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She started out as a dancer at the Nöjesfältet amusement park in Stockholm, drew press attention for her topless act at the China variety theatre and stepped into film while Europe was in flames.
He came from Italy with money, contacts and a story that grew every time it was told.
Together, Betty Bjurström and Renato Senise moved between the stage, film, luxury hotels, police interrogations and intelligence circles in wartime Europe.
Around them was a web of producers, military officers, policemen, informants and gangsters. In the background were glimpses of names that drew the story far beyond the wings of showbusiness.
In Betty & Renato, Johan Öhgren follows the trail of a Swedish woman who has all too easily been reduced to a footnote in other people's stories. Here Betty stands at the centre: ambitious, fearless, contradictory and resolute.
The book is based on the security service's original files, telephone surveillance, police interrogations and court records. It also draws on letters and press material, as well as Betty's own memoirs.
The material shows a different Betty from the well-known "pin-up" and the woman who survived five gunshots in Paris: Lucia, with her own direct channel to the German intelligence chief in Stockholm, Hans Georg Wagner — in a network in which the notorious American mafia boss Vito Genovese also appears. For the first time, the history of the entertainment world and the intelligence files are brought together in one coherent account.
This is a documentary account of glamour and collapse, of film, business, lies, roles and survival — and of a woman who refused to let anyone else write her story.
Johan Öhgren is an intelligence historian and author focusing on Swedish spy history. Since 2015 he has run a project to establish a museum of intelligence history in Sweden, and he gives talks and guided city walks, and hosts an international podcast on the subject.
Betty & Renato is Johan Öhgren's fifth book about the real spies who were active in a city strongly marked by the war, even though it stood outside occupation and fighting.