American Recording Artists (2)

Founded in 1944 by Russian immigrant Boris Morros as a division of his publishing operation, Boris Morros Music Co. USA. Prior to these activities, Morros had worked at Paramount Pictures and had conspired with the Russian People/s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) to organize covers for two Soviet spies in exchange for favors involving family members who were being harassed in Russia. Both the publishing company and ARA were established with funding from Soviet sympathizers Alfred K. Stern and Martha Dodd, in part as a means of laundering cash. Because of his extensive contacts in the entertainment industry, Morros assembled an impressive artist roster that included Hoagy Carmichael, Smiley Burnette, Phil Harris, [a257353], Jan Savitt, Art Tatum and Bob Crosby And The Bob Cats. The company was reorganized in 1946 as Ara, Inc., a move that coincided with its purchase of Symphony Records, a small West Coast classical label. By the summer of 1946, rumors were circulating that Morros' company was on the verge of being absorbed by Cosmopolitan Records, Inc. or MGM Records. Its pressing plant closed and manufacturing was contracted to several independent plants, but ARA's operations soon came to a standstill. The company was placed in receivership in September, 1946 to thwart a seizure by the IRS. Following a tangle of legal disputes, the company's assets were auctioned off piecemeal on November 25, 1946. Further civil lawsuits involving irregularities in the company's accounting dragged on for years, and other parts of the operation were sold. The pressing plant was acquired by the Bihari brothers' Modern Records (2) in 1947 and Irving Mills acquired much what remained of the company and continued to use the ARA name for his own record operation into the mid-1950s. On July 14, 1947 Morros informed the FBI of his activities for the Russians and agreed to serve as a double-agent to report on Soviet intelligence efforts. His activities were made public 10 years later and were documented in Morros' best-selling 1959 autobiography, My Ten Years as a Counterspy . This served as the basis for the 1960 film Man on a String . Morros died in New York on January 8, 1963.