Calling Hedy Lamarr
by Colin Todhunter
She’s hot, she’s sexy and she’s famous. Well, she was, back in the 1940s. Hedy Lamarr was an extraordinary woman and was a huge Hollywood movie star and regarded as the most beautiful woman in the world. Unlike her contemporaries, however, there was more to her than met the eye, a lot more. You may not know it, but her legacy has most probably become part and parcel of your everyday life.
The Austrian-born Hollywood icon Hedy Lamarr is the inventor of the spread spectrum, the technology that underpins the workings of mobile phones and WiFi Internet connections, among other things. When she was at the peak of her movie career fame, she was also busy inventing the technology that would lay the basis for modern communications. So the next time you pick up your mobile, you may like to give at least a passing thought to Austria’s finest export: the talented and intellectually astute Ms Lamarr.
The Austrian-born Hollywood icon Hedy Lamarr is the inventor of the spread spectrum, the technology that underpins the workings of mobile phones and WiFi Internet connections, among other things. When she was at the peak of her movie career fame, she was also busy inventing the technology that would lay the basis for modern communications. So the next time you pick up your mobile, you may like to give at least a passing thought to Austria’s finest export: the talented and intellectually astute Ms Lamarr.
Hedy Lamarr was one of the top actresses from the Golden Age of Hollywood and her heart-melting beauty was a monument to womanhood. Few women have come close to matching the type of beauty that radiated from the subtle blend of perfect bone structure, thick red lips, porcelain skin and striking black hair.
Her rise to fame began in her native Austria by appearing nude in the 1933 film Ecstasy. The film is famous for bringing the naked female form to the screen for the first time, along with Lamarr performing the first fake movie orgasm. In the 1980s, she told a confidant that she had been tricked then coerced, into acting in those particular scenes. Nevertheless, it was pretty strong stuff for that period, I’m sure you will agree.
Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Keisler in Vienna on 9 November 1913 and died on 19 January 2000 in Florida, aged 86. Her first of six marriages was to Friz Mandl, a much older man who dealt arms to the Nazis. Mandl actually attempted to buy all of the remaining copies of Ecstasy so no one would be able to see his wife naked. He never succeeded, however. Incidentally, the mansion used in the 1965 film The Sound of Music was their home while they were married. After spectacularly fleeing from her controlling Nazi-sympathising husband in 1937, by reportedly drugging her maid, she ended up in London where she met MGM studio boss Louis B.Mayer who kickstarted her career in Hollywood.
Lamarr appeared in a string of films, including Lady of the Tropics (1939), The Strange Woman (1946), and Dishonored Lady (1947), but one of her best roles, and reputed to be her favourite, was Delilah in Cecille B.Demille’s production of Samson and Delilah in 1949.
Her rise to fame began in her native Austria by appearing nude in the 1933 film Ecstasy. The film is famous for bringing the naked female form to the screen for the first time, along with Lamarr performing the first fake movie orgasm. In the 1980s, she told a confidant that she had been tricked then coerced, into acting in those particular scenes. Nevertheless, it was pretty strong stuff for that period, I’m sure you will agree.
Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Keisler in Vienna on 9 November 1913 and died on 19 January 2000 in Florida, aged 86. Her first of six marriages was to Friz Mandl, a much older man who dealt arms to the Nazis. Mandl actually attempted to buy all of the remaining copies of Ecstasy so no one would be able to see his wife naked. He never succeeded, however. Incidentally, the mansion used in the 1965 film The Sound of Music was their home while they were married. After spectacularly fleeing from her controlling Nazi-sympathising husband in 1937, by reportedly drugging her maid, she ended up in London where she met MGM studio boss Louis B.Mayer who kickstarted her career in Hollywood.
Lamarr appeared in a string of films, including Lady of the Tropics (1939), The Strange Woman (1946), and Dishonored Lady (1947), but one of her best roles, and reputed to be her favourite, was Delilah in Cecille B.Demille’s production of Samson and Delilah in 1949.
So how did such an unlikely figure as a Hollywood movie queen come to invent the basis of modern communications technology? Well, Lamarr had learned about the latest in weapons technology at her husband's munitions plants and by accompanying him during his business meetings. When she met composer George Antheil in 1940, she shared with him what she knew about the design of remote-controlled torpedoes, which were vulnerable to detection and jamming.
Lamarr believed the solution was to broadcast the weapon’s signals on rapidly changing frequencies. She and Antheil developed a frequency-hopping system by incorporating the basic technological principles of the piano. The invention enabled both the transmitting and receiving stations of a remote-control torpedo to change at intervals. They received a U.S. Patent in 1942, but their research was largely ignored at the time, with some government officials being more than a little cynical by possibly envisioning a piano strapped to a torpedo.
