Red Masquerade

by Angela Calomiris, Caroline Bird (ghost writer)

Angela Calomiris is the young photogapher who for seven years masqueraded as a Communist Party member while acting as a secret agent for the Subversive Squad of the F.B.I. Her testimony played an important part in the recent conviction of eleven top Communists after a lengthy trial before Judge Medina in New York.

Of Greek descent and with a background that might be described as underprivileged, Miss Calomiris was a natural as an F.B.I. plant. Intending to join the WACS or the WAVES, she was persuaded that she could perform a more valuable service by becoming a spy.

284 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1950

About the author

Angela Calomiris, whose parents were born in Greece, was herself born in New York City, where she attended public schools. She continued to live and work in Greenwich Village as a professional photographer, her favorite subjects being children and animals.

She became a minor celebrity for a short time after testifying for the F.B.I. and made the rounds of radio talk shows. Unlike her fellow spys, Matt Cyetic, author of I Posed as a Communist for the F.B.I. and Herb Philbrick, author of I Led Three Lives, Angela Calomiris was not able to parlay this moment in the spotlight into a full-time career. She continued to work for the F.B.I. which led to a falling out with her friends in the lesbian community. In the 1960's she left NYC to open a bed & breakfast in Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Sarah Coleman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book by way of research for my Literate Lens blog entry, The Woman Who Destroyed the Photo League (http://theliteratelens.com/2012/02/08...). It was a curious book, very much a product of its time (the 1950s), telling the story of a female photographer who was a mole for the F.B.I. In the 1940s, Angela Calomiris joined the American Communist Party and worked her way up to a high post, all the time betraying friends and turning over information to the government. As I said in my blog post, by the time she wrote this memoir Calomiris had turned state's evidence and was anxious to justify herself in the face of those who called her a stool pigeon, so her writing is rather low on introspection and high on self-aggrandizement. Nevertheless this is an interesting read and a great resource if you want to find out more about Communism in America in the 1940s and 50s.