Agnes Bernelle
Encyclopedia
Agnes Bernelle was an actress and singer, long-based in the UK for much of her career, although she later settled in Ireland
. Her family had fled Berlin in 1936. She appeared in over 20 films and also made stage and television appearances.
Born as Agnes Elizabeth Bernauer in Berlin
, she was the OSS
wartime 'Black Propaganda
' radio announcer codenamed "Vicki", famous for demoralizing a German U-Boat
Captain into surrendering with one of her targeted broadcasts. This was the subject of the recent Channel 4
documentary Sex Bomb.
alongside the top secret Enigma
project, Bernelle was introduced to black propaganda. She was recruited for her perfect German and was suggested by her father, Rudie Bernauer, after he was sourced for his theatrical and German connections, operating under the codename "Vicky". Her radio broadcasts on Deutsche Kurzwellensender Atlantik
were bounced over to Germany and primarily were aimed at spreading confusion and lowering morale among German forces, along with being littered with code messages for resistance fighters on the continent disguised as record labels and numbers. The most notorious story featured the impressive feat of convincing a German U-boat to surrender by broadcasting a made-up message to the captain, stating that his wife had given birth to twins, when he had not been on leave for more than two years. She would later learn that the man in charge, known to her only as "The Beard", was in fact the British black propagandist Sefton Delmer
, her unofficial boss.
(1921–2001) who briefly became notorious for assaulting Bernard Levin
during a live transmission of That Was The Week That Was
in 1962 for writing a hostile review of one of his wife's performances. The show was 'An Evening of Savagery and Delight' which had had rave reviews at the Dublin Festival but lasted only 3 weeks at London's Duchess theatre and polarised audiences. On the first night an usherette tipped a tray of hot coffee into Levin's lap, which may have affected his view of the performance. Bernelle bravely posted all the bad reviews along with the good outside the theatre.
The couple had three children:
, Elvis Costello
, Tom Waits
, and The Radiators
. She released three albums. The first, Bernelle on Brecht and... was produced by Philip Chevron of The Radiators and released in limited numbers by the Midnite Music Company in 1977, featuring Irish jazz musicians Louis Stewart and Peter O'Brien
. In 1985 she released Father's Lying Dead on the Ironing Board. This was followed in 1988 by Some Bizzare label produced album, Mother, The Wardrobe is full of Infantrymen. The first two albums are filled with songs from Weimar cabaret (her father Roudie Bernauer ran a cabaret in Berlin) and the third has more modern updates on the form with songs from Tom Waits
and Roger McGough
. She also sang a duet with Marc Almond
on his The Stars We Are album.
In 1978, Bernelle appeared Off Broadway in New York City in the American premiere of Bertolt Brecht's Downfall of the Egotist Johann Fatzer
, with Shelter West Theater Company at the Vam Dam Theatre, directed by W. Stuart McDowell, with an original musical score of ballads sung by Bernelle, composed by Tony Award-winning composer/arranger, Bruce Coughlin.
, County Dublin
. The Fun Palace, her autobiography, was published in 1995.
Republic of Ireland
Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...
. Her family had fled Berlin in 1936. She appeared in over 20 films and also made stage and television appearances.
Born as Agnes Elizabeth Bernauer in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, she was the OSS
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
wartime 'Black Propaganda
Black propaganda
Black propaganda is false information and material that purports to be from a source on one side of a conflict, but is actually from the opposing side. It is typically used to vilify, embarrass or misrepresent the enemy...
' radio announcer codenamed "Vicki", famous for demoralizing a German U-Boat
U-boat
U-boat is the anglicized version of the German word U-Boot , itself an abbreviation of Unterseeboot , and refers to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in World War I and World War II...
Captain into surrendering with one of her targeted broadcasts. This was the subject of the recent Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
documentary Sex Bomb.
