THE AMAZING HEDY LAMARR

I vaguely recalled someone named Hedy Lamarr, but a recent PBS documentary (shown without interruption) astounded me about her true life.  If you are a PBS Passport member, click here and view the presentation.  From PBS:

Hollywood star Hedy Lamarr (Ziegfeld Girl, Samson and Delilah) was known as the world’s most beautiful woman – Snow White and Cat Woman were both based on her iconic look. However, her arresting appearance and glamorous life stood in the way of her being given the credit she deserved as an ingenious inventor whose pioneering work helped revolutionize modern communication. An Austrian Jewish emigrant who invented a covert communication system to try to help defeat the Nazis, Lamarr was ignored and told to sell kisses for war bonds instead. It was only toward the very end of her life that tech pioneers discovered that it was her concept that is now used as the basis for secure WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth technologies.

Bombshell:  The Hedy Lamarr Story is part of the American Masters series, which since 1986 has won 28 Emmy awards, 12 Peabodys, 2 Grammys, and even an Oscar.  Rotten Tomatoes reviewers gave Bombshell a 95% rating, and audiences 85%.

She was born in 1914 as Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna, Austria, and passed away in 2000.  She began acting at the age of 16, and was duped into nudity and orgasm in Ecstasy (this is the full hour and a half film) at the age of 18.  In parts of Europe the film gained respect as an artistic work, but she was dismayed about that experience, which did taint her progress, especially later in the U.S.

That year (1932) she married 38-year old Friedrich Mandl (both were Jewish), a munitions manufacturer with links to Mussolini and Hitler.  She eventually had six husbands and he married five times.  

She left her husband in 1937, moved to London, met Louis B. Mayer (head of MGM), and, on a cruise ship to the USA, conned him into paying her $500/week.  He changed her name to Hedy Lamarr, and she was promoted as the world's most beautiful woman.

She appeared in 30 films, among the more notable being Algiers (1938, the whole film), Boom Town (1940), Comrade X (1940), Ziegfeld Girl (1941--Tony Martin sings You Stepped Out of a Dream, and she does in the photo above), White Cargo (1942), Samson and Delilah (1949, right) and My Favorite Spy (1951, with Bob Hope).  She did not win any significant award in acting, but posthumously in 2014 won the "Oscar of Inventing", the first female to be so honored.  Why?

As busy as she was in entertainment, she spent much of her free time inventing things:

• improved traffic stoplight
• a tablet that dissolved in water to create a carbonated drink
• being close to Howard Hughes, she suggested he change his square aeroplane design to more a streamlined shape, which he did, with success

• during World War II she (as H.K. Markey, her married name at that time) designed a radio-controlled torpedo (with composer George Antheil), which was patented (US Patent 2,292,387) in 1942

However,  that patent, featuring frequency-hopping spread spectrum, was not really used by the Navy until 1962 when the patent had expired.  Her reaction was something like, oh well, for she could have gained a six-year extension to financially benefit.  This concept is now the basis for WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth.

Her later years from the 70's were difficult ones, for she went into seclusion, even from her family.  She then turned to plastic surgery to revive her looks, but that all backfired.  However, ever the inventor, she actually improved the clinical practice by suggesting where cuts could be placed to minimize detection.

In 2016 there were two off-Broadway shows, HEDY:  The Life and Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, and Stand Still and Look Stupid:  The Life Story of Hedy Lamarr.  Next Gal Gadot (left) will star in and produce a Showtime series based on the Bombshell's life.

My energy series will start tomorrow and appear weekly on Wednesdays.

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