- Somaya Nasr
- BBC News Arabic
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January 19th marks the anniversary of the death of Hedy Lamar, who was famous for the charming beauty that served as her ticket to entering the world of Hollywood art in its golden age.
But in addition to that beautiful face and strong female presence, Lamar had a sharp intellect and an ability to innovate that enabled her to invent a technology that is still used to this day in many modern scientific applications.
So what is the story of Lamar, who fled from Europe to become a brilliant movie star in America, and who tried to change the course of World War II with her invention, but because of her beauty and fame, and perhaps just being a woman, was not taken seriously?
International fame and notoriety
Lamar, whose real name was Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, was born in the Austrian capital, Vienna, to a well-to-do Jewish family, in 1914.
She was passionate regarding acting and theater from a young age, and she was also passionate regarding technology and inventions from an early age, to the extent that she was able to disassemble her music box and put it back together when she was five years old.
Lamar took acting lessons in Vienna, and participated in adolescence in small roles in some films and plays in Austria and Germany.
But it was her starring role in the movie “Ecstase” (Ecstase in Czech, Ekstase in German) by Czech director Gustav Macacey at the age of 18 that earned her international fame and notoriety at the same time.
The film was considered in most European countries a creative work of art, and won an award at the Venice Film Festival. But the Pope condemned him, and he received negative reactions in the United States because of the appearance of Lamar naked in some scenes, and the appearance of her face in a scene of sexual connotations.
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Lamar in the controversial Czech film “Ecstase”.
Lamar then participated in many theatrical roles in Vienna, especially the play “Empress Elisabeth of Austria”, which achieved great success, and won her heroine many admirers.
One such admirer was industrial magnate Friedrich Mandel, who was dubbed the “Henry Ford of Austria”. Mandel owned a huge munitions factory and had strong ties to the Nazi and fascist regimes in Germany and Italy, respectively.
In 1933, she married Lamar Mandel, who was regarding 15 years older than her, despite her parents’ opposition because of his links to Hitler and Muslini, and lived a luxurious life in a huge castle.
By 1937, Lamar might no longer bear life with her husband, who was very jealous of her, as well as life in Vienna, amid increasing persecution of the Jews, so she decided to flee from the two and travel to London, where she stayed for a few months with her relatives.
“The most beautiful woman in the world”
In London I met Louis B. Mayer, head of the famous Metro-Golden-Mayer (MGM) studio, who was constantly traveling to Europe in search of new talent.
Meyer offered her a job with MGM and persuaded her to change her name to distance herself from her reputation as an “ecstasy girl”, telling her what he told other Jewish actors at the time, not to talk regarding their religion.
Meyer’s wife, who greatly admired her, suggested she change her name to Hedy Lamarr, following the famous silent film hero Barbara Lamarr.
Meyer took her to Hollywood in 1938, and began promoting her as “the most beautiful woman in the world”.
Lamar began her career in Hollywood with the movie “Algiers” (“Algeria”), which was a great success and drew attention to her beauty from her first scene on the silver screen.
Lamar’s pictures became published on all the covers of art magazines, and many women in Hollywood began imitating her hairstyle and the way she applied cosmetics, and many men sought to approach her – and it seemed among them was John Kennedy, whom Lamar said she dated before he became president of America .
She later participated in many successful films, such as Boom Town, White Cargo, Comrade X, and Ziegfeld Girl.
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Hedy Lamarr in a scene from “Comrade X” with Clark Gable
Meyer Lamar limited roles that focus on her beauty and femininity, which bored her, even though she used to work long hours, sometimes up to 16 hours a day.
Lamar the inventor
Lamar found solace in her favorite pastime, invention, which she pursued following studio work.
She became acquainted with aircraft designer Howard Hughes, and a romantic relationship developed between them, as well as their common love of science and inventions. Lamarr admired Hughes’ mind, and would go to his factory and watch how planes were designed and built.
Lamar mentioned in a press interview conducted with her in 1990 that Hughes was trying at that time to increase the speed of his planes and that she helped him to do so, as she suggested that he change the design of the wings, following she had been studying pictures of bird wings and fish fins famous for their speed.
In her spare time, Lamar invented a few things, including a pill that dissolved in water to turn it into a soft drink, but her invention was not successful due to the bad taste of that drink – by Lamar’s own admission.
At the beginning of the 1940s, the Axis forces were making great progress on several fronts, and Britain, with its conventional weapons, was finding it very difficult to fend off the advancing German weapons.
Naval boats needed to control anti-ship and anti-submarine torpedo missiles and change course at times, and then communication between them and those missiles was necessary. But wireless communication is not secure, and the enemy can detect and jam its frequency.
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Lamarr says she proposed an idea to the famous aircraft designer Howard Hughes that helped him increase the speed of his planes
Lamar had the idea of creating a secret method of communication that might not be jammed: instead of using a single frequency, she suggested using many frequencies that were constantly changing in sync with each other, and therefore might not be disturbed, a technique he called “frequency hopping”.
“The idea for this invention came to me when I was thinking of creating something that would help bring some balance to Britain,” Lamarr said in a newspaper interview in 1990.
