Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story

Front Row at the Movies by Shirrel Rhoades

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The first time I saw Viennese actress Hedy Lamarr on the screen was in the silly 1951 comedy “My Favorite Spy,” starring opposite Bob Hope. Even as a kid, I thought she was extraordinarily beautiful.

Later, as an adult, I saw her once-banned film “Ecstasy,” the one in which she took a sensuous nude swim. This 1933 black-and-white romance is often cited as the first non-pornographic film to depict a woman in the throes of orgasm. Her first husband spent the equivalent of $5 million buying up prints of the film to keep people from seeing his naked wife.

Hedy Lamarr went on to be married six times, made thirty-plus feature films, and received several patents for her inventions.

MGM’s Louis B. Mayer promoted her as the “world’s most beautiful woman.”

Among her movies were “Algiers” with Charles Boyer, “Comrade X” with Clark Gable, “Tortilla Flat” with Spenser Tracy, “White Cargo” with Walter Pigeon, and “Sampson and Delilah” with Victor Mature. She was generally typecast as an exotic seductress.

Born Hedwig Eva Kiesler, MGM changed her name to distance her from that nudie Czech-Austrian film. In 1974 she would sue Warner Bros. for parodying her stage name in the Mel Brooks comedy “Blazing Saddles (remember the character Hedley Lamarr?). The studio settled the lawsuit for a nominal sum and issued an apology for “almost using her name.”

Lamarr was a “tinkerer.” One of her many inventions was a secure, radio-controlled torpedo guidance system using a frequency-hopping spread spectrum. That idea contributed to the development of Bluetooth and WiFi, but the US Navy waited until her patent lapsed, thus paying her no money.

Unable to rekindle her movie career, she took to seclusion in Florida, only communicating by telephone – somewhat reminiscent of Howard Hughes, one of her mentors.

All this is examined in “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story,” a documentary written and directed by Alexandra Dean and produced by Susan Sarandon. Audio recordings by a Forbes magazine writer form the basis for this telling of Lamarr’s story.

“Bombshell” is currently showing at Tropic Cinema.

Alexandra Dean’s documentary covers it all, from Lamarr’s sexpot image to her brainy inventions, from her addiction to methamphetamines to her 1966 arrest for shoplifting $86 worth of merchandise while carrying checks in the amount of $14,000 in her purse.

As one movie historian put it, “Her tragedy was that she was in the wrong business, precisely that business that promotes beauty over brains – the movie business.”

As Hedy Lamarr got older, she resorted to plastic surgery in an attempt to preserve her beauty. It didn’t work. But moviegoers can always view her striking image up there on the silver screen.

As for her inventions, the guidance system would be worth an estimated $30 billion today. She died in near poverty.

Email Shirrel: srhoades@aol.com