Hedy Lamarr
in Algiers, (1938)
Born	Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler (1913-11-09)9 November 1913 Vienna, Austria-Hungary
Died	19 January 2000(2000-01-19) (aged 86) Orlando, Florida, U.S.
Years active	1930-1958
Spouse	Fritz Mandl (m.1933-1937; divorced) Gene Markey (m.1939-1941; divorced; 1 child) John Loder (m.1943-1947; divorced; 2 children) Teddy Stauffer (m.1951-1952; divorced) W. Howard Lee (m.1953-1960; divorced) Lewis J. Boies (m.1963-1965; divorced)
Children	James Markey (adopted) Denise Hedy & Antony (Loder)

Hedy Lamarr ( /ˈhɛdi/; 9 November 1913 – 19 January 2000) was an Austrian-born American actress, celebrated for her great beauty, who was a major contract star of MGM's "Golden Age".

Lamarr also co-invented – with composer George Antheil – an early technique for spread spectrum communications and frequency hopping, necessary to wireless communication from the pre-computer age to the present day.^[1]

Early life[link]

Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, the only child of assimilated Jewish parents. Her mother, Gertrud (née Lichtwitz), was a pianist and Budapest native who came from the "Jewish haute bourgeoisie", and her father, Lemberg-born Emil Kiesler, was a successful bank director.^[2][3]

She studied ballet and piano at age 10. When she worked with Max Reinhardt in Berlin, he called her the "most beautiful woman in Europe".^{[citation needed]}

Career[link]

1942 publicity photo

In early 1933 she starred in Gustav Machatý's notorious film Ecstasy, a Czechoslovak film made in Prague, in which she played the love-hungry young wife of an indifferent older husband. Closeups of her face during orgasm in one scene (rumored to be unsimulated), and full frontal shots of her in another scene, swimming and running nude through the woods, gave the film great notoriety.

On August 10, 1933, aged 19, she married Friedrich Mandl, a Vienna-based arms manufacturer 13 years her senior. In her autobiography Ecstasy and Me, Lamarr described Mandl as an extremely controlling man who sometimes tried to keep her shut up in their mansion. Mandl bought as many copies of Ecstasy as he could possibly find, objecting to her in the film, and "...the expression on her face." (Lamarr in her autobiography, objecting to the rumors about real sex, admitted that her costar had indeed played the scene with her using "method acting reality," but she also stated that the film's director had simulated looks of passion from offscreen by poking her in the bottom with a safety pin.)^[4]

Mandl prevented her from pursuing her acting career, and instead took her to meetings with technicians and business partners. In these meetings, the mathematically talented Lamarr learned about military technology. Otherwise she had to stay at their castle home, Schloss Schwarzenau. She later related that, although Mandl was part-Jewish, he consorted with Nazi industrialists. In Ecstasy and Me, Lamarr wrote that Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler attended Mandl's grand parties. She related that in 1937 she disguised herself as one of her maids and fled to Paris, where she obtained a divorce, and then moved to London. According to another version of the episode, she persuaded Mandl to allow her to attend a party wearing all her expensive jewelry, later drugged him with the help of her maid, and made her escape out of the country with the jewelry.^{[citation needed]}

Hollywood[link]

Lamarr in The Conspirators (1944)

First she went to Paris, then met Louis B. Mayer in London. After he hired her, at his insistence, she changed her name to Hedy Lamarr, choosing the surname in homage to a beautiful film star of the silent era, Barbara La Marr,^[4] who had died in 1926 from tuberculosis.

In Hollywood, she was usually cast as glamorous and seductive. Her American debut was in Algiers (1938). Her many films include Boom Town (1940) with Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy, Comrade X with Gable, White Cargo (1942), and Tortilla Flat (1942) with Tracy and John Garfield, based on the novel by John Steinbeck. White Cargo, one of Lamarr's biggest hits at MGM, contains arguably her most famous film quote, "Tondelayo make tiffin". In 1941, she was cast alongside two other Hollywood beauties, Lana Turner and Judy Garland in the musical extravaganza Ziegfeld Girl.

Lamarr made 18 films from 1940 to 1949 even though she had two children during that time (in 1945 and 1947). After leaving MGM in 1945, she enjoyed her biggest success as Delilah in Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah, the highest-grossing film of 1949, with Victor Mature as the Biblical strongman. However, following her comedic turn opposite Bob Hope in My Favorite Spy (1951), her career went into decline. She appeared only sporadically in films after 1950, one of her last roles being that of Joan of Arc in Irwin Allen's critically panned epic The Story of Mankind (1957).

with Paul Henreid in The Conspirators (1944)

The publication of her autobiography Ecstasy and Me (1967) took place about a year after accusations of shoplifting, and a year after Andy Warhol's short film Hedy (1966), also known as The Shoplifter. The shoplifting charges coincided with a failed return to the screen in Picture Mommy Dead (1966). The role was ultimately filled by Zsa Zsa Gabor. Ecstasy and Me begins in a despondent mood, with this reference:

Frequency-hopping spread-spectrum invention[link]

Avant garde composer George Antheil, a son of German immigrants and neighbor of Lamarr, had experimented with automated control of musical instruments, including his music for Ballet Mécanique, originally written for Fernand Léger's 1924 abstract film. This score involved multiple player pianos playing simultaneously.

