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| Birth Name(s) : Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler |
Date of Birth: November 9, 1913 |
| Status:
Single
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Partner:
N/A |
| Profession:
Actor |
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Full Hedy Lamarr Biography
| Hedwig Eva Kiesler from Vienna in Austria was a student of the theatre director 'Max Reinhardt' in Berlin. Since 1930 she worked in Czechoslovakian and German cinema productions; her most famous movie was "Extase (1932)" which converted her to 'Modern Eva' in 1933 and also gave her the opportunity to go to Hollywood where she was contracted by 'MGM'. 'MGM' did not only change her artistic name to 'Hedy Lamarr' but also prepared a new image of an elegant but cool and adventurous woman for her like e.g. in "Algiers (1938)" or "White Cargo (1942)". But as Hollywood did not allow her more but decorative roles she left the business definitely in 1957. |
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Additional Hedy Lamarr Biography
Hedy Lamarr (November 9, 1913 – January 19, 2000) was an Austrian-born American Jewish actress and communications technology innovator. Though known primarily for her great beauty and her successful film career, she also co-invented the first form of spread spectrum, a key to modern wireless communication.
Lamarr was born as Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna, Austria. While married to her first husband, Friedrich Mandl, aka Fritz Mandl Budde, an arms manufacturer, she became educated technically in her husband's business. Mandl was 13 years older than Lamarr.
Lamarr had already appeared in several European films, including Ecstasy (1933), A Czech film, in which she played a love-hungry young wife of an indifferent old husband. Closeups of her face in orgasm, and long shots of her running nude through the woods, gave the film notoriety. (In reality, the looks of passion were looks of pain, as the director poked her with a pin to get the desire effect.) (Robert Osbourne, TCM) Mandl bought up as many copies of the film as he could possibly find, as he objected to her nudity, as well as "the expression on her face."
In Hollywood, she was usually cast as glamorous and seductive. Her many films include Algiers (1938), White Cargo (1942), and Tortilla Flat (1942), based on the novel by John Steinbeck. In 1941 she was cast alongside two other Hollywood beauties, Lana Turner and Judy Garland in the musical extravaganza Ziegfeld Girl.
For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Hedy Lamarr has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6247 Hollywood Blvd.
Hedy Lamarr (under her then-married name of Hedy Kiesler Markey) and composer George Antheil received U.S. Patent 2,292,387 for their Secret Communication System on August 11, 1942. 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.
This idea was controversial and ahead of its time and technology. The technology was not implemented until 1962, when it was used by U.S. military ships during a blockade of Cuba, after the patent had expired. Neither Lamarr nor Antheil (who died in 1959) made any money from the patent. Perhaps due to this lag in development, the patent was little-known until 1997, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Lamarr an award for this contribution.
Lamarr wanted to join the National Inventors Council but she was told 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.
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.
In 2005, the first Inventor's Day in German-speaking countries was held in her honor on November 9, on what would have been her 92nd birthday.
Briefly engaged to the actor George Montgomery in 1942, Lamarr was married to:
- Friedrich Mandl (1900–1977), married 1933–37; chairman of Hirtenberger Patronen-Fabrik, a leading armaments firm founded by his father, Alexander Mandl. Mandl, although partially of Jewish descent, was a supporter of political fascism, although not Nazism.
- Gene Markey (1895-1980), screenwriter and producer, married 1939–41; son (adopted in 1941, after their divorce), James Lamarr Markey (b. 1939). When Lamarr and Markey divorced — she claimed 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. Previously, he was married to actresses Joan Bennett and Myrna Loy.
- 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 lump-sum payment of $50,000.
- Ernest "Ted" Stauffer (1909-1991), nightclub owner, restaurateur, and former bandleader, married 1951–52.
- W. Howard Lee (1909–1981), a Texas oilman, married 1953–60. In 1960, he married film star Gene Tierney.
- Lewis J. Boies (b. 1920), a lawyer, married 1963–65. They were divorced after Lamarr claimed he had threatened her with a plastic baseball bat and wiffle ball. |
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Hedy Lamarr Quote(s)
| I must quit marrying men who feel inferior to me. Somewhere there must be a man who could be my husband and not feel inferior. I need a superior inferior man. |
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