SPREAD THE WORD

Spy Behind Home Plate

opens now at Gateway Film Center on June 21

Washington Post article: https://wapo.st/ 2MzTAZT

Los Angeles Times review by Ken Turan: https://lat.ms/2wGKWhA

Aviva Kempner’s The Spy Behind Home Plate is the first feature-length documentary to tell the real story of Morris “Moe” Berg, the enigmatic and brilliant Jewish baseball player turned spy. Berg caught and fielded in the major leagues during baseball’s Golden Age in the 1920s and 1930s. But very few people know that Berg also worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), spying in Europe and playing a prominent role in America’s efforts to undermine the German atomic bomb program during WWII.

The Spy Behind Home Plate reveals the life of this unknown Jewish hero through rare historical footage and photographs as well as revealing contemporary and past interviews with an All-Star roster of celebrities and other individuals from the worlds of sports, spycraft, and WWII history.

Among the contemporary interviewees are authors Robert Fitts, David Ignatius, and Thomas Powers, baseball executives Jerry Reinsdorf and Bud Selig, biographer Nicholas Davidoff, film professor Annette Insdorf, Los Angeles Angels manager Brad Ausmus, MLB historian John Thorn, OSS Society president Charles Pinck, playwright Michael Frayn, sports columnist Ira Berkow, sports commentator Larry Merchant, and U.S. Senator Edward Markey.