Dakota Beacon

Our entertainment world has been graced by many talented and ingenious immigrants.  There were many who fled Europe as Hitler brought oppression to his own people and other minorities as well.  Hollywood was the destination for many of these people.  One of our loveliest film stars of the era was Hedy Lamarr.

We don’t have any source for a record of Hedy Lamarr’s IQ, but suffice it to say it was very, very high.  One of Hollywood’s most beautiful women, Lamarr also had a unique talent for math and a creative inventing talent as well.  Her interest in math and science, fostered by her father when she was a child in Austria, led her to patent technology which we use today in Bluetooth.  But we should go back a bit.

Hedy was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna on September 9, 1914.  Both of her parents were Jewish - her father was a banker and her mother a pianist.  She was an only child.  At age 12 she won a beauty contest.  Her father, also interested in science and invention, took many long walks with her, explaining how many technologies worked.  Always fascinated by theater and film, she took a job as a script girl at age 16 and then picked up a part as an extra in a film, then a speaking part in a movie in 1931.  She got the lead in a comedy in 1932, No Money Needed, and then she played a young wife of an older man indifferent to her, in Ecstasy.  This role catapulted her to international stardom.  However, she felt she had been manipulated by the director and lost interest in her film career. She was 18.  Although a major hit in Europe, the film was banned in the United States.  In Germany it was also banned because she was a Jew.  

At about the same time as the movie Ecstasy premiered, she was starring in the title role of Sissy in a stage production about the Austrian empress, in Vienna.  One of the “stage-door Johnnies” who clamored to meet her was a wealthy Austiran arms dealer, Friedrich Mandl.  She became infatuated with him.  Against her parents’ wishes she married him.  It did not go well.  Mandl, was, according to her account, a very controlling person and her life was basically confined to his castle.  He bought up all the copies of Ecstasy he could find and destroyed them.  He forced her to convert to Catholicism - probably because being half Jewish himself, he was very sensitive as Hitler and Mussolini began their antisemitic pogroms.  He stopped her acting career. However, she did accompany her husband to meetings where various military technologies were discussed and she listened carefully.

She could no longer bear her marriage so she disguised herself as her maid and left, taking her mother with her.  She managed to get to the United States through her contact with Louis B. Mayer, who was in London at the time.  He signed her and she changed her name.  Hedy Kiesler became Hedy Lamarr.  Mayer publicized her as “the most beautiful woman in the world” and her first film in the U.S. was the movie Algiers co-starring with Charles Boyer (1937).  

Lamarr was usually cast as the beautiful, exotic temptress.  She did not find this very challenging and was bored with much of the work she was given.  Her often pensive expression suggests a complex nature.  A refugee from Hitler’s Europe, she wished to help the Allied cause and sought to join an inventors’ group, but was dissuaded, being told she could do more good by selling war bonds.  This she did - she sold an incredible $350 million-plus (in today’s funds) in a period of 10 days.  She continued to invent things, however, and eventually came up with a frequency-skipping signal which is used today in communications equipment.  Its original purpose, however, was for submarine technology.  She also worked on airplane design with pioneer Howard Hughes - who told his staff to give her whatever she needed.  

Lamarr was married six times.  After she divorced her sixth husband in 1965, she remained single thereafter, until her death 35 years later.  Toward the end of her life she became very secluded, seldom if ever coming out in public and even spoke with her children only on the telephone.  She died at age 85 in Florida, in January of 2000.  Her contributions were far more extensive than those of entertainment.  She was an American patriot and a valuable contributor to the World War II war effort.  Her remains were cremated and scattered in her beloved Vienna Woods.

Hedy Lamarr, the Inventor:  https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=youtube+-+hedy+lamarr&docid=608020515884827696&mid=7B6409BC9F96F823D3667B6409BC9F96F823D366&view=detail&FORM=VIRE

VIsions of Hedy Lamarr:  https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=youtube+-+hedy+lamarr&&view=detail&mid=85DBCE36DA9190B2047985DBCE36DA9190B20479&&FORM=VDRVRV

An interview with Hedy Lamarr (1969):  https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=youtube+-+hedy+lamarr&&view=detail&mid=991571CBD26B81D8051A991571CBD26B81D8051A&&FORM=VDRVRV

Some movies starring Hedy Lamarr:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVsheO9YO0Q

Full movie - Dishonored Lady (1941):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaEkZT_AKXw

Full movie - Comrade X (1940):  https://ok.ru/video/270546242211

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