Hedy Lamarr (November 9, 1913 â?? January 19, 2000)
[edit] Movie career in Hollywood
in Boom Town (1940)
In Hollywood, she was usually cast as glamorous and seductive. Her American debut was in Algiers (1938). Her many films include Boom Town (1940), White Cargo (1942), and Tortilla Flat (1942), based on the novel by John Steinbeck. White Cargo, one of Lamarr's biggest hits at MGM, contains arguably her most famous film quote, "I am Tondelayo". In 1941, she was cast alongside two other Hollywood beauties, Lana Turner and Judy Garland in the musical extravaganza Ziegfeld Girl.
She made 18 films 1940-1949 even though she had two children during that time (1945, 1947). She left MGM in 1945; Lamarr enjoyed her biggest success as Delilah in Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah, the highest-grossing film of 1949, with Victor Mature as the Biblical strongman. However, following her comedic turn opposite Bob Hope in My Favorite Spy (1951), her career went into decline. She appeared only sporadically in films after 1950, one of her last roles being that of Joan of Arc in Irwin Allen's critically panned epic The Story of Mankind (1957).
The publication of her autobiography Ecstasy and Me (1967) took place about a year after accusations of shoplifting, and a year after Andy Warhol's short film Hedy (1966), also known as The Shoplifter. The controversy surrounding the shoplifting charges coincided with an aborted return to the screen in Picture Mommy Dead (1966). The role was ultimately filled by Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Lamarr became a naturalized citizen of the United States on April 10, 1953.
[edit] Frequency-hopped spread spectrum invention
Avant garde composer George Antheil, a son of German immigrants and neighbor of Lamarr, had experimented with automated control of instruments. Together, he and Lamarr submitted the idea of a Secret Communication System in June 1941. On 11 August 1942, U.S. Patent 2,292,387 was granted to Antheil and Hedy Kiesler Markey. This early version of frequency hopping used a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies and was intended to make radio-guided torpedoes harder for enemies to detect or jam.
The idea was impractical, ahead of its time, and not feasible due to the state of mechanical technology in 1942. It was not implemented in the USA until 1962, when it was used by U.S. military ships during a blockade of Cuba,[4] after the patent had expired. Neither Lamarr nor Antheil (who died in 1959) made any money from the patent. Perhaps due to this lag in development, the patent was little-known until 1997, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Lamarr an award for this contribution.[1]
Lamarr's and Antheil's frequency-hopping idea serves as a basis for modern spread-spectrum communication technology, e.g. CDMA used in devices ranging from cordless telephones to WiFi network connections.[5] Similar patents had been granted to others earlier, like in Germany in 1935 to Telefunken engineers Paul Kotowski and Kurt Dannehl who also received U.S. Patent 2,158,662 and U.S. Patent 2,211,132 in 1939 and 1940.
Lamarr wanted to join the National Inventors Council, but she was told that she could better help the war effort by using her celebrity status to sell War Bonds. She once raised $7,000,000 at just one event.
In May 2008, playwright Elyse Singer was slated to premiere a new play in New York City, Frequency Hopping, about Antheil and Lamarr's frequency-hopping invention.
[edit] Death
Lamarr died in Altamonte Springs, Florida (near Orlando) on January 19, 2000. Her son Anthony Loder took her ashes to Vienna and spread them in the Wienerwald, according to her wishes.[6]
[edit] Marriages
Lamarr was married to:
- Friedrich Mandl (1900â??1977), married 1933â??37; chairman of Hirtenberger Patronen-Fabrik, a leading armaments firm founded by his father, Alexander Mandl. Mandl, partially of Jewish descent, was a supporter of Austrofascism, although not Nazism.
- Gene Markey (1895-1980), screenwriter and producer, married 1939â??41; son (adopted in 1941, after their divorce), James Lamarr Markey (b. 1939).[9] When Lamarr and Markey divorced â?? she claimed they had only spent four evenings alone together in their marriage â?? the judge advised her to get to know any future husband longer than the four weeks she had known Markey. Previously, he was married to actresses Joan Bennett and Myrna Loy.
- John Loder (born John Muir Lowe, 1898â??1988), actor, married 1943â??47; two children: Anthony Loder (b. 1947) and Denise Loder (b. 1945). Loder adopted Hedy's son, James Lamarr Markey, and gave him his surname. James Lamarr Loder later challenged Hedy Lamarr's will in 2000, which did not mention him. He later dropped his suit against the estate in exchange for a lump-sum payment of $50,000. Anthony Loder is featured in the 2004 European documentary film "Calling Hedy Lamarr".[6]
- Ernest "Ted" Stauffer (1909-1991), nightclub owner, restaurateur, and former bandleader, married 1951â??52.
- W. Howard Lee (1909â??1981), a Texas oilman, married 1953â??60. In 1960, he married film star Gene Tierney.
- Lewis J. Boies (b. 1920), a lawyer, married 1963â??65. They were divorced after Lamarr claimed he had threatened her with a plastic baseball bat and whiffle ball.[citation needed]