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(November 9, 1913 – January 19, 2000)
was an Austrian-born American 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.
After her flight from Mandl, she met Louis B. Mayer in London. After
he hired her, at his insistence 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.
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. 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.
Her biggest success came as Delilah in Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and
Delilah (1949) with Victor Mature as the Biblical strongman. Samson
and Delilah was the highest-grossing film of 1949. |
