Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, more recognisably known as Hedy Lamarr, is often called the most beautiful woman in film, and it’s easy to see why. Her beauty and screen presence alone made her one of the most popular actresses of her generation. Lamarr was much more than just a pretty face, however.
Discovered by director Max Reinhardt at the age of 16, Hedy Lamarr studied acting in Berlin and made her silver screen debut in the German film Geld auf der Straße. In 1933, her work in the controversial film Ecstasy earned her even wider attention, and after arriving in London in 1937 following a separation from then-husband Fritz Mandl, Hedy received a contract with MGM studios. Her subsequent work in films such as Algiers, Lady of the Tropics, Comrade X, Ziegfeld Girl, and the highest-grossing film of 1950, Cecil B DeMille’s Samson and Delilah, cemented her Hollywood stardom. She was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, commemorating her significant achievements as an actress.
The daughter of a prosperous Viennese banker, Hedy was privately tutored and by the time she was 10 was a skilled pianist and could speak four languages. With an interest in innovation that began at 5 years of age, Lamarr once said that she felt that improving things came easy to her.
During World War II, with a desire to assist the war effort however she could, Lamarr made her greatest breakthrough, inventing a device that would prevent enemy ships from jamming torpedo guidance signals; a technology later dubbed ‘frequency hopping’.
Her co-inventor, avant-garde composer George Antheil, confirmed that it was Hedy’s design that led to his creation of a practical model of the device. Lamarr and Antheil submitted their idea to the National Inventor’s Council and received a patent in 1942; however, the Navy classified the patent as top secret, and it went unused during wartime.
Unfortunately, during her lifetime Hedy Lamarr was typecast as a femme fatale and little more than a beautiful actress, thanks to the way women were positioned in the public eye. Though the patent on her frequency hopping device expired before widespread implementation of the technology, and she was not widely recognised for her pioneering work until much later, it became the basis for today’s Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth communication systems.
In the 1990s, one of the pioneers of wireless communication systems for computers came across Lamarr’s early patent and began the work of ensuring Hedy and George receive the attention they deserved. Since then, the work Lamarr did for communications technology has begun to be more broadly acknowledged. In 1997 the Electronic Frontier Foundation granted Lamarr and Antheil a joint Pioneer Award, and Hedy was the first woman to receive the Invention Convention’s Bulbie Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award – the Oscars of inventing. In 2014, Lamarr was posthumously inducted into the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame. After her death in 2000 at the age of 85, her son Anthony Loder said that she would be pleased with her legacy of being someone who contributed to the wellbeing of mankind.
This article was originally published in Issue 32 – Storytellers Assemble. You can purchase this issue and enjoy more enchanting content here.
