History of Hedy Lamarr: Movie Star and Technology Inventor

HISTORY OF HEDY LAMARR: TECHNOLOGY INVENTOR

Hedy Lamarr, the Austrian-American actress and Hollywood legend known as “the most beautiful woman in the world,” is remembered today, November 9, on the anniversary of her birthday for her pioneering work on the technology that would become the basis for today’s WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth communications systems.

What? you say.
Indeed, say I.

More than a pretty face, she had a genius-level IQ of around 140. The Vienna-born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler began studying engineering at an early age but put her studies aside to dedicate herself to the theatre.

Banned for Twenty Years

In 1932, at 18, she was filming several scenes of the Czech movie Ecstasy without, shall we say, the benefit of external adornment. This controversy catapulted her to stardom during filming, but the movie was banned for 20 years after its 1933 release. Pope Pius XII denounced it, and Hitler banned it in Germany.

She married Friedrich Mandl, a German arms industry magnate who was jealous and controlling, keeping her in his house. During this time, she put her film career on hold and returned to finishing her mostly self-taught engineering studies.

Using her husband’s contacts, she could access details on weapons technology, which she then shared with the U.S. government for the war effort. These meetings with munitions executives in the 1940s gave her the expertise to devise and even patent the frequency-hopping technique used in modern communications.

Hedy Lamarr’s Contributions

During World War II, she learned that 80 children had been killed crossing the Atlantic in a passenger ship by a German U-boat. She teamed up with George Antheil, a friend and avant-garde composer, to work on a “secret communication system” that the U.S. Navy might use to evade German detection.

In this way, “frequency hopping” across 88 frequencies would make it impossible for Germans to detect or jam radio-controlled torpedoes launched from U.S. Navy ships. She was granted a patent in 1942.

The patent was filed in 1941 by Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil for a “secret communication system.”

But while the Navy saw the potential, the “spread spectrum” technology would sit on the shelf for another decade. In the ’50s, the Navy would use it to transmit the positions of enemy subs revealed by sonar. It was further used in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Hedy Lamarr in Hollywood

Recalling her time in Germany, she escaped to Paris and then London in 1937, where she met Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM Studios. He wanted to give her a movie contract; she negotiated it to $500 per week for 7 years. She changed her name to Hedy Lamarr, after the silent film star Barbara La Marr.

When she arrived in Hollywood, she was a smash hit. It is rumored that her striking features inspired Walt Disney to model his Snow White character after her.

She was typecast as a beautiful and glamorous seductress. Cecil B. DeMille cast her as the ultimate femme fatale, Delilah from the Bible, in Samson and Delilah (1949), the studio’s most profitable film up to that time. She co-starred with the Hollywood elite: Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Walter Pidgeon, William Powell, James Stewart, Robert Young, Victor Mature, and Bob Hope.

Stories are told of her, between shoots, tinkering on her inventions in her dressing trailer. She advised one-time flame Howard Hughes on his airplane wing designs based on her studies of birds and fish streamlining.

Hedy Lamarr’s Recognition

Largely uncredited for decades for her inventions, in 1997, Lamar and George Antheil were honored together by the Electronic Frontier Foundation‘s Pioneer Award. In 2014, she was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

On November 9, 2015, Google honored her on her 101st birthday with a Google Doodle.

Hedy Lamarr Movie Trivia

In the Mel Brooks Western Blazing Saddles, the villain, played by Harvey Korman, is named Hedley Lamarr. Mel Brooks, as Governor Lepetomane, assures him:

“What are you worried about? This is 1874. You’ll be able to sue her.”

“Hedley” was a running joke throughout the film, but it backfired: Miss Lamarr sued Warner Brothers for $10 million for using her name without permission in the movie.

Brooks was flattered and chose not to fight it in court; the studio settled out of court for a small sum and an apology for “almost using her name.” Brooks recognized that Lamarr “never got the joke” but asked that she be informed of where he lived.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
billpetro.com