1. Marguerite Elton Harrison Blake was an American socialite who became a reporter and author, spy, filmmaker and translator.
22 Facts About Marguerite Harrison
1. 2.
However, Marguerite Harrison flouted some conventions of the time, which caused her mother to send her on a chaperoned trip to Italy after that Radcliffe semester.
3.
Marguerite Harrison survived two husbands, and was survived by a son and grandchildren.
4.
In 1905, Marguerite Harrison spearheaded an effort to open a school for indigent convalescent children.
5.
Marguerite Harrison used her many connections to procure donations and offered a large stone house her father owned in Catonsville.
6.
Marguerite Harrison concocted many schemes to raise funds for the school, including a charity baseball game and a circus performed by prominent society members.
7.
In 1911, Marguerite Harrison was named to the board of directors of the Women's Civic League of Baltimore, which advocated for safer and cleaner streets and schools.
8.
In 1915, Marguerite Harrison's husband died of a brain tumor, leaving her and their 13-year-old son.
9.
In 1918, with the US still involved in World War I and Europe virtually one large battlefield, Marguerite Harrison wished to report on the conditions in Germany.
10.
On her application, Marguerite Harrison described herself as five feet six inches tall, weighing 125 pounds without physical defects and with no use of stimulants, tobacco or drugs.
11.
The November 11,1918 armistice was declared before she was officially hired, but Marguerite Harrison was sent to Europe with a new assignment to report on political and economic matters at the forthcoming peace conference.
12.
Marguerite Harrison later spied for the United States in the Soviet Union and Japan.
13.
Marguerite Harrison arrived in the Soviet Union in 1920 as an Associated Press correspondent and assessed Bolshevik economic strengths and weakness and assisted American political prisoners.
14.
Marguerite Harrison was detained in the infamous Russian prison Lubyanka for 10 months, where she contracted tuberculosis.
15.
Marguerite Harrison was arrested again in 1923 in China and was taken to Moscow, but was released before her trial after she was recognized by an American aid worker.
16.
Marguerite Harrison expressed her views of the Soviet Union and China as world forces in her book Red Bear or Yellow Dragon.
17.
Marguerite Harrison was an important member and sponsor of the production team responsible for the classic ethnographic film Grass.
18.
Marguerite Harrison appears as herself in her role as a reporter in the film.
19.
Cooper's co-producer Ernest B Schoedsack opined years later that Harrison had not done "a damn thing" during the expedition.
20.
Marguerite Harrison met and married former actor Arthur Blake in 1926 and traveled extensively with him, ultimately moving to Los Angeles.
21.
Marguerite Baker Harrison Blake died on July 16,1967, in Baltimore at the age of 88.
22.
Marguerite Harrison's ashes were scattered at sea per her wishes.