Rejection and ridicule
Lamar did not know how to apply this idea, which experts later described as genius, so she used an innovative composer named George Antheil.
Antheil was not an engineer, but he was an expert on how pianos work and how they are tuned. Antheil suggested using two small piano-like cylinders that would start to rotate at the same time and in the same frequency pattern to produce a sort of secret code that would enable ships to communicate with torpedoes.
The two presented the idea to the American National Inventors Council, which considered it genius, and advised it to communicate with Professor Sam McOwen, who designed the electronic component of the invention.
The patent was registered to Hedvig Kiesler-Markey (Lamar’s name during her second marriage to screenwriter Jean Markey) and George Antheil in August 1942.
The documentary “Bomshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story” released in late 2017 notes that Lamarr and Antheil donated their invention to the National Inventors Council, which in turn gave it to the US Navy.
The film quotes Antheil as saying that the Navy rejected the invention and laughed at the idea of ”putting pianos on torpedo bombs”.
The film indicates that Lamarr wanted to continue developing the invention following the Navy rejected it, but Antheil was not enthusiastic.
Perhaps Lamar realized then that the only way she might help was to use her beauty and her fame—the only qualifications society allowed her to use at the time.
Lamar managed to sell war bonds to finance US forces worth regarding $ 25 million (equivalent to regarding $ 343 million now), according to the documentary, and she was also involved in parties entertaining soldiers – although she had not yet obtained American citizenship.
To make matters worse, later in 1942 the US government confiscated the patent as “a property of an enemy alien”.
“I don’t understand, when they used me to sell war bonds, I wasn’t a citizen of an enemy country, and when I invented something for this country, I became a citizen of an enemy country?” Lamar asked disapprovingly in a 1990 interview.
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Hedy Lamarr with Spencer Tracy in the movie “I Take This Woman,” which she starred in shortly before she invented frequency hopping technology.
“Hollywood broke my heart”
The films that were shown to her at that time were of the type of “third-rate films” designed by the MGM studio to entertain and entertain the soldiers.
Lamarr wanted more challenging roles, but realized that she would not be given the same status as actresses such as Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. “They think I’m a bad actress. Hollywood broke my heart,” Lamar said later.
She tried to break free from the constraints of MGM and Louis B. Mayer, and decided to make her own films – something that was not welcome at the time. She produced two films, The Strange Woman in 1946 and Dishonored Lady in 1947, but they were not commercially successful.
Her most notable role was the role of Delilah in Samson and Delilah, which was a huge hit in 1950 and won two Academy Awards.
Soon, Lamar’s star began to wane, and the roles she played following that met with little success.
On a personal note, she was unhappy in any of her six marriages, none of which lasted long, and lost a lot of her money producing her 1954 epic “Loves of Three Queens”.
She underwent many plastic surgeries, many of which failed, and the media mocked her appearance following she was described in her youth as the most beautiful woman in the world.
Lamar lived in isolation during the last three decades of her life, and the phone was the only means of communication with her son, daughter, and friends, until she passed away on January 19, 2000.
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Lamarr was confined to the roles of one-dimensional glamor women
A forgotten legacy and late recognition
In 1990, journalist Fleming Meeks interviewed Lamarr over the phone following he heard regarding her invention during a conversation between his father, an astrophysicist, and a friend of his father’s, an expert in secure communications.
Meeks spoke with Lamarr five times on the phone, and the article he published in Forbes marked the first time that Lamarr’s invention had been mentioned in the media.
Mix kept the tapes of his dialogue, which benefited greatly from the “Bomshell” documentary filmmakers.
In these recordings, Lamar states that the US Navy used her technology before the patent rights expired, yet Lamar did not receive any money for it.
This is supported by what the designer of the floating “Sonobuoy” device, which is used to monitor submarines, wrote, that the US Navy gave him a patent for Lamar’s patent before the expiry of his rights, and that he used its technology in designing the device and in designing drones.
Those working in the telecommunications industry were among the first to pay attention to the story of Lamar’s invention, as he had already started using “frequency hopping” technology in GPS, broadband technology (Wi-Fi), wireless Bluetooth communications, and even in the satellite industry. industrial and military industries.
In 1997, the US Navy, military giant Lockheed Martin, and satellite manufacturer Melstar decided to award Lamar an award for her genius idea. The award was received by her son on her behalf, and he said that his mother was very happy.
Lamar wanted people to remember her as someone who contributed to humanity, and now she’s finally getting some recognition.
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Alexandra Dean (left), director of the documentary “Bomshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story”, with American superstar and executive producer Susan Sarandon during a private screening of the film in London
The documentary film Bomshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, which is primarily written, directed and produced by women, played a major role in introducing this aspect of Lamarr’s life and personality.
Perhaps the story of Hedy Lamarr is similar to the stories of many women in the field of science, engineering, technology and sports, who were not taken seriously, and many other women who were placed by society in the mold of the beautiful female who is not good at anything at all, and is not expected to be good at anything at all, except to be female beautiful.