Alice Marble, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. / Marble Comics

http://tennis.quickfound.net/history/alice_marble.html

http://www.sfcityguides.org/public_guidelines.html?article=1206&submitted=TRUE&srch_text=&submitted2=&topic=San%20Francisco%20Women

Alice Marble’s story doesn’t end with personal tragedies and tennis victories. During World War II, she was asked to spy on Hans Steinmetz, a Nazi sympathizer who had been her lover years before. The U.S. Government believed that Steinmetz had stolen great pieces of art for the Nazis, and Marble’s task was to photograph the artwork. She lived with him in Switzerland and played the part of the devoted lover.

One night when Steinmetz was out, Marble photographed the art pieces. When she met with her American contact, she knew something was wrong when he demanded that she turn over the camera and film to him. Marble refused and ran into the woods. The contact (who was a double agent) shot her in the back. Amazingly, Marble survived with little permanent damage, but the camera film had been destroyed. Marble wasn’t finished yet, though. It turned out that she had a photographic memory, and was able to “recall a great deal of what I had seen in the basement vault of Hans’s chateau.”

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Alice Marble served for a time as an editor on Wonder Woman.