3. Hedy Lamarr (1914 - 2000)

Hedy Lamarr was a force to be reckoned with. She was a master in agency and made her own success. She got her foot in the door, and knew how to elevate herself from one stratum to the next.

Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in 1914.? As a child, Lamarr was interested in acting and became fascinated by theater and film.? At the age of 12, she won a beauty contest in Vienna.? Lamarr also began to learn about technological inventions from her father, who would explain how devices operated on walks with her.

While taking acting classes, Lamarr forged a note from her mother and was able to get herself hired as a script girl at Sascha-Film.? She got herself a role as an extra in Money on the Street (1930), then she landed a small speaking part in Storm in a Water Glass (1931).? Producer Max Reinhardt cast her in a play called The Weaker Sex, and was so impressed with Lamarr’s performance that he brought her back to Berlin.

In Berlin, Lamarr met Russian producer Alexis Granowsky, who cast her in The Trunks of Mr. O.F. (1931), with Walter Abel and Peter Lorre.? In 1932, Lamarr was given the lead role in the comedy No Money Needed (1932).

In 1933, at only 18, Lamarr landed the lead role in Ecstasy, playing the neglected young wife of an indifferent older man.? The film was celebrated–and notorious–for capturing Lamarr’s face while performing the throes of orgasm, as well as close-up scenes of nudity.? Ecstasy won an award at the Venice Film Festival and gained world recognition.? Though lauded as an artistic work in Europe, the film was banned in America and Germany.

Lamarr became disillusioned about work in films, later claiming that the director and producer of Ecstasy tricked her by using high-power telephoto lenses to capture the risqué footage.? The director disputed this claim.? She turned to the stage, playing several roles and receiving praise from critics.?

One admirer was insistent about getting to know Lamarr.? Friedrich Mandl was an Austrian military arms dealer and manufacturer, and known to be the third-richest man in Austria.? Lamarr fell for his charm and personality, partly due to his wealth.? Her parents disapproved, due to Mandl’s ties to Mussolini and later Hitler, but Lamarr was headstrong.?

At 18, Lamarr married Mandl, who was 33.? Lamarr claimed that Mandl was extremely controlling, objected to her orgasm scene in Ecstasy, and tried to prevent her from pursuing her acting career.? She even claimed that she was kept a prisoner in their castle home.

Lamarr accompanied Mandl to business meetings, where he conferred with scientists and other professionals involved in military technology.? She learned that navies needed a means of guiding torpedoes as they raced through the water.? Though radio control had been proposed, an enemy might jam a guidance system and set the torpedo off-course of target.

Her marriage became unbearable, and Lamarr decided to flee the country in 1937.? Accounts of her escape differ.? Lamarr claimed in an autobiography that she disguised herself as her own maid, and fled to Paris. ?In other accounts, she persuaded Mandl to let her wear all of her jewelry for a dinner party, then disappeared with the jewelry afterward.

Lamarr arrived in London in 1937, and met Louis B. Mayer, the head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.? Mayer was scouting for talent in Europe, and offered her $125 per week.? Lamarr turned down the offer, then booked herself on the same ocean liner as Mayer, bound for New York, and impressed him enough during the voyage to secure a $500 per week contract.? Mayer convinced Lamarr to change her name to “Hedy Lamarr” to distance herself from her actual identity and Ecstasy.? Her stage surname “Lamarr” was suggested by Mayer’s wife as an homage to the beautiful silent film star Barbara La Marr.? Mayer brought Lamarr to Hollywood in 1938 and began promoting her as the “world’s most beautiful woman.”

Lamarr was cast as the lead opposite Charles Boyer in Algiers (1938), which created a national sensation.? One viewer claimed that “everyone gasped” when her face first appeared on the screen and her “beauty literally took one’s breath away.”? Lamarr next played a mixed-race seductress in Saigon, in Our Lady of the Tropics (1939), opposite Robert Taylor.? Lamarr appeared with Clark Gable in both Boom Town (1940) and Comrade X (1941).? She was then teamed with Jimmy Stewart in Come Live With Me (1941) and Ziegfield Girl (1941).?

