Home » Posts tagged 'hedy-lamarr'

Tag Archives: hedy-lamarr

The Eyes of Hedy Lamarr

Posted on by

Clark Gable and Hedy Lamarr in Comrade X (1940)

It was a strange movie made at a strange time by an eminent director (King Vidor). I had never seen Comrade X before, and what I remember most about it were the eyes of Hedy Lamarr. It was an early Hollywood film—released by MGM no less—by the Austrian actress who caused a succès de scandale seven years earlier when she appeared in the buff in a Czech film by Gustav Machaty called Ecstasy.

The strange thing is that Hedy was one of the most intelligent-looking actresses in Hollywood. This is borne out by the fact that she also had a career as an inventor. Not the sort of thing one would expect with a nudie actress.

Hedy Kiesler (Later: Lamarr) in Ecstasy (1933)

I have always regarded Hedy Lamarr as one of the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood. I watch her films whenever I can because seeing her films gives me a frisson of sorts.

Comrade X was released a year before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. We were officially an ally of Russia at the time and were running aid ships to Stalin via the port of Murmansk. In addition to Gable and Lamarr, the film starred all the usual Slavic suspects, such as Oscar Homolka, Vladmir Sokolov, Felix Bressart, and Mikhail Rasumny. In a few short years, the film’s goofy innocence would be a red flag to Senator Joseph McCarthy, who saw the film as a kowtowing to the Soviet enemy.

Hedy Lamarr as a Russian Streetcar Motorman in Comrade X

When I have recovered sufficiently from my broken collar bone, I plan to seek out and read Lamarr’s ghost-written autobiography, Ecstasy and Me.

Beauty and Brains

Posted on by

Actress and Inventor Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000)

One of the most beautiful actresses ever to appear on the silver screen was also a brilliant inventor whose work—for which she did not receive a dime—is used by most Americans on a daily basis.

Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, better known as Hedy Lamarr, was an Austrian actress from a Jewish family that fled to the United States on the brink of World War Two. She was slightly notorious for having appeared in the nude in Gustav Machaty’s Czech film Ecstasy (1933). Not only was she unclothed, but was photographed in a tight facial shot simulating an orgasm. As a result, the sanctimonious studio boss of MGM, Louis B. Mayer, put her in films, but never in the big productions.

Poster for Ecstasy (1933)

Still, Hedy did her best, starring in many films, but also making a unique contribution to the war effort. Working with music composer George Antheil, she developed an invention for producing an unjammable system for communicating with a torpedo that has been released. The method involved hopping across a broad spectrum of frequencies. In 1942, her invention was granted a patent, but never used during the war because the Navy thought they knew better. But by the time the patent expired in 1957, it was being used and is used today in Bluetooth technology and on legacy versions of WiFi.

Because Miss Lamarr did not renew the patent, she did not receive any remuneration for her invention. I just saw a thoughtful documentary by Alexandra Dean entitled Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (2017). Perhaps, in the end, Hedy was too smart for Hollywood—and Hollywood did not tend to reward actresses for their brains. She drifted through several marriages and several bouts of plastic surgery. But looks were never her problem. This woman had a brain, and that was unforgivable.