Georg Misch's documentary Calling Hedy Lamarr takes a look at the woman behind the fabulous face. Considering how often Hedy Lamarr was married, it might be a little difficult to keep track of all her husbands. Just in case, Lamarr's six husbands were:
- Munitions dealer Fritz Mandl (1933-1937). The possessive Fritz Mandl held the young Kiesler prisoner in their mansion until the mid-1930s, when, as the story goes, she managed to escape disguised as a maid.
- Writer-producer Gene Markey (1939-1940). Among Markey's film credits as producers were two Shirley Temple movies, Wee Willie Winkie (1937) and The Blue Bird (1940). Markey's considerably more extensive writing credits included screenplays and/or stories for the likes of Marion Davies (The Florodora Girl), John Gilbert (West of Broadway), Greta Garbo and Erich von Stroheim (As You Desire Me), Barbara Stanwyck (Baby Face), and Warner Baxter and Alice Faye (King of Burlesque).
- Actor John Loder (1943-1947). Among the British-born Loder's screen credits were John Ford's Best Picture Oscar winner How Green Was My Valley (1941), Vincent Sherman 's Old Acquaintance (1943), as Miriam Hopkins' husband; and Robert Stevenson's Dishonored Lady (1947), co-starring with Lamarr in the year the couple were divorced.
- Bandleader and part-time actor Teddy Stauffer (1951-1952), who had been previously married to Faith Domergue.
- Oilman W. Howard Lee (1953-1959), who would later marry another dark-haired beauty, Gene Tierney.
- 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 Gustav Machatý's notorious 1933 Czech melodrama Ecstasy (1933), in which 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. That could be true, but if the film was indeed banned, the sex and the nudity were likely the main culprits as Lamarr's Jewish background was a matter of conjecture for quite some time.
And if Ecstasy lost the German market, it found lots of admirers when screened at the 1934 International Film Exposition in Venice. Left unimpressed was Pope Pius XI, who reportedly 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 year before Lamarr was seen in her first Hollywood film, John Cromwell's Algiers.
Hedy Lamarr photo: Mischief Films