Moved!

we’re moved to:

http://www.hedy-lamarr.org/blog/

no more posts will be made here 🙂

– An

They should have made it

As one visitor had suggested, I am blogging about Hedy Lamarr and Errol Flynn and the project they should have made together, if other things (whatever they were) hadn’t happened. Around 1943/1944, Errol Flynn spotted his eyes on Hedy as his leading lady for his upcoming technicolor movie William Tell. The movie never came into production due to financial problems. I mourn that fact. Think of the gorgeousness of both in a technicolor! Hedy liked Errol very much in real life and had thought of him as a talented writer whose parties never got boring (now she was not a party person at all, so that’s something!). Here’s what Errol wrote about Hedy in his autobiography My wicked wicked ways, when he and his friend David Niven were invited to Hedy’s house.

they would have made a gorgeous movie couple, don't you think?

One night Niven and I were invited to the house of Hedy Lamarr. She was married to John Loder at the time. Reginald Gardiner and his delightful Russian wife were there, and a few others.

It chances that I think Hedy to be one of the most underestimated actresses, one who has not been lucky enough to get the most desirable roles. I have seen her do a few brilliant things. I always thought she had great talent, and as far as classical beauty is concerned you could not then, nor perhaps even now, find anyone to top Lamarr. Probably one of the most beautiful women of our day. Naturally, I wanted to meet her — and subsequently I would want her to play the female lead in my Italian fiasco, William Tell.

As we waited for Hedy to enter her living room, David kept prodding me to expect by far the most ravishing creature.

David whispered as she glided in, “By God, she’s beautiful, even without the jewels.”

“Quiet!”

He wasn’t quiet. “See if she will tell you what she told me about how she had to save herself in getting out of Austria.”

Hedy Lamarr as the lady of William Tell? hmm why not?

Now, with Niven prodding me, I didn’t know how to get around her to ask her to tell me about her private life, but it sounded intriguing when David repeated, “See if she will talk about the night she couldn’t stand it any more and made a gateaway.”

Hedy and I talked for a while. I started leading up to it in a diplomatic way and finally got out the words, “Where is Mandel now?” At which from this beautiful creature, came the growl, “That sonofabitch!” She spat and walked off.

As for the completeness of my mourning out of pity, I’ll blog about the films Hedy should have had the chances to make (and many of them turned into quite a success) but for one reason or another, didn’t.

“Wissen ist Macht”

The Hedy Lamarr Lectures, which is hosted by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Austrian Telecommunication Group and the Vienna Publishing House, is the series of 8 lectures starting on February, 22 nd, 2010, and focusing on the developments of knowledge and information in the modern society.  The event was named after Hedy Lamarr to remember her significant invention of frequency hopping during WWII, without which, today’s mobile/wireless technology would have been impossible, or as my economics professor would say, “the natural log of people’s living standard curve would shift downward”.  I’m so happy that they named the lectures after her!

The event gathers Austria’s scientists who have worked on the subject of telecommunications. For the schedule of the the series of lectures, please click on the picture on the left handed side. Also available on youtube is the opening lecture by general director of Austrian Telecommunication Group Hannes Ametsreiter, taken at the Austrian Academy of Science.

I wonder if there’s any Austrian fans of Hedy Lamarr who had attended the event? Could you provide me with more information? If you could and would be willing to, please email me: annpham@hedy-lamarr.org. Thank you!

For more information, please click here and here

First video below is the opening speech by Hannes Ametsreiter, and second video is about impressions/opinions of those who attended the event.

a tribute to george montgomery

For Valentine day, I’ll blog about one of Hedy’s love interests during the early 40s: George Montgomery.

He was one of the two very handsome Hollywood actors who came from Montana (the other was Gary Cooper!). He was engaged to Hedy Lamarr in 1942, yet for some reason they didn’t make it to the altar. Hedy, instead married to John Loder and George to Dinah Shore. However, they remained good friends and George admitted, “Hedy is the only girl I’ve ever asked to marry me.” He called Hedy, “Penny” because she often sat thinking when he came and said, “Penny for your thoughts”. She once gave him a St.Christopher medal which he still wore around his neck. George is, undoubtedly, a talentedly artist. Besides being in the movie business, he was a painter, sculptor who as Hedy said, “can make a living out of his hobbies.” At the end of this post, you’ll get to see many of George’s paintings and sculpturing works.

Hedy and George in 1942. Please check back at the gallery at hedy-lamarr.org for hi-res version of the picture.

George Montgomery was born in August. 29. 1916 to a family of 17 members. He left his education at the University of Montana to pursue his interest in a film career in Hollywood. His cowboy background led him to getting many film offers in various western movies. His first movie appearance was at the age of 18. At age 24, he signed a contract with 20th century fox and changed his name to George Montgomery. George had wonderful craftsmanship ever since he was a little child. He had made many many sculptures (some was sent to the White House), furniture for family and friends.

George had loved Hedy ever since he saw her in “Algiers” and their romance blossomed in 1942. The engagement was announced during the filming of “Tortilla Flat”. Their love story appeared on various film magazines of the time for one whole year. Nobody really knew what happened in between, but by the time Hedy started “Crossroads” she started hanging out with John Loder, an English actor she met at the Hollywood canteen. And George found his ideal soulmate in Dinah Shore, at the same place.  In the same year 1943, Hedy married John and George married Dinah. Hedy remembered George as one of the men “she should have married to.” Somehow I think they would have been a good match to each other, regarding how much Hedy loved arts, painting, and she herself was a vivid painter and art collector.

Check out some of George pictures:

Some artworks (out of many many):

For more artworks and pictures of George Montgomery, please feel free to contact me

Pictures and information taken mainly from “The years of George Montgomery” which George dedicated to: “who believed in me, had faith in me, loved me, envied me, jealous of me, and those who didn’t give a damn about me.”

“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.”