04:25):
It wasn't until an August game against the Yankees when
he finally got his chance to shine as catcher. He
went up against the heaviest hitters of the time, including
Babe Ruth and Lou Garrig. His performance from that point
on helped him earn a spot as the White Sox
starting catcher. Unsurprisingly, as his sports career continued to trend upward,
his legal education suffered. He did not graduate with his
(04:48):
class in ninete, but he did pass the bar exam
in New York and earned his law degree the following year.
Berg continued to play ball until the late nineteen thirties,
ending his career with the Boston Red Side. He went
on radio game shows where he demonstrated his intelligence, and
he helped his country win World War Two. Sadly, Berg
didn't do much after the war. He lived with his
(05:10):
siblings and was asked to write a memoir about his
time as both and athletes and a spy. He declined.
Moburg died in a hospital bed in New Jersey in
nineteen seventy two. The nurse who had been attending him
recalled his last words as being, how did the Mets
do today? For those wondering they won? Just in case
(05:31):
you are curious, As we move up in the world,
it's important to remember where we came from, our roots,
the people who raised us and shaped our lives. For many,
(05:52):
those people might be our parents. For others, they could
be an uncle's grandparents or neighbors. For Archie Leech, all
he had to do was look down from the top
of his stilts. Archie was born in Bristol, England, in
nineteen o four. His father, Elias, worked at a clothing factory,
and his mother, Elsie, made ends meet as a seamstress.
(06:13):
He also had an older brother who had died of
tuberculosis before he was born. Archie had a rough childhood
growing up and avoided his father, who tended to drink
to excess. His domineering mother, on the other hand, pushed
him toward the arts. She sometimes took him to the movies,
where he'd stare up at the slapstick antics of Charlie
Chaplin or the death defying feats of Buster Keaton. He
(06:35):
cherished those moments a break from his otherwise melancholy life.
When he wasn't in school or at the cinema, Elsie
made him take piano lessons. She had been suffering from
clinical depression since the death of her first son, A
condition she'd never gotten treatment for, and so it festered
inside her, slowly destroying her relationship with Archie. Though deep
(06:56):
down she loved her son, she had trouble showing it.
Later in life. Archie believed her behavior stemmed from a
fear of losing him, as she had with her firstborn.
Mr Leach admitted Elsie to a mental facility when Archie
was just nine years old. He told his son that
his mother was away on what he called a long holiday,
one she would never come back from. Archie's already strained
(07:17):
relationship with his mother was destroyed by her sudden vacation,
and when it was reported that she had died, he
was unable to get the closure he desperately needed. It
wasn't until his father was on his deathbed years later
when he finally learned the truth Elsie was still alive.
As Archie got older, he returned to the one place
(07:38):
he felt safe, the arts, specifically the theater. By nineteen seventeen,
he was working in theaters all over Bristol as a
production assistant. Though he'd been a smart student, he had
gotten expelled from school for getting caught in the girl's bathroom.
Not to worry though Archie had a plan. He had
become friendly with the troop of acrobatic dancers known as
(07:58):
the Penders thanks to his time working in theater. He
had no intention of continuing his education. Instead, he wanted
to be a performer, and Bob Pender was only too
happy to oblige. So Archie's father, Elias, worked out a
deal with Mr. Pender, who would take Archie under his
wing and train him as a stilt walker. He teach
him how to dance, provide room and board while on tour,
(08:20):
and pay him for his performances. By nineteen twenty, Archie
and the Penders had made the jump from small English
playhouses to the New York Hippodrome. The venue could hold
almost six thousand people who filled the seats twelve times
a week for nearly a year to watch Archie and
the Pender's leap and dance across the stage. That was
the young leeches introduction to the world of vaudeville. For
(08:43):
the next several years, he toured with different groups in
places like St. Louis and Cleveland. It wasn't long before
he was starting in major Broadway productions and getting noticed too.
The next logical step for the up and coming actor
was a jump from the stage to the screen. He
did a screen test for Paramount, which led to a
studio contract pain four hundred and fifty dollars a week.
(09:06):
There was just one problem. His name, Archibald Leach, wasn't
going to draw people to the movies. Paramount manager B. P.
Schulberg told him to change it to something more all American,
and so Archie, borrowing a page from Gary Cooper, came
up with the perfect name, one that would grace the
pages of magazines and newspapers for years to come. The
(09:26):
star of Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday would
no longer go by Archie Leech from Bristol. He would
be forever immortalized as Carrie Grant. I hope you've enjoyed
today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for
free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show
by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created
(09:51):
by me Aaron Manky in partnership with How Stuff Works.
I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
a podcast, book series, end television show, and you can
learn all about it over at the World of Lore.
Dot com and until next time, stay curious yeah h
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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