“I should probably sell my life story to Ted Turner”

Refreshed after a swim in the pool at her apartment complex in Miami, Hedy Lamarr picked up her telephone and politely, but firmly, turned down a request for an interview in person. She also declined to let us send a photographer. “I still look good, though,” she added during a lengthy phone chat.

Lamarr is hardly a recluse. She spends evenings playing cards with friends and watching movies on her VCR. “Jimmy Stewart just wrote me a picture card–‘To a wonderful gift,’ it said. And Rex Reed wants me to go to a party with him tonight. He’s in town.”

The daughter of a prominent Viennese banker, Lamarr (née Hedwig Kiesler) grew up a self-described enfant terrible. She gained notoriety while still a teenager for running through the woods naked in the 1933 Czech film Ecstasy. Shortly afterwards, she married wealthy arms manufacturer Fritz Mandl. They shared a 25-room hunting lodge in the Austrian Alps, were chauffeured around in one of nine cars and dined off gold plates. Lamarr broke off the marriage after three years. “I couldn’t be an object,” she says, sounding rebellious and spry at age 75, “so I walked out.”

An older Hedy Lamarr relaxing by the pool

After abandoning Vienna in 1937, she met film mogul Louis B. Mayer in London. Mayer paid her $500 to sign a seven-year contract with MGM, shipped her to Hollywood and rechristened her Hedy Lamarr. At her peak, in the Forties, she earned as much as $250,000 a picture, starring in such films as White Cargo, Samson and Delilah and Comrade X. Over two decades, she appeared in 25 films, starring with such immortals as Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Judy Garland and Spencer Tracy.

In 1942 Lamarr patented an antijamming radio and gave it to the U.S. government as her contribution to the war effort. But her patent wasn’t her only contribution. During the war, she raised $7 million in a single evening selling war bonds. She also pursued other ideas for inventions. Howard Hughes once lent her a pair of chemists to help her develop a bouillon-like cube which, when mixed with water, would create a soft drink similar to Coca-Cola. “It was a flop,” she says with a laugh.

Over the years she married and divorced six husbands, a tact which, in the end, left her poorer. “You couldn’t live with a person, in those days, without being married,” she says. In a playful sendup of Greta Garbo’s oft misquoted line, Lamarr, who spoke to FORBES before Garbo’s death last month, said, “I didn’t vant to be alone.”

Lamarr today lives comfortably, if not in grand style, in a one-bedroom apartment, supported by Social Security and a pension from the Screen Actors Guild. “I should probably sell my life story to Ted Turner,” says the film goddess-inventor-patriot, “because it’s unbelievable.”

Little Tribute for Jan. 19. 2010

10 most favorited Hedy pictures?

To remember Hedy on her day, I have asked her fans to vote for their most favorite Hedy pictures and among 31 people who sent me their choices, I’m delighted to see some pictures in common. So below are 10 pictures which were mentioned the most. For all the pictures who get the same number of votes, I cast my own vote in order to be able to rank them. Note that this is only unofficial fan’s choices.

R.I.P and have fun doing whatever you want up there Hedy. Painting, inventing….whatever!

10 most favorited pictures: # 10 - the super seductive Delilah. This picture is picked by 4 people

10 most favorited pictures: # 9 - a 1940 studio promo shot. This was picked by 6 people

10 most favorited pictures: # 8 - one of the famous hat series. This one gets 8 votes, including mine

10 most favorited pictures: # 7- white goddess in pearls. This one gets 9 votes

10 most favorited pictures: # 6- promo shot for Ziegfeld Girl. This one gets 10 votes. I'm surprised to see so many people voted for this picture, which means Ziegfeld Girl remains one of Hedy' most famous films. And she didn't have much to do in that movie

10 most favorited pictures: # 5 - promo picture for The Conspirators. This one gets 11 votes. I think Jenna voted this 2 times. Is it fair?

10 most favorited pictures: # 4 - promoshot from Crossroads. I don't like her hair in the movie and in this picture she again looks so bored. But it is a color shot. Maybe that is why it gets 14 votes

10 most favorited pictures: # 3 - this is one of my absolute favorites too. it's so good to see many people also like it

10 most favorited pictures: # 2 - studio shot for The Conspirators. how can you miss this gorgeous photo? this gets 17 votes!!!

10 most favorited pictures: # 1 - Hedy Lamarr as an unglamorized girl in Tortilla Flat. Does this surprise anyone? This gets 21 votes. It's one of my very very favorite photos actually and I am sooo surprised (and glad) that many people pick it as their favorite

Fan’s Film Review: Expriment Perilous (1944)

Some visitors are kind enough to send me their reviews of Hedy films. I’ll be happy to share them in this blog.

We can start with Experiment Perilous (1944) because it’s one of my favorite Hedy looks.

This review below was written by Peter Andres

Good direction and good performances can’t save a confusing and stale script

Hedy Lamarr delivers an adequate performance in this Gothic thriller, directed by the atmospheric RKO director Jacques Tourner and set in 1903 New England and New York City. However, a mediocre script by Warren Duff (who also produced the film) and a downright boring starring performance by George Brent weaken the film considerably.

