Alternative Film Guide

Author Patrick Agan (Clint Eastwood: The Man Behind the Myth) has been working on a biography of MGM star Hedy Lamarr, at one point considered one of the most beautiful women this side of Orion.

The Austrian-born "exotic" import was brought to the studio in the late 1930s, and would remain at MGM well into the following decade. Though hardly one of the greatest actresses to come out of either Europe or Hollywood, Lamarr possessed an undeniable charisma that made her thoroughly watchable in both biblical and modern tales, whether well cast or totally miscast, or whether fully clothed or fully naked (as in Gustav Machatý’s scandalous 1933 Czech drama Ekstase / Ecstasy).

A temptress with a heart, Hedy Lamarr was a young adulteress in Ekstase; an unwitting Angel of Death in Algiers; the Other Woman in H.M. Pulham, Esq.; a Russian agent who discovers democracy, Clark Gable, and baseball in Comrade X; a Spanish-Californian in Tortilla Flat; swarthy siren Tondelayo in White Cargo; Joan of Arc (!) in The Story of Mankind; and most famously, a perfectly coiffed Delilah in Cecil B. DeMille’s entertaining atrocity Samson and Delilah.

What does your Hedy Lamarr manuscript cover — Lamarr’s films, her private life, both? — and how did you become interested in Lamarr as a book subject?

My book is an unauthorized biography even though it contains many quotes given me by Lamarr when we were talking over many hours about doing a book entitled “Beyond Ecstasy.” My book covers everything, including the movies, the woman, and the myth.

Personally, I always thought of Hedy as being an available, an accessible love goddess, unlike the aloof images of Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, who were both still huge stars when she got to Hollywood in the fall of 1937 — even though their gloss had been tarnished when they’d both been recently labeled “box-office poison.” Hedy had her work cut out for her.

Aloofness was something Hedy didn’t — couldn’t – project after the publicity surrounding her running around naked for ten minutes in Ecstasy. That picture made her a sensation long before she sailed past Ellis Island on the Normandie. In fact, she was barely off the ship before reporters surrounded her with questions about it. She must have thought she was getting away from it, as she was so upset she had to take refuge at the Plaza until her train left for California.

As a kid from a town in Upstate New York, I didn’t know from Ecstasy, but I sure knew from Hedy when I saw her on The Late Show in Boom Town and The Conspirators. Frankly, I’d never seen anything like her, and when Samson and Delilah was re-released in 1959 I stayed in the theater for three shows.

I could say she was underrated but what I really think is that she was underappreciated, most likely because of her beauty. Surprisingly modest in person, Hedy nonetheless had a great sense of humor which I think came across best in My Favorite Spy. [MGM head Louis B.] Mayer briefly pushed her as a new Garbo but it was quickly apparent that she had more to offer than copycat glamour. She had her own brand of style and, when she had the chance, of acting. When she got to Hollywood and made Algiers, everybody was copying her. [Joan Bennett, in fact, went from cutesy blonde to Lamarr-ish brunette at that time.]

As an European star during World War II she had a lot stacked against her, but she became a big star and a household name nonetheless. She deserves to be remembered.

What would you say was Hedy Lamarr’s forte as an actress?

As an actress, I think Hedy’s forte was surprise. True, the reason she got butts into seats was her beauty but once they were there she let them know there was more to her than the languid beauty of Algiers, much more than just soulful eyes and a hairdo.

After all, this woman had studied with Max Reinhardt and had starred on the Viennese stage in Sissi, giving a remarkable performance. Hollywood just looked at the face and thought that anyone who looked that good couldn’t possibly have talent, but when she needed it it was there. Her pal Clark Gable first helped show it off in Comrade X.

Though it’s endlessly dismissed as a Ninotchka rip-off, the movie is a hilarious take-off on wartime prejudices and sensibilities, and Hedy surprised everyone with her comic sense. Stripped of glamour, she exuded a slap-on-the-shoulder charm she rarely got to exercise. She wasn’t funny again until the much calmer The Heavenly Body three years later.

Do you have a favorite Hedy Lamarr film and/or performance?

