HEDY LAMARR BIOGRAPHY & FILMOGRAPHY:
Hedy Lamarr was born November 9th, 1913 in Vienna, Austria as Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler. Born into a wealthy Viennese banking family, she was discoverrred by an Austrain film director as a young teenager.
In 1933, she gained the publics notice with her role in the sexy Czech film, "Ecstasy". She got married to Fritz Mandl and was educated in the trade of arm manufacturer which was the line of work her husband worked in. Her husband was very controlling and possessive and so she decided to drug him and run away to London in 1937. Her marriage came to an end and soon after she met Louis B. Mayer of MGM in London. He hired her and changed her name to Hedy Lamarr.
Hedy signed a contract with the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio and began her career in Hollywood as Hedy Lamarr. Upon the release of her first American film, "Algiers", she became an immediate box-office sensation.
At a Hollywood dinner party in 1940 that she met George Antheil, a film scorer andcomposer, together they came up with the concept of frequency shifting, also known as frequency hopping. Together they patented their idea in August 1942, and intended it to be used against the Nazis as part of the American effort in World War II. However, the military did not use the frequency shifting idea during that war, and they first used the technology in 1962, during the Cuban Missile crisis. By then, the patent had expired, George Antheil had died, and Lamarr never received any profit from her idea.
In Hollywood, she appeared in many films during the 1930's and 40's, including, "Lady of the Tropics" (1939) starring with Robert Taylor and Joseph Schildkraut, "Boom Town" (1940) co-starring Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Frank Morgan and Spencer Tracy, "White Cargo" (1942) co-starring Walter Pidgeon, Frank Morgan, Richard Carlson and Reginald Owen and "Tortilla Flat" (1942) starring with Spencer Tracy, Frank Morgan, John Garfield, Akim Tamiroff and Sheldon Leonard and her biggest success came in, "Samson and Delilah" (1949) starring alongside Victor Mature, Angela Lansbury, Henry Wilcoxon, Russ Tamblyn and George Sanders.
Lamarr’s film career began to decline in the 1950's. Her last film was in (1958) "The Female Animal" sharing the spotlight with Jane Powell and Jan Sterling and shortly after retired. In 1965 she made headlines by being arrested for shoplifting and again in 1991. In 1966 she published her tell-all autobiography, Ecstasy and Me: My Life as a Woman, but she later sued her ghostwriters for misrepresentation. She later also had some success as a songwriter in the 1980's.
At the heigth of her film career Hedy was considered by many to be the most beautiful woman in the world!
She was finally recognized for her contribution by an Electric Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award for technological innovation in March 1997. Lamarr was married six times and had two children, Anthony and Denise, with her third husband, the actor John Loder. She also adopted a son, James. In the later years of her life, Lamarr lived quietly in Orlando, Florida. She was known as one of the most beautiful woman in Films and also the inventor of the first form of spread spectrum. She passed away January 19, 2000 in Altamonte Springs, Florida at the age of 86. Following her wishes, her son Anthony Loder took her ashes back to Austria to be spread in the Vienna Woods.
Filmography
1989 Entertaining the Troops
1977 That's Action
1965 The Love Goddesses
1957 The Female Animal
1957 The Story of Mankind
1953 L'Amante di Paride"
1951 My Favorite Spy
1950 Copper Canyon
1950 A Lady Without Passport
1949 Samson and Delilah
1948 Let's Live a Little
1947 Dishonored Lady
1946 The Strange Woman
1945 Her Highness and the Bellboy
1944 Experiment Perilous
1944 The Conspirators
1943 The Heavenly Body
1943 Show Business at War
1943 Tortilla Flat
1942 Crossroads
1942 White Cargo
1941 Come Live with Me
1941 Ziegfeld Girl
1941 H.M. Pulham, Esq.
1940 Boom Town
1940 Comrade X
1940 The Miracle of Sound
1939 I Take This Woman
1939 Lady of the Tropics
1938 Algiers
1932 Ecstasy
1931 Die Koffer des Herrn O.F.
1931 Die Blumenfrau von Lindenau
1931 Man braucht kein Geld
1930 Geld auf der Straße