War years
During the Second World War, she became involved with top secret British Special Operations radio broadcasts. Transmitting from Woburn AbbeyWoburn Abbey
Woburn Abbey , near Woburn, Bedfordshire, England, is a country house, the seat of the Duke of Bedford and the location of the Woburn Safari Park.- Pre-20th century :...
alongside the top secret Enigma
Enigma machine
An Enigma machine is any of a family of related electro-mechanical rotor cipher machines used for the encryption and decryption of secret messages. Enigma was invented by German engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I...
project, Bernelle was introduced to black propaganda. She was recruited for her perfect German and was suggested by her father, Rudie Bernauer, after he was sourced for his theatrical and German connections, operating under the codename "Vicky". Her radio broadcasts on Deutsche Kurzwellensender Atlantik
Soldatensender Calais
Soldatensender Calais was a British black propaganda broadcaster during the Second World War operated by the Political Warfare Executive. It pretended to be a station of the German military broadcasting network...
were bounced over to Germany and primarily were aimed at spreading confusion and lowering morale among German forces, along with being littered with code messages for resistance fighters on the continent disguised as record labels and numbers. The most notorious story featured the impressive feat of convincing a German U-boat to surrender by broadcasting a made-up message to the captain, stating that his wife had given birth to twins, when he had not been on leave for more than two years. She would later learn that the man in charge, known to her only as "The Beard", was in fact the British black propagandist Sefton Delmer
Sefton Delmer
Denis Sefton Delmer was a British journalist and propagandist for the British government. Fluent in German, he became friendly with Ernst Röhm who arranged for him to interview Adolf Hitler in the 1930s...
, her unofficial boss.
Family life
Bernelle was married (from 1945 to 1969) to Desmond LeslieDesmond Leslie
Desmond Arthur Peter Leslie was a British pilot, film maker, writer, and musician, of English, Irish and Scottish descent...
(1921–2001) who briefly became notorious for assaulting Bernard Levin
Bernard Levin
Henry Bernard Levin CBE was an English journalist, author and broadcaster, described by The Times as "the most famous journalist of his day". The son of a poor Jewish family in London, he won a scholarship to the independent school Christ's Hospital and went on to the London School of Economics,...
during a live transmission of That Was The Week That Was
That Was The Week That Was
That Was The Week That Was, also known as TW3, is a satirical television comedy programme that was shown on BBC Television in 1962 and 1963. It was devised, produced and directed by Ned Sherrin and presented by David Frost...
in 1962 for writing a hostile review of one of his wife's performances. The show was 'An Evening of Savagery and Delight' which had had rave reviews at the Dublin Festival but lasted only 3 weeks at London's Duchess theatre and polarised audiences. On the first night an usherette tipped a tray of hot coffee into Levin's lap, which may have affected his view of the performance. Bernelle bravely posted all the bad reviews along with the good outside the theatre.
The couple had three children:
- Shaun Rudolf Christopher Leslie (b. 4 June 1947), married Charlotte Bing; no offspring.
- Christopher Mark Leslie (b. 7 December 1952), married Cliona Manahan and had two children, Leah Leslie and Luke Leslie.
- Antonia Kelvey Oriel Leslie (b. 1963), married Colm Nolan, and raised one daughter, Lola Leslie.
Later years
As an international cabaret singer she collaborated on record with artists such as Marc AlmondMarc Almond
Marc Almond is an English singer-songwriter and musician, who originally found fame as half of the seminal synthpop/New Wave duo Soft Cell...
, Elvis Costello
Elvis Costello
Elvis Costello , born Declan Patrick MacManus, is an English singer-songwriter. He came to prominence as an early participant in London's pub rock scene in the mid-1970s and later became associated with the punk/New Wave genre. Steeped in word play, the vocabulary of Costello's lyrics is broader...
, Tom Waits
Tom Waits
Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...
, and The Radiators
The Radiators From Space
The Radiators From Space are an Irish punk rock band. The band formed in 1975 in Dublin, originally under the name Greta Garbage and the Trashcans, and consisted of Philip Chevron , Pete Holidai, Steve Rapid, Jimmy Crashe and Mark Megaray. They were one of the earliest punk rock bands...
. She released three albums. The first, Bernelle on Brecht and... was produced by Philip Chevron of The Radiators and released in limited numbers by the Midnite Music Company in 1977, featuring Irish jazz musicians Louis Stewart and Peter O'Brien
Peter O'Brien
Peter O'Brien is an Australian actor, not to be confused with the New Zealand actor Peter O'Brian.-Early life:O'Brien was born at Murray Bridge, South Australia...