Lamarr would receive top billing in White Cargo (1942).? Her famous line, “I am Tondelayo.? I make tiffin for you?” typified many of Lamarr’s roles, which emphasized her beauty and sensuality at the expense of dialogue.? She grew bored with the lack of acting challenges, and took up inventing to relieve the boredom.

With no formal training and being primarily self-taught, Lamarr began designing and drafting inventions, including on set between takes.? Her inventions included an improved traffic stoplight and a tablet that dissolved in water to create a flavored carbonated beverage.

Lamarr discussed the susceptibility of torpedo guidance to jamming with a new composer friend, George Antheil.? She explained her idea of preventing jamming by frequency hopping.? Antheil had attempted previously to synchronize note-hopping in a piece involving multiple, synchronized player pianos.? Together, Lamarr and Antheil realized that radio frequencies could be changed similarly to notes.? U.S. Patent No. 2,292,387 was granted on August 11, 1942, on which Lamarr is listed by her legal name, Hedy Kiesler Markey.? Lamarr proposed the invention to the U.S. Navy, who rejected the invention because it would be too large for a torpedo.? Lamarr and Antheil pursued the invention no further.? Lamarr attempted to join the National Inventors Council but was told that she could better help the war effort by using her celebrity to sell war bonds.

Lamarr’s off-screen life was far from her onscreen persona.? She was often lonely and homesick.? She would swim at her agent’s pool, but avoided beaches and crowds.?

After leaving MGM in 1945, Lamarr formed a production company, but the films were not successful.

Lamarr enjoyed her biggest success playing Delilah in Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah, which was the highest-grossing film of 1950.? She returned to MGM and made the Western Copper Canyon (1950), and My Favorite Spy (1951) with Bob Hope.

Lamarr’s career began to decline.? She produced Loves of Three Queens (1954) in Italy and played multiple roles, but lost millions when she was unable to secure distribution of the picture.? Lamarr’s last film was The Female Animal (1958).? Though signed to act in Picture Mommy Dead, she collapsed during filming due to nervous exhaustion and was replaced by Zsa Zsa Gabor.

By the 1970s, Lamarr had increasingly entered seclusion, despite being offered scripts, television commercials, and stage projects.? In 1974, she filed a $10 million lawsuit against Warner Brothers, claiming that the running parody (“Hedley Lamarr”) of her name in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles infringed her right to privacy.? The studio settled out of court for a nominal sum and an apology from Mel Brooks for “almost using her name.”? Brooks later said that she “never got the joke.”

A Corel-drawn image of Lamarr won CorelDRAW’s software suite cover design contest in 1996.? For several years thereafter, the image was featured on boxes of the software.? Lamarr sued the company for using her image without permission, but Corel countered that she did not own the rights to the image.? The parties settled in 1998.

Lamarr married and divorced six times throughout her life and had three children, and then remained unmarried for the last 35 years of her life.? Lamarr retreated from public life and settled in Miami Beach, Florida, in 1981.? In the last decades of her life, the telephone became Lamarr’s only means of communication, even with her children and close friends; she often talked for six or seven hours a day on the phone.? For her contribution to the film industry, she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6247 Hollywood Boulevard.

In 1997, Lamarr and Antheil were jointly honored with the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Award, and Lamarr became the first woman to receive the Invention Convention’s BULBIE Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award, known as the “Oscars of inventing” and given to individuals whose creative lifetime achievements in the arts, sciences, business, or invention fields have significantly contributed to society.? In 1998, Austria awarded Lamarr the Viktor Kaplan Medal of the Austrian Association of Patent Holders and Inventors.

Lamarr died in Casselberry, Florida, at the age of 85 in 2000.? Her son, Anthony Loder, spread part of her ashes in Austria’s Vienna Woods.? In 2014, a memorial to Lamarr was unveiled at the Central Cemetery in Vienna.? The same year, Lamarr was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology.

Lamarr’s frequency hopping invention remained virtually unknown until the 1960s, when it began to be recognized for its significant contributions to the field of telecommunications.? The impact of Lamarr’s work has led to the ubiquity of WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS technologies.? Though originally promoted as the “world’s most beautiful woman,” Hedy Lamarr’s inventive genius has earned her the title of “the mother of WiFi.”