In an era, where women’s aptitude was often overshadowed by their appearance, one lady broke all expectations and barriers and pursued all of her interests fiercely. She went from being a homemaker to Old Hollywood’s biggest actress and a World War II inventor. She was Hedy Lamarr and this is her story.
Back in Austria
Hedy Lamarr was born as Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna on November 9, 1914 as the daughter of a bank director Emil Kiesler and a concert pianist, Gertrud Kiesler. At the age of five, she is said to have taken a musical clock apart to understand how it works. Her mother encouraged her to participate in art and Lamarr became interested in acting at a young age, taking classes and eventually landing roles in films and theatre. Her screen debut was as an extra in the Austrian-German film Geld auf der Strasse (Money on the Street) in 1930. She then headed to Berlin and was cast in the leading role in Gustav Machatý’s controversial 1933 film Ecstasy, where she appeared naked, marking the first nude scene in a feature film.She also starred as Empress Elisabeth of Austria in the 1933 stage play Sissy in Vienna, gaining praise and accolades from critics. Friedrich “Fritz” Mandl, a wealthy industrialist and Austrian arms manufacturer, was in the audience and insisted on meeting her. In August 1933, the two married at the Karlskirche in Vienna; for the wedding, Lamarr converted to Christianity.Mandl was associated with fascist movements through Europe, including ties to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. He supplied ammunition to Italy and was friends with Benito Mussolini, who visited for a dinner party. Many of Mandl’s dinner parties involved business discussions, which meant that Lamarr had an insight into the rising tensions in interwar Europe and gained knowledge of arms manufacturing and weaponry.Despite being the wife of one of Austria’s richest men, Lamarr was deeply unhappy in her marriage to Mandl and was unable to pursue her acting career. In 1937, she fled to London, where she met Louis B. Mayer, co-founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Studios, who was scouting for European talent, and she signed a contract to work for him in Hollywood. Mayer and Lamarr were both passengers on the ship the SS Normandie bound for New York, where they agreed to change her name from Hedwig Kiesler to Hedy Lamarr in homage to Barbara La Marr, a silent film star.
Rise in Hollywood
She was known for her stunning beauty as the ‘Most beautiful woman in film’.
After arriving in Hollywood, Lamarr quickly became famous through her breakthrough role in Algiers in 1938. She came to be cast in movies as a glamorous temptress and was known for her stunning beauty as the ‘Most beautiful woman in film’. Disney is said to have designed his “Snow White” after her model, and the comic character “Catwoman” is said to be inspired by her. Over the years, she appeared in hits like White Cargo (1942), The Conspirators (1944) and Sampson and Delilah (1949).In 1941 and 1942, she won two Photoplay Awards for her performances in ‘Come Live with Me’ and ‘Tortilla Flat’. But to her, the glamour did not hold much value. “Any girl can be glamorous,” she said, “you just have to stand still and look stupid.”
An inventor at heart
Patent for a “Secret Communication System,” granted to actress Hedy Kiesler
While her Hollywood career was at its peak, Lamarr continued working on inventions behind the scenes. On set during breaks, in her trailer and at night at home, her brain was consistently working. One invention she made was a tablet that could dissolve in water to make soda.Meanwhile in Europe, Nazi Germany annexed Austria through the Anschluss in March 1938. Lamarr’s father had already passed away in 1935 from a heart attack and her mother had left Austria in 1938, living in exile in London until she arrived in Hollywood in 1942 through Lamarr’s efforts.After World War II broke out in 1939, Lamarr felt an urge to do something to help the war effort. Although she was not yet a US citizen (and would not be naturalised until 1953), she felt compelled to help the Allies. In one of his works, film composer and Lamarr’s friend George Antheil had to use 16 mechanical pianos in synchronisation with film, but this did not work. It was precisely this problem of synchronisation, which Antheil and Lamarr discussed at length, that led to their invention.The actress and the film composer applied for a patent for their ‘Secret Communication System’ in the USA on June 10, 1941. “An object of the invention is to provide a method of secret communication which is relatively simple and reliable in operation, but at the same time is difficult to discover or decipher… (it involves) the use of carrier waves of different frequencies, and is especially useful in the remote control of dirigible craft, such as torpedoes.“Their system, adapted for radio control of a remote craft employed a pair of synchronous records, one at a transmitting station and one at the receiving station, which change the tuning of the transmitting and receiving apparatus from time to time, so that without knowledge of the records an enemy would be unable to determine at what frequency a controlling impulse would be sent. By trying to solve the problem of how to synchronise the player pianos with their perforated paper records, Lamarr and Antheil invented the frequency hopping method: They described a solution for how the radio transmitter and the receiver in the torpedo could simultaneously jump from frequency to frequency, which made it impossible for an enemy to locate and interfere with the radio link.
With the frequency hopping method, the two inventors paved the way for GPS, WLAN, Bluetooth and smartphones.
With the frequency hopping method, the two inventors paved the way for GPS, WLAN, Bluetooth and smartphones. While the technology was not used by the US Navy in World War II, it led Lamarr to use her celebrity status to sell war bonds as a form of support for the Allied Powers. During one period of fundraising in 1942, she raised $25 million in war bonds, around $343 million today. She also volunteered at the Hollywood Canteen after its opening in October 1942, where she danced with servicemen, signed autographs, and helped wash dishes.But, the US Navy returned to it when it developed a “sonobuoy” to discover submarines. Lamarr’s idea was taken up and further developed. In the Cuban crisis of 1962, all US ships were armed with torpedoes controlled by a frequency-hopping system.Lamarr and Antheil, who died in 1959, the year their patent expired, did not earn a cent from their invention. Honour also arrived very late. Decades after the end of her screen career, when she lived lonely and withdrawn in Florida, Hedy Lamarr received the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award in 1997. Long after her death on January 19, 2000, she was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014 and given the name ‘the mother of Wi-Fi’.
