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When Hollywood Came to the Heights
In the summer of 1946, a cast of movie stars headlined by James Cagney traveled to Boston College to begin shooting the spy thriller 13 Rue Madeleine. Here’s the forgotten story of how the project landed at BC…and how O’Connell House became the star of the show.
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Not long after the end of World War II, a veteran of the US Army Air Corps named Sy Bartlett came up with an idea for a movie, a spy thriller that would be set during the war. Bartlett and a screenwriter named John Monks Jr., who’d served in the Marines, worked together to write a script for what would eventually become 13 Rue Madeleine, a 1946 espionage film starring James Cagney that involves the Allies’ plans prior to the D-Day landing on June 6, 1944.
When it came time to shoot the movie, the producers wished to make the film as authentic as possible, which is how O’Connell House on Boston College’s upper campus came to feature prominently in several of the early scenes. The mansion, it turned out, was a perfect stand-in for the training area of the 077, the movie’s fictional American spy agency that was modeled on the real-life Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, which was the precursor to the CIA.
The story of how O’Connell House came to be featured in 13 Rue Madeleine, and how it would transform campus for those few weeks of shooting in the summer of 1946, has until now been largely lost to time.
On June 9, 1946, The Boston Globe ran an article with the headline “Sick Priest Arranged Filming of New Cagney Movie at B.C.” The news story documented the many ways in which John Louis Bonn, SJ, a Boston College instructor for nearly two decades, had been instrumental in bringing the Twentieth Century–Fox production to campus.
John Louis Bonn, SJ, for whom BC’s Bonn Studio Theater is named, was instrumental in bringing the production to campus. Photo: John J. Burns Library, Boston College
The path that led to O’Connell House’s starring role in the movie began when scouts for the film studio traveled to the East Coast in search of filming locations that would appear authentically European. The crew scoured Washington, DC, and the National Archives, and then searched Boston, particularly the Chestnut Hill area, home to several British-style mansions that could function as realistic settings for the 077’s headquarters. (The location scouts also spent time in the old section of Quebec City, which would eventually stand in for the film’s later scenes set in Le Havre, France.)
The movie’s director, Henry Hathaway, and Twentieth Century–Fox eventually settled on O’Connell House for the 077 training scenes. The site was perfect to double as an English mansion where the film’s prospective spies could gather. The mansion, designed for the Storey family by the Boston firm Chapman & Frazer and built in 1895, was patterned on the Tudor Gwydir Castle (a fortified mansion done as a luxurious palace) in Conwy Valley, Wales. Through the years, O’Connell House experienced a curious evolution, passing from the Storey family to its next owners, the Louis K. Liggett family of drugstore fame, who then went on to sell it to the BC alumnus Cardinal William O’Connell, who donated it to the college in 1941, just five years prior to the production of 13 Rue Madeleine. At the time of the filming, O’Connell House was serving as the School of Business Administration, with classrooms and its own cafeteria.
Image: Alamy/Everett Collection/©Twentieth Century–Fox
With the moviemakers having decided on O’Connell House, the next step was to work with BC to secure permission to film in the building. Less is known about that process than you might expect, but the approval of then–BC President William L. Keleher, SJ, would have certainly been required. And since the closest thing at BC back then to film was theater, it makes sense that Fr. Keleher would have leaned on the expertise of Fr. Bonn, who, according to the 1946 account in the Globe, served as the liaison between Boston College and Twentieth Century–Fox. This would be ideal for Fr. Bonn, for whom the Boston College Bonn Studio Theater is named. As a teacher of drama, English as well as the classics, he saw the on-site production as an ideal way to expose the students to the glamour of a Hollywood production. Bonn was also quite familiar with the military. He had been a chaplain in the Navy in World War II, so a spy film would certainly interest him. Adding to the allure, he believed that the filming would be perfect for theater students in the Dramatics Society. That same year, the students had performed Euripides’s oldest surviving play, Alcestis, and one of Shakespeare’s most popular works, Othello. These plays fit perfectly with Fr. Bonn’s regular teaching curriculum in the classics and English literature. Now, the film production held the potential to allow Boston College drama students to meet screen and stage actors.
For all his contributions in finalizing BC as a prominent setting in the film, Fr. Bonn, unfortunately, was unable to witness much of the work on campus. He fell ill and was taken to Carney Hospital, and it was only near the end of filming that he was able to leave the infirmary.
Hollywood star James Cagney, playing spymaster Bob Sharkey, addresses prospective agents in the espionage thriller 13 Rue Madeleine. The scene was just one of many from the film that were shot during the summer of 1946 in BC’s O’Connell House. Image: Alamy/Collection Christophel/©Twentieth Century–Fox
A 1946 Boston Globe item captures the stars of the film between takes. News Clipping: The Boston Globe
In the summer of 1946, the area around O’Connell House was closed off for filming 13 Rue Madeleine. Yet students would at times crash the gates to view famous actors and possibly obtain their autographs. In between takes, the actors socialized with the extras on the expansive lawn and grounds, playing baseball and chatting about their careers on stage or in film. The French actress Annabella, who used just the single name, could be photographed relaxing in the summer sun or rereading letters from her husband, the famous actor Tyrone Power, or the life of Shelley. James Cagney, in tie and suspenders, dined at the cafeteria. (Cagney, as it happened, was no stranger to New England. He kept a summer home on Martha’s Vineyard, where he tended to his “gentleman’s farm” and sailed on his ketch, the Mary Ann.)
By mid-July, shooting at O’Connell House wrapped and the cast and crew of sixty people moved on to Quebec City for the remainder of the production. There, staying primarily at the spacious and historic Château Frontenac, they filmed in Old Quebec and Île-d'Orléans. The idea was to replicate the French port city of Le Havre, with Quebec’s buildings and general milieu recalling the France of 1944.
When 13 Rue Madeleine was released in 1947, the Boston College community delighted in seeing O’Connell House featured prominently in many of the movie’s early scenes. In one, Cagney, playing the spymaster Robert Emmett “Bob” Sharkey, descends O’Connell House’s central staircase to address 077 agents-in-training and introduce them to a mission that involves clandestine work in Nazi-occupied Europe. In another scene, Cagney stands on an O’Connell House balcony as he learns that there is a double agent in his spy team.
Although the filming at O’Connell House occupied only the earlier sequences of the film, it was a genuine coup for Fr. Bonn to bring the production to BC. The guest book at the Burns Library for June 1946 serves as a fine tribute to his efforts in the filming of the movie.
The film today can be viewed in its entirety on YouTube, and alumni and students will certainly recognize the O’Connell House external and internal settings. The movie, in the end, is a bit of fun. The World War II spy thriller may not be Casablanca, but it’s a fine piece of entertainment that, through the lens of fiction, manages to offer insight into the CIA’s predecessor agency. ◽
John Michalczyk is a longtime Boston College professor who teaches in the art, art history, and film department. He wishes to acknowledge the contributions of the Burns Library Archives staff, Shelley Barber and Andrew Isidoro, Nina Bogdanovsky, Connor Adams, and Bobby Clark.
