Hedy Lamarr’s Moodiness – Part 1

Do you know that Hedy Lamarr had a fierily temperamental character that was completely opposite of her heavenly look? Somehow many men got intimidated of her because she was both extremely intelligent and too moody to handle. Let’s look at how many of the men in her life talked about this aspect of Hedy. The first part of today I’ll focus on actor John Fraser’s personal experience with Hedy when they filmed The Loves of Three Queens together in 1953.

In his autobiography Close up:an actor telling tales, John Fraser dedicated one chapter to talk about the filming of The Loves of Three Queens where he played Drago, a loyal friend of queen Geneviève (Hedy Lamarr) who died while fighting to protect her honor. At first it was the problem of Hedy’s disapproving of what she had to wear in the movie. She screamed in anger:

“How can they sick me in that Ball Gown! I need scarlet! Or lilac to go with my eyes…They want to ruin my career. I’ll look like Doris Day before she was a virgin! I’m going to walk off this picture. Walk it off. Just like that. Just leave. Get on a plane tomorrow. Frankie will fix everything. I’m not sticking around here to have my future flushed down the john…”

She seemed to be talking to herself at this point, then she even got very temperamental though John and many people had assured Hedy that she would look wonderful in anything, anything! Because she was the most beautiful woman.

She didn’t seem to listen. She just immersed herself in her own thoughts. This made John think she must be seriously mentally disturbed. In the end, he had to raise his voice a little,

“Hedy, don’t walk off the picture. They’ll listen alright when we start working. You see, everything will turn out fine.”

Everything did not turn out fine. Hedy didn’t speak anything. She was, again, deep in her own thoughts regardless of the presence of John Fraser. Then he said, “she bent her lovely gaze on me without speaking for quite two minutes. She then said in a gentle voice, extremely lucidly, “Who are you, you little flea, to tell me what to do?”. Then she just left.

The 40 year old but still ravishing Hedy Lamarr, as queen Geneviève de Brabant

John Fraser was too young and unprepared before a big star he didn’t know what to do. What came next was that the scenes with Hedy and him turned out to be so difficult and heavy because Hedy refused to talk to him for she thought he didn’t treat her with enough respect. Even her relationship with Edgar Ulmer, who was also from Austria thus naturally everyone expected a warm relationship between Hedy and him, was becoming more and more bitter. Edgar, who had directed Hedy in The Strange Woman had to walk off the filming because Hedy was “beyond unbearable”. Note that he was one director who never walked off while filming before.

The ending scene when queen Geneviève reconciled with her husband after 5 years apart

John Fraser was just glad when the filming was over and he would not want to work with a big star again soon. But in conclusion, he said in defense of Hedy:

“Hedy Lamarr was never a normal person. Not only she was considered the most beautiful woman in Hollywood, she was one  of the patent holders of the idea of “frequency hopping” communications. This revolutionary concepts is now used in everything from mobile phones to military satellites to jam-resistance radar. She was worshiped for both her beauty and scientific genius”

>> Next: Hedy Lamarr’s Moodiness – Part 2: Engaged to Jean Pierre Aumont.