Hedy Lamarr
Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian and American actress and inventor. After a brief early film career in Czechoslovakia, including the controversial erotic romantic drama Ecstasy, she fled from her first husband, Friedrich Mandl, and secretly moved to Paris. Traveling to London, she met Louis B. Mayer, who offered her a film contract in Hollywood. Lamarr became a film star with her performance in the romantic drama Algiers. She achieved further success with the Western Boom Town and the drama White Cargo. Lamarr's most successful film was the religious epic Samson and Delilah. She also acted on television before the release of her final film in 1958. She was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.
At the beginning of World War II, along with composer George Antheil, Lamarr co-invented a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes that used spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to defeat the threat of radio jamming by the Axis powers. This approach, conceptualized as a "Secret Communication System," was intended to provide secure, jam-resistant communication for weapon guidance by spreading the signal across multiple frequencies. Similar technology was used in operational systems only beginning in 1962, which was well after World War II and three years after the expiry of the Lamarr-'Antheil patent. Frequency hopping, which existed and was utilized before the Lamarr-Antheil' patent, is a foundational technology for spread spectrum communications. Its principles are utilized for secure wireless networking, including Bluetooth and early versions of Wi-Fi, which use variants of spread spectrum to protect data from interception and interference.
Early life
Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in 1914 in Vienna, the only child of Gertrud "Trude" Kiesler and Emil Kiesler.Her father was born to a Galician-Jewish family in Lemberg in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, part of Austria-Hungary and was, in the 1920s, deputy director of Wiener Bankverein, and at the end of his life a director at the united Creditanstalt-Bankverein. Her mother, a pianist and a native of Budapest, in the Kingdom of Hungary, had come from an upper-class Hungarian-Jewish family. She had converted to Catholicism and was described as a "practicing Christian" who raised her daughter as a Christian, although Hedy was not baptized at the time.
As a child, Lamarr showed an interest in acting and was fascinated by theater and film. At the age of 12, she won a beauty contest in Vienna. She also began to learn about technological inventions with her father, who would take her out on walks, explaining how devices functioned.
European film career
Early work
Lamarr was taking acting classes in Vienna when one day, she forged a note from her mother and went to Sascha-Film and was able to have herself hired as a script girl. While there, she had a role as an extra in the romantic comedy Money on the Street, and then a small speaking part in the comedy Storm in a Water Glass. Producer Max Reinhardt then cast her in a play entitled The Weaker Sex, which was performed at the Theater in der Josefstadt. Reinhardt was so impressed with her that he brought her with him back to Berlin.However, she never actually trained with Reinhardt or appeared in any of his Berlin productions. Instead, she met the Russian theatre producer Alexis Granowsky, who cast her in his film directorial debut, The Trunks of Mr. O.F., starring Walter Abel and Peter Lorre. Granowsky soon moved to Paris, but Lamarr stayed in Berlin and was given the lead role in No Money Needed, a comedy directed by Carl Boese. Lamarr then starred in the film which made her internationally famous.
''Ecstasy''
In early 1933, at age 18, Lamarr was given the lead in Gustav Machatý's film Ecstasy. She played the neglected young wife of an indifferent older man.The film became both celebrated and notorious for showing Lamarr's face in the throes of orgasm as well as close-up and brief scenes of nudity. Lamarr claimed she was "duped" by the director and producer, who used high-power telephoto lenses, although the director contested her claims.
Although she was dismayed and now disillusioned about taking other roles, the film gained world recognition after winning an award at the Venice Film Festival. Throughout Europe, it was regarded as an artistic work. In America, it was considered overly sexual and received negative publicity, especially among women's groups. It was banned there and in Germany.
Withdrawal
Lamarr played a number of stage roles, including a starring one in Sissy, a play about Empress Elisabeth of Austria produced in Vienna. It won accolades from critics. Admirers sent roses to her dressing room and tried to get backstage to meet her. She sent most of them away, including a man who was more insistent, Friedrich Mandl. He became obsessed with getting to know her.Mandl was an Austrian military arms merchant and munitions manufacturer who was reputedly the third-richest man in Austria. She fell for his charming and fascinating personality, partly due to his immense financial wealth. Her parents, both of Jewish descent, did not approve due to Mandl's ties to Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini and, later, German Führer Adolf Hitler, but they could not stop the headstrong Lamarr.
