Hedwig Eva Marie Kiesler
Hedy Lamarr
Motion Pictures Category Star
- Ceremony was on February 8, 1960
Hedy Lamarr
Hollywood temptress Hedy Lamarr dies
By RICHARD SEVERO The New York Times
Hedy Lamarr, the raven-haired Viennese beauty who became one of the reigning temptresses in Hollywood in the 1930s and '40s, was found dead in her Orlando, Fla., home yesterday. She was 86.
Although she earned millions from her movies. Lamarr fell upon hard times and had lived modestly in Florida for many years.
Lamarr was forever identified with "Ecstasy," a 1933 Czech film in which she appeared nude.
Film historian David Thomson said of her later work: "It became her lot to be cast as exotic, sultry women - and she did her best; but conscientiousness is not quite what we expect in our femme fatales. Too often, she had a worried look."
Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Marie Kiesler in Vienna, the daughter of a banker and a concert pianist. She studied acting with Max Reinhardt in Vienna in 1931.
By the time "Ecstasy" was making the rounds in Europe, she married the first of her six husbands, Fritz Mandl, a Viennese munitions maker who sold his wares to the Nazis.
She left him and went to London where Louis B. Mayer saw her and offered her a contract at MGM. He changed her last name to Lamarr after silent film star Barbara LaMarr
In 1939 she made her first American film, "Algiers," with Charles Boyer. Columbia University students voted her the girl they would most like to be marooned on a desert island with. Women copied her hair, parted down the middle.
One of her best-known movies was with Victor Mature in "Samson and Delilah," Cecil B. DeMille's 1949 epic. Other films included "Comrade X," "Boom Town," "Ziegfeld Girl," and "Tortilla Flat."
Her private life was messy and sad.
In early 1939, she eloped with Gene Markey, a writer and producer, and was divorced the following year.
With composer George Antheil she discussed how difficult it was going to be to stop the Nazis.
As the story goes, Lamarr recalled conversations between Mandl and the Nazis about a device that would permit the radio control of airborne torpedoes, with no chance of jamming. The idea, she and Antheil decided, was to defeat jamming by sending synchronized radio signals on various wave lengths to torpedoes.
Antheil supplied the technical expertise, and on Aug. 11, 1942, the two received a patent for radio-controlled missiles. There were some doubts that Lamarr had the technical background to give much to the project but Antheil always credited her. A version of the device was used by the U.S. military in the 1960s - after the patent had expired. They never made a dime but in 1996 were honored an engineering society.
"It's about time," Lamarr said.
During World War II, Lamarr sold war bonds, telling an audience in Philadelphia that she was "a gold digger for Uncle Sam."
In 1943 she married British actor John Loder. They were divorced three years later.
Her other marriages, to Teddy Stauffer, a former band leader; Howard Lee, a Texas oilman; and Lewis W. Boles, a lawyer, all ended in divorce. She adopted a son, James, and had two children with Loder, Anthony and Denise. They all survive her.