Lamarr took her idea to Antheil and together, Antheil and Lamarr submitted the idea of a secret communication system in June 1941. On August 11, 1942, US Patent 2,292,387 was granted to Antheil and "Hedy Kiesler Markey", Lamarr's married name at the time. This early version of frequency hopping used a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies and was intended to make radio-guided torpedoes harder for enemies to detect or jam. Although a presentation of the technique was soon made to the U.S. Navy, it met with opposition and was not adopted.^[5]

The idea was not implemented in the USA until 1962, when it was used by U.S. military ships during a blockade of Cuba after the patent had expired. Perhaps owing to this lag in development, the patent was little-known until 1997, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Lamarr an award for this contribution.^[1] It is reported that, in 1998, Ottawa wireless technology developer Wi-LAN, Inc. "acquired a 49 percent claim to the patent from Lamarr for an undisclosed amount of stock" (Eliza Schmidkunz, Inside GNSS),^[6] although expired patents have no economic value. Antheil had died in 1959.

Lamarr's and Antheil's frequency-hopping idea serves as a basis for modern spread-spectrum communication technology, such as Bluetooth, COFDM used in Wi-Fi network connections, and CDMA used in some cordless and wireless telephones.^[7] Blackwell, Martin, and Vernam's 1920 patent Secrecy Communication System (1598673) seems to lay the communications groundwork for Kiesler and Antheil's patent, which employed the techniques in the autonomous control of torpedoes.

Lamarr wanted to join the National Inventors Council, but was reportedly told by NIC member Charles F. Kettering and others that she could better help the war effort by using her celebrity status to sell War Bonds. She once raised $7,000,000 at just one event.^{[citation needed]}

Later years[link]

The 1970s were a decade of increasing seclusion for Lamarr. She was offered several scripts, television commercials, and stage projects, but none inspired her interest. In 1974, Lamarr filed an invasion of privacy lawsuit to the tune of $10 million for the unauthorized use of her name in the Mel Brooks satire Blazing Saddles; the case was settled out of court. Tired of the life of a celebrity and with her eyesight failing, Lamarr retreated from public life and settled in Miami Beach, Florida, in 1981.^[8]

For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Hedy Lamarr has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6247 Hollywood Blvd.^[9]

Personal life[link]

Lamarr became a naturalized citizen of the United States on April 10, 1953.

Marriages and romances[link]

She was briefly engaged to German actor Fred Doederlein, and later to actor George Montgomery in 1942. ^[10]

Lamarr was married to:

• Friedrich Mandl (1900–1977), married 1933–1937; chairman of Hirtenberger Patronen-Fabrik, a leading armaments firm founded by his father, Alexander Mandl. Mandl, partially of Jewish descent, was a supporter of Austrofascism, although not Nazism.
• Gene Markey (1895–1980), screenwriter and producer, married 1939–1941; son (adopted in 1941, after their divorce), James Lamarr Markey (b. 1939).^[11] When Lamarr and Markey divorced – she said they had only spent four evenings alone together in their marriage – the judge advised her to get to know any future husband longer than the four weeks she had known Markey.^{[citation needed]}
• John Loder (born John Muir Lowe, 1898–1988), actor, married 1943–47; two children: Anthony Loder (b. 1947) and Denise Loder (b. 1945). Loder adopted Hedy's son, James Lamarr Markey, and gave him his surname. James Lamarr Loder later challenged Hedy Lamarr's will in 2000, which did not mention him. He later dropped his suit against the estate in exchange for a reported lump-sum payment of $50,000. Anthony Loder is featured in the European documentary film Calling Hedy Lamarr (2004).^[12]
• Ernest "Ted" Stauffer (1909–1991), nightclub owner, restaurateur, and former bandleader, married 1951–1952.
• W. Howard Lee (1909–1981), a Texas oilman, married 1953–1960. He later married film star Gene Tierney.
• Lewis J. Boies (b. 1920), a lawyer (her divorce lawyer), married 1963–1965.

Controversies[link]

In 1965 Lamarr was arrested for shoplifting in Los Angeles; the charges were eventually dropped. In 1991 she was arrested on the same charge in Florida, this time for $21.48 worth of laxatives and eye drops. She pleaded "no contest" to avoid a court appearance, and in return for a promise to refrain from breaking any laws for a year, the charges were once again dropped.^[13]

According to her autobiography, Ecstasy and Me (1966), once while running away from Friedrich Mandl, she slipped into a brothel and hid in an empty room. While her husband searched the brothel, a man entered the room and she had sex with him so she could remain hidden. She was finally successful in escaping when she hired a new maid who resembled her; she drugged the maid and used her uniform as a disguise to escape.^[14] Lamarr later sued the publisher, saying that many of the anecdotes in the book, which was described by a judge as "filthy, nauseating, and revolting", were fabricated by its ghost writer, Leo Guild.^[15] She was also sued in Federal Court by Gene Ringgold, who asserts that the actress's autobiography contains material from an article he wrote about her for a magazine Screen Facts in 1965.^[16]

