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MI5 planned to intern top American director

Britain’s security services planned to intern the father of the actress Zoë Wanamaker in the event of a national emergency because of his communist links.

MI5 and Special Branch, alerted by the US Embassy in London, kept a close eye on Sam Wanamaker, a successful actor and director, after he fled a crackdown on communism in the United States with his young family in 1951.

The Wanamaker brief also shows that Special Branch kept a file on Michael Redgrave, the actor father of Vanessa Redgrave, because of his interest in “left-wing cultural activities”.

The secret memos and other correspondence, released by the National Archives, demonstrate the heightened sense of paranoia during the initial years of the Cold War...

Read entire article at Times (UK)