CALLING HEDY LAMARR Notes
Mischief Films
Georg Misch’s entertaining documentary Calling Hedy Lamarr takes a look at the woman behind the fabulous face.
Below are a few notes on Hedy Lamarr’s life and career:
Hedy Lamarr’s six husbands were:
- munitions dealer Fritz Mandl (1933-1937),
- writer-producer Gene Markey (1939-1940),
- actor John Loder (1943-1947),
- bandleader and part-time actor Ernest "Teddy" Stauffer (1951-1952),
- oilman W. Howard Lee (1953-1959); he later married another dark-haired beauty, actress Gene Tierney,
- and attorney Lewis J. Bowles (1963-1965), Lamarr’s lawyer in the divorce case against Lee.
***
Husband #1, Fritz Mandl, unsuccessfully tried to buy all copies of the notorious 1933 Czech melodrama Ecstasy (1933), in which Hedy Lamarr (then known as Hedy Kiesler) appears nude. (In its review of the film, Variety referred to her closeups under "emotional stress" as "extremely audacious.")
According to author David Shipman, Ecstasy was banned in Germany because Hedy Kiesler was Jewish — a detail that goes unmentioned in Calling Hedy Lamarr — though the sex and the nudity were likely the main reasons for the ban. (Lamarr’s Jewish background was a matter of conjecture for quite some time.)
Ecstasy was a huge hit when screened at the 1934 International Film Exposition in Venice; so much so that Pope Pius XI had the official Vatican newspaper condemn it.
In the U.S., Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr., requested that Ecstasy be banned as indecent and morally dangerous. An edited version of the film reached American shores in 1937.
The possessive Fritz Mandl held the young Kiesler prisoner in their mansion until the mid-1930s, when she managed to escape disguised as a maid.
***
MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer was an ardent admirer of dark-haired, silent film siren Barbara La Marr (1896-1926, born Reatha Watson), known as The Girl Who Was Too Beautiful. When MGM imported Hedy Kiesler in the late 1930s, Mayer changed the name of the new dark-haired sensation to Hedy Lamarr.
According to Lamarr herself, the name change took place aboard the ship that brought her to the United States. Mayer was trying to find a more glamorous name than "Kiesler," but was unable to come up with an appropriate surname until the actress jokingly suggested "La Mer" ("The Sea" in French). That triggered Mayer’s recollection of his fallen idol, Barbara La Marr, and thus Hedy Kiesler became Hedy Lamarr.
***
Hedy Lamarr’s biggest financial success was the 1949 Paramount release Samson and Delilah, which earned the studio $11.5 million (approximately $90 million in 2004 dollars) in domestic rentals. Her best film performance, however, may well have been in a now largely forgotten 1941 romantic comedy-drama with James Stewart, Come Live with Me.
Among Hedy Lamarr’s other films are:
- Algiers (above, 1938), playing opposite Charles Boyer in this remake of the Jean Gabin vehicle Pépé le Moko (1937);
- the blockbuster Boom Town (1940) with Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, and Spencer Tracy;
- Comrade X (1940), a poor man’s Ninotchka, also with Clark Gable;
- Ziegfeld Girl (1941), co-starring with Judy Garland and Lana Turner in the second (or third or fourth or fifth) remake of Sally, Irene and Mary (1925), that old warhorse about three girls on Broadway;
- Tortilla Flat (1942), improbable as a Mexican;
- White Cargo (1943), in which she plays the sultry native Tondelayo
- The Conspirators (1944), a film noir with Paul Henreid;
- and My Favorite Spy (1951), a comedy with Bob Hope.
Lamarr stopped making movies in 1957. According to a handful of sources, she came out of retirement for a cameo in the little-seen Instant Karma (1990), though in reality she is seen only in a brief old movie clip.
Ingrid Bergman owes much of her stardom to Hedy Lamarr, for the latter (unfortunately) refused Casablanca (1942), Gaslight (1944), and Saratoga Trunk (1946).
***
In 1965, Hedy Lamarr was arrested in Los Angeles for shoplifting, but she was later cleared of all charges. (Even so, she lost a small role in Picture Mommy Dead because of that incident. Zsa Zsa Gabor replaced her.)
There was another shoplifting charge in 1991 in Florida, this time for $21.48 worth of laxatives and eye drops. Lamarr’s attorney stated that the shoplifting was actually a case of absentmindedness. Lamarr, 77, had been shopping with two other friends, and had in fact paid for the other items she had bought at the store. She could have contested the charges, but preferred to plead "no contest" so she would not have to appear in court and face a barrage of tabloid reporters. Through her attorney, the quite wealthy former actress promised she would refrain from breaking any laws for a year, and the charges were dropped. Rumors that Hedy Lamarr was a kleptomaniac seem to have absolutely no basis on reality.
***
Lamarr filed a $21 million lawsuit against ghostwriters Leo Guild and Sy Rice, alleging that they had turned her (purportedly auto-) biography, the highly readable Ecstasy and Me: My Life As a Woman (1966), into a book that was "fictional, false, vulgar, scandalous, libelous, and obscene."
***
Hedy Lamarr, at the age of 85, died of natural causes, apparently in her sleep, in a suburb of Orlando, Florida, on January 19, 2000.
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Tags: Algiers, Calling Hedy Lamarr, Classic Movies, Comrade X, Ecstasy, Ecstasy and Me, Fritz Mandl, Georg Misch, Hedy Lamarr, John Loder
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