Hedy Lamarr

Ecstasy

In early 1933, at age 18, Lamarr was given the lead in Gustav Machatý's film Ecstasy (Ekstase in German, Extase in Czech). She played the neglected young wife of an indifferent older man.

The film became both celebrated and notorious for showing Lamarr's face in the throes of orgasm as well as close-up and brief scenes of nudity. Lamarr claimed she was "duped" by the director and producer, who used high-power telephoto lenses, although the director contested her claims.^[24][b][25]

Although she was dismayed and now disillusioned about taking other roles, the film gained world recognition after winning an award at the Venice Film Festival.^[26] Throughout Europe, it was regarded as an artistic work. In America, it was considered overly sexual and received negative publicity, especially among women's groups.^[24] It was banned there and in Germany.^[27]

Withdrawal

Lamarr played a number of stage roles, including a starring one in Sissy, a play about Empress Elisabeth of Austria produced in Vienna. It won accolades from critics. Admirers sent roses to her dressing room and tried to get backstage to meet her. She sent most of them away, including a man who was more insistent, Friedrich Mandl.^[24] He became obsessed with getting to know her.^[28]

Mandl was an Austrian military arms merchant^[29] and munitions manufacturer who was reputedly the third-richest man in Austria. She fell for his charming and fascinating personality, partly due to his immense financial wealth.^[27] Her parents, both of Jewish descent, did not approve due to Mandl's ties to Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini and, later, German Führer Adolf Hitler, but they could not stop the headstrong Lamarr.^[24]

On August 10, 1933, Lamarr married Mandl at the Karlskirche. She was 18 years old and he was 33. In Lamarr's ghostwritten^[30] autobiography, Ecstasy and Me, Mandl is described as an extremely controlling husband who strongly objected to her simulated orgasm scene in Ecstasy and prevented her from pursuing her acting career. She claimed she was kept a virtual prisoner in their castle home, Schloss Schwarzenau [de].^[27]

Mandl had close social and business ties to the Italian government, selling munitions to the country,^[16] and had ties to the Nazi regime of Germany as well, even though his own father was Jewish, as was Hedy's. Lamarr wrote that the dictators of both countries attended lavish parties at the Mandl home. Lamarr accompanied Mandl to business meetings, where he conferred with scientists and other professionals involved in military technology. These conferences were her introduction to the field of applied science and nurtured her latent talent in science.^[31]

Lamarr's marriage to Mandl eventually became unbearable and she decided to separate herself from both her husband and country in 1937. In her autobiography, she wrote that she disguised herself as her maid and fled to Paris, but according to other accounts she persuaded Mandl to let her wear all of her jewelry for a dinner party and then disappeared afterward.^[32] She wrote about her marriage:

I knew very soon that I could never be an actress while I was his wife. ... He was the absolute monarch in his marriage. ... I was like a doll. I was like a thing, some object of art which had to be guarded—and imprisoned—having no mind, no life of its own.^[33]

Algiers and her first MGM films

After arriving in London^[34] in 1937, she met Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM, who was scouting for talent in Europe.^[35] She initially turned down the offer he made her (of $125 a week), but then booked herself onto the same New York–bound liner as him, and she managed to impress him enough to secure a $500-a-week contract. Mayer persuaded her to change her name to Hedy Lamarr (to distance herself from her real identity and "the Ecstasy lady" reputation associated with it),^[32] choosing the surname in homage to the beautiful silent film star Barbara La Marr, on the suggestion of his wife, who admired La Marr. He brought her to Hollywood in 1938 and began promoting her as the "world's most beautiful woman".^[36]

Mayer loaned Lamarr to producer Walter Wanger, who was making Algiers (1938), an American version of the French film Pépé le Moko (1937). Lamarr was cast in the lead opposite Charles Boyer. The film created a "national sensation", says Shearer.^[16]: 77 She was billed as an unknown but well-publicized Austrian actress, which created anticipation in audiences. Mayer hoped she would become another Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich.^[16]: 77 According to one viewer, when her face first appeared on the screen, "everyone gasped ... Lamarr's beauty literally took one's breath away."^[16]: 2

Her off-screen life and personality during her Hollywood years was quite different from her screen image. She spent much of her time feeling lonely and homesick. She might swim at her agent's pool, but shunned the beaches and staring crowds. When asked for an autograph, she wondered why anyone would want it. In December 1938, writer Howard Sharpe interviewed her and gave his impression:

Hedy has the most incredible personal sophistication. She knows the peculiarly European art of being womanly; she knows what men want in a beautiful woman, what attracts them, and she forces herself to be these things. She has magnetism with warmth, something that neither Dietrich nor Garbo has managed to achieve.^[24]

In future Hollywood films, she was frequently typecast as the archetypal glamorous seductress of exotic origin. Her second American film was to be I Take This Woman, co-starring with Spencer Tracy under the direction of regular Dietrich collaborator Josef von Sternberg. Von Sternberg was fired during the shoot, replaced by Frank Borzage. The film was put on hold, and Lamarr was put into Lady of the Tropics (1939), where she played a mixed-race seductress in Saigon opposite Robert Taylor. She returned to I Take This Woman, re-shot by W. S. Van Dyke. Lamarr later remembered the filming of I Take This Woman: "We were seated around a table one day, rehearsing our lines. It was my first Metro film, and little Hedy was learning English, when Spencer turned to me and said, briskly, 'Get me a taxi.' I obligingly arose and started to walk toward the sound‐stage door, not realizing that it was the next line in the script. He was a great actor, but there were times when he made me cry. He was not precisely my favorite person."^[37]

