GREAT ACTRESSES: Hedy Lamarr

Here is a tribute to legendary actress Hedy Lamarr.

Hedy Lamarr (born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, 1914-2000) was an Austrian-born American film actress and inventor.

At the beginning of World War II, Lamarr and composer George Antheil developed a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes, which used spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to defeat the threat of jamming by the Axis powers. Although the US Navy did not adopt the technology until the 1960s, the principles of their work are arguably incorporated into Bluetooth technology, and are similar to methods used in legacy versions of CDMA and Wi-Fi. This work led to their induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.

After a brief early film career in Czechoslovakia, including the controversial Ecstasy (1933) in which she is seen swimming and running nude, she fled from her husband, a wealthy Austrian ammunition manufacturer, and secretly moved to Paris.

After arriving in Paris in 1937, she met Louis B. Mayer. Mayer persuaded her to change her name to Hedy Lamarr (she had been known as "the Ecstasy lady"), choosing the surname in homage to the beautiful silent film star, Barbara La Marr. He brought her to Hollywood in 1938 and began promoting her as the "world's most beautiful woman" and offered her a movie contract and she became a film star from the late 1930s to the 1950s.

Lamarr appeared in numerous feature films, including Algiers (1938), Lady of the Tropics (1939), Boom town (1940), I take this woman (1940), Comrade X (1940), Come live with me (1941), Ziegfeld girl (1941), H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941), Tortilla flats (1942), Crossroads (1942), Tondelaya (1942), The heavenly body (1944), The conspirators (1944), Experiment perilous (1944), Her Higness and the bellboy (1945), The strange woman (1946), Dishonored lady (1947), Let's live a little (1948), Samson and Delilah (1949), A lady without passport (1950), Copper Canyon (1950), My favorite spy (1951), and Love of three queens (1954).

According to one viewer, when her face first appeared on the screen, “everyone gasped...Lamarr's beauty literally took one's breath away.”

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. When asked for an autograph, she wondered why anyone would want it.

The 1970s were a decade of increasing seclusion for Lamarr. She was offered several scripts, television commercials, and stage projects, but none piqued her interest. With her eyesight failing, Lamarr retreated from public life and settled in Miami Beach, Florida, in 1981.

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

Enjoy Hedy Lamarr's charismatic beauty!