As for a favorite Lamarr performance, I would have to say Tortilla Flat is right up there. Her performance as the Mexican girl, Dolores, was amazing in its simplicity and clarity and Karl Freund’s cinematography brought out an earthiness that she’d never shown before. This was a girl who knew she was beautiful, but she also knew there was much more to life than that and wasn’t ready to settle for anything less than a faithful husband with a job. Hedy had to go to the front office to get that part. The chemistry between her and John Garfield is great. It was strong between her and Spencer Tracy, too, but for the wrong reason as she disliked him intensely. Whether Hedy and Garfield’s characters lived happily ever after remains to be seen, but we can easily visualize Tracy’s Pilon carrying on as usual, looking for a bottle of wine and a free place to drink it in.

Personally, I like Hedy as The Strange Woman where she chews up the scenery as she’s chewing up co-stars Louis Hayward and George Sanders. She produced it, hired her co-stars, helped design her costumes, and even oversaw the musical score, generally running herself ragged trying to make this a hit. She learned the hard way that putting your own money on the line wasn’t a good idea. Not being a major studio release [United Artists handled the distribution in the U.S.], it didn’t have the theater spread that would have made it a moneymaker.

And then there are two of the movies’ most famous temptresses, Tondelayo and Delilah. Hedy knew White Cargo for what it was, and enjoyed her romp in the jungle. [Director] Richard Thorpe just stood back and let her go to town. Hedy’s biggest complaint was that she practiced her sexy dance all summer long and then it was mostly cut out by the censors.

Samson and Delilah was Hedy’s high water mark, giving her the superstardom she’d long deserved, plus [it was] in Technicolor. Mayer was nuts not to have put her in a color picture, although he did have one planned, Quo Vadis, which was cancelled by the war. Hedy was to play the slave girl Eunice, which was later played by Marina Berti [in the 1951 MGM release, starring Robert Taylor and Deborah Kerr. Samson and Delilah was made at Paramount. By that time, Lamarr was no longer under contract with MGM.] It would have been a revelation for Hedy, as she exploded in color, but it took [director Cecil B.] DeMille to make that happen. The results were a breathtaking success as we all know, even out-grossing Gone with the Wind for a time. Hedy knew it was crucial for her and devoted herself to it. DeMille understood pampered beauties, since he’d practically invented them so he knew just how to tease, cajole, and encourage a terrific performance out of her.

I also think she was equally matched with Bob Hope in 1951’s My Favorite Spy. She combined sex appeal and slapstick in what was, oddly, her last major movie. DeMille wanted her for The Greatest Show on Earth, but Betty Hutton got that part as Hedy decided it was just too physical for her, and, she’d laugh, “all that dirt and noise and exercise. I said no.” Hutton claims she was the only one ever considered for the part, but I have proof to the contrary. In a strange way, Betty’s lucky. As the only survivor she gets to rewrite history any way she wants to.

And finally, I think she’s terrific in 1957’s The Female Animal, bringing a perfect poignancy at age 44 to aging movie star [Vanessa Windsor]. Like many an actress of her age, Hedy’s Vanessa had a habit of falling for the wrong man, in this case movie extra George Nader. Throw in Jane Powell as her adopted daughter and you have quite a stew of emotions. Hedy limned the star responsibilities of the forties-into-fifties star perfectly, especially in the scene where she wants to announce her engagement to Nader and has to decide who to give it to, [gossip columnist] Hedda Hopper or Louella Parsons. Like Scarlett at the barbecue choosing who’s to get her dessert, she pauses and says “this
story I think this should go to…Hedda” — odd considering Hedda, [who] unlike Parsons, had never been much of a Lamarr supporter. Sadly, Universal chopped it up and Hedy disowned it. A flop but, seen today, a fascinating one.

What was Hedy Lamarr’s relationship with MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer like? Mayer was the one who brought her into the MGM stable, but once Lamarr was in, Mayer didn’t seem to know what to do with her.

First of all, L. B. Mayer had never met a lady like Hedy. Though notorious for her ten minutes of on-screen nudity [in Ecstasy], she was nonetheless from the Jewish aristocracy of Vienna and, despite her conversion to Catholicism, was a woman well out of his class. He was used to fashioning stars out of chorus girls and shopkeeper’s daughters — and the occasional Swedish shampoo girl — but he rarely got his hands on an opinionated upper-class lady. He loved the idea he was getting an international star for only $500 a week but once he got home he was at a loss.