MGM successes

In Boom Town (1940), one of her most popular films, she co-starred with Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert and Spencer Tracy; it made $5 million.^[38] Of her co-stars, Lamarr said, "Clark Gable, so warm and friendly to the insecure actress … Claudette Colbert, such a lady to me, although much higher in the MGM pecking order."^[37] MGM promptly reteamed Lamarr and Gable in Comrade X (1940), a comedy film in the vein of Ninotchka (1939), which was another hit. She got along well with Gable: "Although I never quite understood his sex appeal, I thought he was one of the nicest people I'd met, and a great practical joker."^[37]

Lamarr was teamed with James Stewart in Come Live with Me (1941), playing a Viennese refugee. She described Stewart as "one of the sweetest men in the world" and also liked the film because it was different from her previous ones: "I was so happy about this picture, it was my first chance to do a charming, humorous story. Until then, my image was that of an exotic creature."^[37] Stewart was also in Ziegfeld Girl (1941), where Lamarr, Judy Garland and Lana Turner played aspiring showgirls—a big success.^[38]

Lamarr was top-billed in H. M. Pulham, Esq. (1941), although the film's protagonist was the title role played by Robert Young. She made a third film with Tracy, Tortilla Flat (1942), which also co-starred John Garfield. Lamarr recalled, "John Garfield was wonderful to work with. He later told Life magazine, 'I tried to steal scenes from Hedy, Hedy tried to steal them from Frank, Frank tried to steal them from me, and the dogs (Morgan's) stole the show.'"^[37] It was successful at the box office, as was Crossroads (1942) with William Powell.

Lamarr played the exotic Arab seductress^[39] Tondelayo in White Cargo (1942), top billed over Walter Pidgeon. It was a huge hit. Lamarr had a dance number in the film: "I was proud of my authentic African dance, which I rehearsed for weeks, and which gave me splinters in my feet. It was done with a bed showing in the background, and it was so sexy almost all of the scene was cut. How I'd like to own that footage today!"^[37] White Cargo contains arguably her most memorable film quote, delivered with provocative invitation: "I am Tondelayo. I make tiffin for you?" This line typifies many of Lamarr's roles, which emphasized her beauty and sensuality while giving her relatively few lines. The lack of acting challenges bored Lamarr. She reportedly took up inventing to relieve her boredom.^[40]

Final MGM films and loan-outs

Lamarr turned down the leading female roles in the 20th Century-Fox film noir Laura and the MGM melodrama Gaslight (both 1944).^[37] She was reunited with Powell in a comedy The Heavenly Body (1944), then was borrowed by Warner Bros for a top-billed role in The Conspirators (1944), co-starring fellow Austrian actor Paul Henreid. This was an attempt to repeat the success of Casablanca (1943), and RKO borrowed her for a melodrama Experiment Perilous (1944).

Back at MGM Lamarr was teamed with Robert Walker in the romantic comedy Her Highness and the Bellboy (1945), playing a princess who falls in love with a New Yorker. It was very popular, but would be the last film she made under her MGM contract.^[41] She said of the film, "There I am, eight months pregnant, being photographed behind potted palms and in full ball gowns, which fortunately fit the story."^[37]

Biographer Richard Rhodes describes her assimilation into American culture:

Of all the European émigrés who escaped Nazi Germany and Nazi Austria, she was one of the very few who succeeded in moving to another culture and becoming a full-fledged star herself. There were so very few who could make the transition linguistically or culturally. She really was a resourceful human being–I think because of her father's strong influence on her as a child.^[42]

Lamarr also had a penchant for speaking about herself in the third person.^[43]

Wartime fundraiser

Lamarr wanted to join the National Inventors Council, but was reportedly told by NIC member Charles F. Kettering and others that she could better help the war effort by using her celebrity status to sell war bonds.^[44][45]

She participated in a war-bond-selling campaign with a sailor named Eddie Rhodes. Rhodes was in the crowd at each Lamarr appearance, and she would call him up on stage. She would briefly flirt with him before asking the audience if she should give him a kiss. The crowd would say yes, to which Hedy would reply that she would if enough people bought war bonds. After enough bonds were purchased, she would kiss Rhodes and he would head back into the audience. Then they would head off to the next war bond rally.^[46]

Samson and Delilah and later films

After the war, she starred in a comedy with Robert Cummings, Let's Live a Little (1948). Lamarr enjoyed her biggest success playing Delilah against Victor Mature as the Biblical strongman in Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah, the highest-grossing film of 1950. The film won two Oscars.^[27]

Lamarr returned to MGM for a film noir with John Hodiak, A Lady Without Passport (1950), which flopped. More popular were two pictures she made at Paramount, a Western with Ray Milland, Copper Canyon (1950), and a Bob Hope spy spoof, My Favorite Spy (1951).

Her career went into decline. She went to Italy to play multiple roles in Loves of Three Queens (1954), which she also produced. However she lacked the experience necessary to make a success of such an epic production, and lost millions of dollars when she was unable to secure distribution of the picture.

She played Joan of Arc in Irwin Allen's critically panned epic, The Story of Mankind (1957) and did episodes of Zane Grey Theatre ("Proud Woman") and Shower of Stars ("Cloak and Dagger"). Her last film was a thriller The Female Animal (1958).

Lamarr was signed to act in the 1966 film Picture Mommy Dead,^[47] but was let go when she collapsed during filming from nervous exhaustion.^[48] She was replaced in the role of Jessica Flagmore Shelley by Zsa Zsa Gabor.