On August 10, 1933, Lamarr married Mandl at the Karlskirche. She was 18 years old and he was 33. In Lamarr's ghostwritten autobiography, Ecstasy and Me, Mandl is described as an extremely controlling husband who strongly objected to her simulated orgasm scene in Ecstasy and prevented her from pursuing her acting career. She claimed she was kept a virtual prisoner in their castle home,.
Mandl had close social and business ties to the Italian government, selling munitions to the country, and had ties to the Nazi regime of Germany as well, even though his own father was Jewish, as was Hedy's. Lamarr wrote that the dictators of both countries attended lavish parties at the Mandl home. Lamarr accompanied Mandl to business meetings, where he conferred with scientists and other professionals involved in military technology. These conferences were her introduction to the field of applied science and nurtured her latent talent in science.
Lamarr's marriage to Mandl eventually became unbearable and she decided to separate herself from both her husband and country in 1937. In her autobiography, she wrote that she disguised herself as her maid and fled to Paris, but according to other accounts she persuaded Mandl to let her wear all of her jewelry for a dinner party and then disappeared afterward. She wrote about her marriage:
Hollywood career
Louis B. Mayer and MGM
After arriving in London in 1937, she met Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM, who was scouting for talent in Europe. She initially turned down the offer he made her, but then booked herself onto the same New York–bound liner as him, and she managed to impress him enough to secure a $500-a-week contract. Mayer persuaded her to change her name to Hedy Lamarr, choosing the surname in homage to the beautiful silent film star Barbara La Marr, on the suggestion of his wife, who admired La Marr. He brought her to Hollywood in 1938 and began promoting her as the "world's most beautiful woman".Mayer loaned Lamarr to producer Walter Wanger, who was making Algiers, an American version of the French film Pépé le Moko. Lamarr was cast in the lead opposite Charles Boyer. The film created a "national sensation", says Shearer. She was billed as an unknown but well-publicized Austrian actress, which created anticipation in audiences. Mayer hoped she would become another Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich. According to one viewer, when her face first appeared on the screen, "everyone gasped... Lamarr's beauty literally took one's breath away."
In future Hollywood films, she was invariably typecast as the archetypal glamorous seductress of exotic origin. Her second American film was to be I Take This Woman, co-starring with Spencer Tracy under the direction of regular Dietrich collaborator Josef von Sternberg. Von Sternberg was fired during the shoot, replaced by Frank Borzage. The film was put on hold, and Lamarr was put into Lady of the Tropics, where she played a mixed-race seductress in Saigon opposite Robert Taylor. She returned to I Take This Woman, re-shot by W. S. Van Dyke. The resulting film was a flop.
Far more popular was Boom Town with Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert and Spencer Tracy; it made $5 million. MGM promptly reteamed Lamarr and Gable in Comrade X, a comedy film in the vein of Ninotchka, which was another hit.
Lamarr was teamed with James Stewart in Come Live with Me, playing a Viennese refugee. Stewart was also in Ziegfeld Girl, where Lamarr, Judy Garland and Lana Turner played aspiring showgirls – a big success.
Lamarr was top-billed in H. M. Pulham, Esq., although the film's protagonist was the title role played by Robert Young. She made a third film with Tracy, Tortilla Flat. It was successful at the box office, as was Crossroads with William Powell.
Lamarr played the exotic Arab seductress Tondelayo in White Cargo, top billed over Walter Pidgeon. It was a huge hit. White Cargo contains arguably her most memorable film quote, delivered with provocative invitation: "I am Tondelayo. I make tiffin for you?" This line typifies many of Lamarr's roles, which emphasized her beauty and sensuality while giving her relatively few lines. The lack of acting challenges bored Lamarr. She reportedly took up inventing to relieve her boredom.
She was reunited with Powell in a comedy The Heavenly Body, then was borrowed by Warner Bros for The Conspirators. This was an attempt to repeat the success of Casablanca, and RKO borrowed her for a melodrama Experiment Perilous.
Back at MGM Lamarr was teamed with Robert Walker in the romantic comedy Her Highness and the Bellboy, playing a princess who falls in love with a New Yorker. It was very popular, but would be the last film she made under her MGM contract.
Her off-screen life and personality during those years was quite different from her screen image. She spent much of her time feeling lonely and homesick. She might swim at her agent's pool, but shunned the beaches and staring crowds. When asked for an autograph, she wondered why anyone would want it. Writer Howard Sharpe interviewed her and gave his impression:
Author Richard Rhodes describes her assimilation into American culture:
Lamarr also had a penchant for speaking about herself in the third person.