For several years beginning in 1997, the boxes of CorelDRAW's software suites were graced by a large Corel-drawn image of Hedy Lamarr. The picture won CorelDRAW's yearly software suite cover design contest in 1996. Lamarr sued Corel for using the image without her permission. Corel countered that she did not own rights to the image. The parties reached an undisclosed settlement in 1998.^[17][18]

Death[link]

John Hodiak and Lamarr in A Lady Without Passport (1950)

Lamarr died in Casselberry, Florida, on January 19, 2000, aged 86, from natural causes. Her son Anthony Loder took her ashes to Austria and spread them in the Vienna Woods, in accordance with her last wishes.^[12]

Other[link]

In 2003, the Boeing corporation ran a series of recruitment ads featuring Hedy Lamarr as a woman of science. No reference to her film career was made in the ads.^[19]

The 2010 New York Public Library's exhibit: “Thirty Years of Photography at the New York Public Library” includes a photo of a topless Lamarr (ca. 1930) by Austrian-born American photographer Trude Fleischmann.^[20]

An off-Broadway play, Frequency Hopping, features the lives of Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil. The play was written and staged by Elyse Singer in 2008, and the script won a prize for best new play about science and technology from STAGE.^[8][21]

Filmography[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Barton, Ruth. Hedy Lamarr: The Most Beautiful Woman in Film. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-8131-2604-3.
• Rhodes, Richard. Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World. Doubleday, 2011. ISBN 0-385-53438-8.

See also[link]

• List of Austrians
• Inventor's Day

Footnotes[link]

References[link]

• Hedy Lamarr, Ecstasy and Me
• "Hedy Lamarr", Half-Life2.net(December 13, 2004)[2] Retrieved on 2008-12-21
• Robert A. Scholtz, "The Origins of Spread-Spectrum Communications," IEEE Transactions on Communications, Vol. 30, No. 5, May 1982, p. 822.
• Robert Price, "Further Notes and Anecdotes on Spread-Spectrum Origins," IEEE Transactions on Communications, Vol. 31, No. 1, January 1983, p. 85.
• Ivanis, Dan (November 2003). "The stars come out – Recruiting ad featuring Hedy Lamarr creates 'buzz't". Boeing Frontiers Online. The Boeing Company. http://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/archive/2003/november/i_nan.html. Retrieved 2009-04-20. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Hedy Lamarr

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Hedy Lamarr

• Hedy Lamarr Site
• Hedy Lamarr foundation
• Hedy Lamarr fansite
• Hedy Lamarr at the Internet Movie Database
• Hedy Lamarr at the TCM Movie Database
• Hedy Lamarr at Reel Classics
• Inventions.org page on Hedy Lamarr
• Interview with Hedy Lamarr biographer Patrick Agan
• Advanced Weaponry of the Stars by Prof. Hans-Joachim Braun Invention & Technology article about Hedy Lamarr's patent
• Annual Inventor's Day on her Birthday
• CorelDRAW splash screens
• Calling Hedy Lamarr (2004)
• Photographs and literature

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William Powell
from the trailer for Libeled Lady (1936)
Born	William Horatio Powell (1892-07-29)July 29, 1892 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Died	March 5, 1984(1984-03-05) (aged 91) Palm Springs, California
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1911-1955
Spouse	Eileen Wilson (m.1915-1930; divorced) Carole Lombard (m.1931-1933; divorced) Diana Lewis (m.1940-1984; his death)

William Horatio Powell (July 29, 1892 – March 5, 1984)^[1] was an American actor.

A major star at MGM, he was paired with Myrna Loy in 14 films, including the popular Thin Man series based on the novels of Dashiell Hammett in which Powell and Loy played Nick and Nora Charles. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor three times: for The Thin Man (1934), My Man Godfrey (1936), and Life with Father (1947). William Powell was not related to David Powell, Dick Powell, Eleanor Powell, or Jane Powell.

Childhood[link]

An only child, Powell was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Nettie Manila (née Brady) and Horatio Warren Powell, on July 29, 1892. His father was born in West Middlesex, Pennsylvania (where William H. Powell spent his boyhood summers), to William S. and Harriet Powell.^[2] Powell showed an early aptitude for performing. In 1907, he moved with his family to Kansas City, Missouri, where he graduated from Central High School in 1910. The Powells lived a few blocks away from the Carpenters, whose daughter Harlean evolved into Hollywood's Jean Harlow, although Powell would not meet her until both were established actors.

Film career[link]

After high school, he left home for New York and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts at the age of 18. In 1912, Powell graduated from the AADA, and worked in some vaudeville and stock companies.^[3] After several successful experiences on the Broadway stage, he began his Hollywood career in 1922, playing a small role as an evil henchman of Professor Moriarty in a production of Sherlock Holmes with John Barrymore. His most memorable role in silent movies was as a bitter film director opposite Emil Jannings' Academy Award-winning performance as a fallen general in The Last Command (1928), which led to Powell's first starring role as amateur detective Philo Vance in The Canary Murder Case (1929).