Eventually the invention was used and Antheil later said that the whole concept was really all down to Lamarr, not him. Her frequency-hopping idea served as the basis for modern spread-spectrum communication technology, used in devices ranging from cordless telephones to WiFi Internet connections. In 1997, both she and the then deceased Antheil received a pretigious Electronic Frontier Foundation Award (EFFA) for the invention. Her son collected the award on her behalf and played an audio recording of Lamarr, who was then 83, thanking the foundation. That was the first time her voice had been heard in public for over twenty years.
I recently spoke with her son, Anthony Loder, who told me, “The EFFA was a very prestigious award to receive. Many high level people from the scientific community recognising Hedy in that way was a very great tribute. It was a big accolade, and to me it was a great honour. Hedy felt that people gave out awards to make them feel better. But it’s not always like that. It’s a two way street.”
During her lifetime, she thought that she never received due recognition for the invention. She was of course right, and she never received any financial remuneration for it either. Georg Misch, the director of the film Calling Hedy Lamarr (2004), is reported to have said that in her later years Lamarr felt that the world owed her something. It may well have.
During her lifetime, she thought that she never received due recognition for the invention. She was of course right, and she never received any financial remuneration for it either. Georg Misch, the director of the film Calling Hedy Lamarr (2004), is reported to have said that in her later years Lamarr felt that the world owed her something. It may well have.
Anthony Loder agreed with me when I put this to him: “She, like a lot of other creative people throughout history, have put in so much work, but we live in an upside down world where celebrities get all the attention. But what they do is short term and eventually they will be forgotten about. It’s very sad. It’s a comment on the society we live in. It has been a struggle all along to receive recognition for what Hedy achieved as an inventor, even on a small scale. I am very proud of the technology that Hedy invented, more so than the film star part of her life, which in many ways ruined her life.”
Loder told me that much of the world has failed to appreciate the enormity of his mother’s invention: “When I was in Austria I met with the minister of culture and asked why they had a monument to Gutenberg who invented the printing press and not for Hedy. In a way they were honouring the written word, and I couldn’t really understand why they were not paying tribute to Hedy in a similar way considering what she has done for the spoken word in terms of modern communications technology.”
He went on to say, “Her technology was first implemented in the Cuban Missile Crisis. In that respect, it was 20 years ahead of its time. In fact, she received the Milstar award for frequency hopping from the government. Her technology underpins the basis of the US government’s defense communications system. Three 28 billion dollar satellites now orbit our planet and allow the military to communicate and that stems from my mother’s technology.”
Loder was happy to reel off a baffling range of modern day products that his mother is responsible for: from wireless heart monitors to blue tooth gadgets and from mobile phones to the USA’s defence communications system. He also said that his mother was proud to have been recognised for something lasting rather than just for her beauty, which was fleeting.
Loder was happy to reel off a baffling range of modern day products that his mother is responsible for: from wireless heart monitors to blue tooth gadgets and from mobile phones to the USA’s defence communications system. He also said that his mother was proud to have been recognised for something lasting rather than just for her beauty, which was fleeting.
Lamarr was intelligent, articulate, daring and self-confident and seemed to have had everything going for her. The secret of life, according to Hedy Lamarr, was to get involved, to try everything, to join everything and to meet everybody. Her attitude to death mirrored her attitude toward life. She once said that she didn’t fear death because she didn’t fear anything she didn’t understand.
But six husbands, fading looks, having plastic surgery and becoming semi-reclusive in old age indicates that everything in the garden wasn’t always rosy. She had great difficulty in throwing off the shackles of an image imposed by Hollywood. Her disappearing looks and post-stardom years led her to state, “After stardom everything else is poverty.”
Thankfully, there will be a Hollywood film about Hedy Lamarr’s life shortly, with Robert Redford’s daughter, Amy, directing it. No one knows as yet who will play Lamarr but rest assured that “Face Value” will finally place Lamarr and her invention firmly in the public spotlight. Lamarr once famously stated that films have a place in time but technology is forever. And she was right. Movie stars come and go, but Hedy Lamarr’s invention and its tangible impact will survive long after even the current crop of stars has faded from public memory.
Hedy Lamarr is one of the true greats of Hollywood and will forever remain immortalised on film as the most beautiful woman in the world. But in an ironic twist of fate, we may now see just how enchanting she actually was by even watching her in her old films on our mobile phones. The world in which we live is a very strange place. And it is indeed a much sadder one without her. Some people are inspirational but a few select ones are uniquely so. Hedy Lamarr is one of them.
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