. In 1985 she released Father's Lying Dead on the Ironing Board. This was followed in 1988 by Some Bizzare label produced album, Mother, The Wardrobe is full of Infantrymen. The first two albums are filled with songs from Weimar cabaret (her father Roudie Bernauer ran a cabaret in Berlin) and the third has more modern updates on the form with songs from Tom Waits
Tom Waits
Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...
and Roger McGough
Roger McGough
Roger Joseph McGough CBE is a well-known English performance poet. He presents the BBC Radio 4 programme Poetry Please and records voice-overs for commercials, as well as performing his own poetry regularly...
. She also sang a duet with Marc Almond
Marc Almond
Marc Almond is an English singer-songwriter and musician, who originally found fame as half of the seminal synthpop/New Wave duo Soft Cell...
on his The Stars We Are album.
In 1978, Bernelle appeared Off Broadway in New York City in the American premiere of Bertolt Brecht's Downfall of the Egotist Johann Fatzer
Downfall of the Egotist Johann Fatzer
Downfall of the Egotist Johann Fatzer is an unfinished play by Bertolt Brecht, written betyween 1926 and 1930. Der Untergang des Egoisten Johnann Fatzer, is translated as Downfall of the Egotist Johann Fatzer or Demise of the Egotist Johann Fatzer and often called the Fatzer Fragment, or simply...
, with Shelter West Theater Company at the Vam Dam Theatre, directed by W. Stuart McDowell, with an original musical score of ballads sung by Bernelle, composed by Tony Award-winning composer/arranger, Bruce Coughlin.
Last years
She spent the later years of her life with her second partner, the historian and author Maurice Craig, in SandymountSandymount
Sandymount is a coastal seaside suburb in Dublin 4 on the Southside of Dublin in Ireland. It is in the Dublin South East Dáil constituency and the East Pembroke Ward. It was once part of Pembroke Township, which took its name from the fact that this area was part of the estate of the Earl of...
, County Dublin
County Dublin
County Dublin is a county in Ireland. It is part of the Dublin Region and is also located in the province of Leinster. It is named after the city of Dublin which is the capital of Ireland. County Dublin was one of the first of the parts of Ireland to be shired by King John of England following the...
. The Fun Palace, her autobiography, was published in 1995.
Selected filmography
- Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), Lady in Waiting (uncredited)
- But Not in VainBut Not in VainBut Not in Vain is a 1948 Anglo-Dutch World War II drama, directed by Edmond T. Gréville and starring Raymond Lovell. The film is set in 1944 in the occupied Netherlands, and was shot at the Cinetone Studios in Amsterdam, with exterior filming taking place at locations in and around the city...
(1948), Mary Meyer - The Missing Princess (1949), The Baroness
- Stranger at My Door (1950), Laura Riordan
- The First Great Train RobberyThe First Great Train RobberyThe First Great Train Robbery — known in the U.S. as The Great Train Robbery — is a 1979 film directed by Michael Crichton, who also wrote the screenplay based on his novel The Great Train Robbery...
(1979), Woman on Platform - The Irish R.M.The Irish R.M.The Irish R.M. refers to a series of books by the Anglo-Irish novelists Somerville and Ross, and the television comedy-drama series based on them...
(1985), Mrs. Maguire (1 episode, 1985) - The Fantasist (1986), Mrs. O'Malley
- Hear My SongHear My SongHear My Song is a 1991 film, written by the actors Peter Chelsom and Adrian Dunbar , based on the story of Irish tenor Josef Locke...
(1991), Receptionist - An Awfully Big AdventureAn Awfully Big AdventureAn Awfully Big Adventure is a 1995 British coming-of-age film directed by Mike Newell. The story focuses on a teenage girl who joins a seedy theatre troupe in Liverpool...
(1995), Mrs. Ackerly - The Tale of Sweety Barrett (1998), Mrs. Walsh
- Still Life (short, 1999), Old woman