Hedy, who was born in Vienna, Austria, was under contract to MGM and was considered to be the most beautiful woman in the world at the time. She was offered the leading lady role to Gaslight (1944), a Gothic thriller which was produced by MGM and based on Patrick Hamilton’s play of the same name. However, the role eventually went to Ingrid Bergman, who dearly wanted to star alongside Charles Boyer and, in the process, won an Oscar for Best Actress as the psychologically tortured wife. So Hedy decided to play a psychologically tortured wife in this Gothic thriller produced at RKO, which is nowhere near as intriguing or straightforward as Gaslight. Due to the unsatisfactory script of Experiment Perilous, it’s difficult to imagine Hedy playing the leading lady role in Gaslight as well as Ingrid Bergman played it.

Alec steals one moment with Allida. Soon after is he killed by her husband.

Paul Lukas, another favorite European actor of mine, is excellent as Hedy’s cunning husband. Special mention should go to Margaret Wycherly (White Heat) as a maid in George Brent’s hotel room. The film’s Oscar-nominated production design is exquisite and opulent and Tony Gaudio’s black-and-white cinematography is moody and haunting. RKO composer Roy Webb adds a familiar music score, which includes a waltz on the soundtrack that was later used in Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946). However, that’s all I have to say about the film’s positive elements.

The script seems to indicate that Hedy’s character is a Vermont farm girl (!) and seems so misguided that any plausibility the plot should have contained is thrown out the window. There’s even a spectacular climactic explosion that seems to come out of nowhere! Due to a murky script that lacks focus and plausibility and George Brent’s wooden performance as a compassionate doctor who helps Hedy through her emotional and mental torment, the film leaves a lot to be desired.

Tourner’s atmospheric direction makes good use of Paul Lukas’ superior acting skills and interesting cinematography, which make the film worth watching despite its shortcomings. While Experiment Perilous isn’t a terrible film, it isn’t a particularly good one, either.

“I don’t just want a house”

“I want the house” is such a common sentiment in films about women that is used in a dramatically contrary way to illustrate what a different kind of woman the leading lady is in H. M. Pulham, Esq. Hedy Lamarr plays the glamorous and beautiful Marvin Myles, another in a series of 1940s heroines who have masculine names. She is definitely a liberated woman, and as such is both the romantic ideal the hero loves and the woman who is wrong, wrong, wrong for him. She has her own apartment, drinks cocktails, and puts makeup on in public, three things that good women presumably do not do. Marvin knows what she wants out of life: a butler, riches, things, but also the right to work for her own living. Without that she says, she would shrink, “There would be nothing left of me.”

Hedy Lamarr as Marvin Myles and Bob Young as Harry Pulham

Of course, in watching hundreds of old movies, one becomes familiar with the female character who wants independence until she falls in love and changes her mind, or for the hero to  make her see how wrong she is. In H.M.Pulham, Esq, that moment never comes. When Marvin firmly explains that she is not made to be at sewing circles or out buying drapes, Pulham (Robert Young) tells her, “You are wrong, because you’ll have a home of your own someday.” Marvin yells out, “I don’t just want a house!”

This brands her truly subversive heroine, and one who is not destined to be with a man at the final clinch. Marvin explains clearly to Pulham that if there is to be a house, she will buy it herself. She feels she is defined by her work and her independent world. If she marries him and goes to his world, she will be without status of her own; her only status will be his status. In the end they do not marry, and she goes on to get her butler, her riches, her yacht, and even a husband whom she marries just because she thinks he resembles Pulham. She has her success and her money, and although she doesn’t look particularly happy, the film doesn’t take it away from her. She didn’t want a house which meant she was rejecting a woman’s world.

Hedy Lamarr dolls

I think I would get a real Hedy Lamarr doll for myself, to add to my collection, even though I’m not really fond of dolls as many people already know. Some dolls like these would look nice on my shelf:

In the mean time, I may get myself some Hedy Lamarr paper  dolls. There are some vintage ones and one by Tom Tierney. Recently, there is one Hedy paper doll designed by Gregg Nystrom which looks very pretty. Mr. Nystrom is releasing another Hedy paper doll, so I’m excited about that. It’s good to see Hedy’s being remembered. Talking about popularity, Hedy is indeed being rediscovered.  Another biography is coming out this July, the Patrick Agan book is longed for by all fans, and a bio film is rumored to be made soon. I don’t have high hopes for the movie as I know Hollywood can totally screw it up and mislead people again about the real Hedy Lamarr. But the books sound quite promising!

Now back to the dolls, here is a hi-res scan of the Hedy paper doll wearing the famous Ziegfeld Girl dress that Mr. Nystrom sent me. It’s pretty!

Hedy Lamarr paper doll dressed as one of the Ziegfeld Girls in the movie Ziegfeld Girl (1941)