Hedy Lamarr’s Moodiness – Part 2

This is taken from Jean Pierre Aumont’s autobiography “Sun and Shadow.”  Hedy met Jean Pierre Aumont after she attained a divorce from John Loder and was looking for her fourth husband. I don’t know much about their relationship except for the fact that there was one. And I’m not a huge fan of Mr. Aumont but I am very well aware that Hedy Lamarr is not the easiest person on earth to live with, especially if you’re just normal people. Plus, she was then already a mother of two children, facing with the unsuccessfulness of her new movie, Dishonored Lady, not knowing that Samson and Delilah, her biggest success was still right ahead. Jean Pierre, like many men, was attracted very much to her beauty but got panic over her temper. So read about his engagement to the most beautiful woman of the century so you can understand why they couldn’t make it!

beautiful as she was, the moodiness of the Austrian star began to worry me

“During dinner she pressed one of her knees, the lovelier of the two, against mine…

The following week, we were engaged.

I gave her a diamond ring and told my father, who had arrived in the States, to fly out to meet his future daughter in law. The marriage had been planned for the beginning of July.

But, beautiful as she was, the moodiness of the Austrian star began to worry me. One evening, when we were driving back from a concert, I braked a little too quickly. Hedy became hysterical, claiming that I had purposely tried to throw her against the windshield because I was jealous of her beauty…

The day my father arrived,  I went to meet him at the airport. Realizing that his arrival in some way made my engagement official, I was suddenly seized with panic.

“You take care of her” I said with cowardice unbefitting a gentleman, “I’ve had enough.” I jumped on the first plane for San Franciso, leaving the poor man standing there with his mouth open. I wasn’t yet mature enough to handle a Tyrolian temptress already three times divorced and nursing in her personality all the complexes and insecurities of our old Europe.

I returned to Hollywood. Hedy threw our ring in my face, and walked out.”

>> next part: Married to John Loder.

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.