In an era where a woman’s competence was often overshadowed by her appearance, a woman broke all expectations and barriers and aggressively pursued all her interests. She went from being a housewife to Old Hollywood’s biggest actress and World War II inventor.
She was Hedy Lamarr and this is her story.
Back in Austria
Hedy Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kessler in Vienna on November 9, 1914, the daughter of bank manager Emil Kessler and pianist Gertrude Kessler. At the age of five, she is said to have taken apart a musical clock to understand how it worked. Her mother encouraged her to participate in the arts, and Lamarr became interested in acting at an early age, taking classes and eventually landing roles in films and theater.
Her first screen appearance was as an extra in the Austro-German film Geld auf der Strasse (Money on the Street) in 1930. She then headed to Berlin and played the lead role in Gustav Machatý’s controversial 1933 film Ecstasy, in which she appeared nude, marking the first nude scene in a feature film.She also starred as Empress Elisabeth of Austria in the play Sissi in Vienna in 1933, receiving praise and accolades from critics.
Friedrich “Fritz” Mandl, a wealthy Austrian industrialist and gunsmith, was in the audience and insisted on meeting her. In August 1933, they were married in the Karlskirche Church in Vienna. At the wedding, Lamar converted to Christianity.Mandel was associated with fascist movements across Europe, including ties to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. He supplied ammunition to Italy and was a friend of Benito Mussolini, who visited for a dinner party.
Many of Mandel’s dinners included business discussions, which meant that Lamarr had an insight into the growing tensions in interwar Europe and gained knowledge of arms and weapons manufacturing.Despite being the wife of one of Austria’s richest men, Lamarr was extremely unhappy in her marriage to Mandel and was unable to continue 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 looking for European talent, and signed a contract to work for him in Hollywood.
Mayer and Lamarr were both passengers on the SS Normandie bound for New York, where they agreed to change its name from Hedwig Kessler to Hedy Lamarr in honor of Barbara La Marr, the silent film star.
Rise in Hollywood
After arriving in Hollywood, Lamarr quickly became famous through her stunning role in 1938’s Algiers. She appeared in films as a glamorous seductress and was known for her stunning beauty as “the most beautiful woman in film.”
Disney is said to have modeled “Snow White” after its model, and the comic character “Catwoman” is said to have been inspired by her. Over the years, she appeared in such successful films as 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, magic had little value. “Any girl can be gorgeous, you just have to stand still and look stupid,” she said.
An inventor at heart
Patented “Secret Communications System” by actress Heidi Kessler
While her Hollywood career was at its peak, Lamarr continued to work on inventions behind the scenes. During breaks, in her trailer and at night at home, her mind was constantly 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 died in 1935 of a heart attack and her mother left Austria in 1938, living in exile in London until she arrived in Hollywood in 1942 through Lamarr’s efforts.After the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Lamarr felt the need to do something to help the war effort. Although she was not yet an American citizen (and did not naturalize until 1953), she felt compelled to help the Allies. In one of his works, film composer and friend of Lamarr, George Antheil, had to use 16 mechanical pianos in conjunction with the film, but this did not work. It was precisely this problem of synchronization, which Anthel and Lamar discussed at length, that led to their invention.The actress and the film’s author applied for a patent for their covert communications system in the USA on 10 June 1941. “The object of the invention is to provide a method of covert communication which is comparatively simple and reliable in operation, but at the same time difficult to detect or decipher… (it involves) the use of carrier waves of different frequencies, which are particularly useful in the remote control of airships, such as torpedoes.
“Their system, adapted for radio control of a remote vehicle, uses a pair of synchronous registers, one at the transmitting station and one at the receiving station, which change the setting of the transceiver from time to time, so that without knowledge of the registers the enemy will not be able to determine the frequency to which a controlled impulse is to be sent. Trying to solve the problem of how to synchronize a player’s piano with his perforated paper records, Lamar and Antheil invented frequency hopping: they described a solution for how the torpedo’s radio transmitter and receiver could simultaneously jump from frequency to frequency, making it impossible for the enemy to locate and interfere with the radio link.
Through frequency hopping, the two inventors paved the way for GPS, WLAN, Bluetooth, and smartphones.
Through frequency hopping, the two inventors paved the way for GPS, WLAN, Bluetooth, and smartphones. Although the US Navy did not use this technology in World War II, it prompted Lamar to use her celebrity status to sell war bonds as a form of support to the Allied powers. During one fundraising spree in 1942, it raised $25 million in war bonds, about $343 million today. She also volunteered at the Hollywood Canteen after it opened in October 1942, where she danced with soldiers, signed autographs, and helped wash dishes.But the US Navy returned to it when it developed the “acoustic buoy” to detect submarines. Lamarr’s idea was adopted and developed. In the Cuban Crisis of 1962, all American ships were armed with torpedoes controlled by a frequency hopping system.Lamar and Antheil, who died in 1959, the year their patent expired, never received a dime for their invention. The honor also arrived very late. Decades after her on-screen career ended, when she lived alone and isolated in Florida, Hedy Lamarr received the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Leadership 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 named the “Mother of Wi-Fi.”
