Hedy Lamarr

Hedy Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler to a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria and died in Altamonte Springs, Florida (near Orlando).

While married to her first husband, Friedrich Mandl, aka Fritz Mandl, an arms manufacturer, she socialized with Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. She also became educated technically in her husband's business. Mandl was obsessed with his wife and never let her out of his sight. She hated him and his Nazi friends and finally escaped to London, reportedly by drugging him and the French maid he had hired to spy on her. Ironically, Mandl was from a Jewish background. Whether the Nazis ever knew about Mandl's and Lamarr's Jewish origins has been debated by historians; Friedrich Mandl came from an extremely assimilated and well-known and highly influential family, and it appears that he overtly hid his Jewish origins and converted to Christianity under evident pressure. Many also say that Lamarr's co-invention of spread spectrum as a potential World War II military application was sparked by her desire to do anything in her power to help see Nazism defeated.

After her flight, she met Louis B. Mayer in London. After he hired her, she changed her name to Hedy Lamarr, choosing the surname in homage to a famously beautiful film star of the silent era, Barbara LaMarr, who had died of a drug overdose in 1926. She had already appeared in several European films, including Ecstasy (1933), in which she played a love-hungry young wife of an indifferent old husband. Closeups of her face in passion, and long shots of her running nude through the woods, gave the film notoriety. She also gained notoriety as one of the first actresses to bare her breasts in a major film. Mandl bought up as many copies of the film as he could possiblyfind, as he objected to her nudity, as well as "the expression on her face."

In Hollywood, she appeared in many films, usually cast as glamorous and seductive, including Algiers (1938), White Cargo, and Tortilla Flat (both 1942), based on the novel by John Steinbeck. In 1941 she was cast alongside two other Hollywood beauties Lana Turner and Judy Garland in a musical extravaganza Ziegfeld Girl (1941), Her biggest success came in Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah (1949) with Victor Mature as the Biblical strongman. Lamarr was cast more for her stunning exotic beauty - which the 1 October 1938 issue of Vogue described as a "fatal Sunday supplement beauty, somnambulistic and aloof" - than her ability as an actress.

Hedy Lamarr became a naturalized citizen of the United States on April 10, 1953.

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Hedy Lamar Filmography These are just a small sampling of her film work. She did over two dozen films. Show Business at War Copper Canyon Samson and Delilah We Need No Money Ecstasy Algiers White Cargo Tortilla Flat Comrade X I Take This Woman Boom Town Come Live with Me Ziegfield Girl The marriages of Hedy Lamarr Friedrich Mandl 1933–37 Gene Markey 1939–41 John Loder 1943–47 Ernest "Ted" Stauffer 1951–52 W. Howard Lee 1953–60 Lewis J. Boies 1963–65