(By the way, Hedy [whose real name was Hedwig Kiesler] always took credit for her new last name, Lamarr, “la mer, the sea.” It was on a list that Mayer and his brain trust came up with on the Normandie, but she said she made the final decision.) [Mayer's was a huge fan of exotic, dark-haired, silent-screen siren Barbara La Marr. La Marr, who led an unhappy life, died at age 29 in 1926.]

Hollywood was a comedown for Hedy after the life she’d lived in Europe, and Mayer was intimidated by that. He didn’t know how to handle her either personally or professionally, especially when she began haunting his office demanding a script. After meeting her fellow female stars, and her initial walk down the length of Mayer’s imperial office, she was sent home with little more than promises. L. B.’s secretary, Ida Koverman, became both her supporter and friend, probably because Hedy was bombarding her bosses’ office with phone calls and Ida recognized there was something to Hedy that her boss had yet to recognize.

At the same time Hedy was looking for a part, the [censor at the] Hays Office was declaiming Ecstasy as a “story of illicit love and frustrated sex” whose only purpose was to “arouse lustful feelings in those who see it.” What a quandary Mayer was in! Stashing her away in Beverly Hills with [Budapest-born] Ilona Massey so they could learn English together proved a bad idea. Ilona quickly got [a supporting role in] Rosalie, while Hedy fumed.

I think part of Mayer’s problem about Hedy was that she was out of place in the climate of 1938. European sex symbols were box-office poison and here he was trying to launch one, renaming her after a tragic silent movie star to boot. Plus, he was very interested in her but she wasn’t about to play the doting daughter as other women did.

After a number of screen tests, L. B. loaned her to Walter Wanger for Algiers and the rest is history. Mayer not only shut her up, but he made money on the deal as well. She came back to the MGM lot the most publicized movie star in the world, but he still didn’t know what to do with her. An American Cinderella was his answer — and that was a disaster despite Mayer’s obsessive interest in it.

He hired Josef von Sternberg, Dietrich’s Svengali, to direct Cinderella, now called I Take This Woman, but that quickly proved to be a mistake. Mayer’s movie factory was not a place where von Sternberg could leisurely shine, plus Mayer was insistent on advising von Sternberg on his “Hedy Lamarr picture” and this made the whole thing a disaster. Also, Mayer had assigned Spencer Tracy as Hedy’s co-star and their lack of chemistry was immediately apparent. After two weeks there were only a couple of Hedy’s close-ups that were salvageable. Von Sternberg was fired and Frank Borzage took over, but after a long and expensive production the picture was shut down to the tune of $800,000.

Before I Take This Woman was resumed, Hedy was in Lady of the Tropics but as good as it was, it didn’t match Mayer’s expectations and he thought of putting her in the ensemble cast of The Women, most likely in the Paulette Goddard part. Perhaps that would have been a good idea, as Hedy’s sense of on-screen humor could have been exposed before Comrade X.

Is it true that Hedy Lamarr refused the lead roles in Casablanca, Gaslight, and Saratoga Trunk? If so, do you know what her reaction was after those three films became huge hits for Ingrid Bergman?

Let’s get one thing straight off the bat. Hedy Lamarr never turned down Casablanca.

L. B. had her solidly booked for several movies, two of which, I think, defined both her talent and her image. True, [producer] Hal Wallis wanted her for it but Mayer said no as he had Tortilla Flat, Crossroads, and White Cargo already lined up.

Why should L. B. have loaned her over to [Warner Bros. in] the [San Fernando] Valley for what at the time was just a run-of-the-mill wartime romance? Hollywood was a very small town and the studio system was even smaller and thus more important. Loaning Hedy at that point wasn’t a good idea for anybody.

Hedy was always a magnet for gossip which over the years has had her looking down her aristocratic nose at the script of Casablanca and waving it in a negative direction. Considering there was no firm script when the film was announced that would have been quite a feat. And Hedy and George Raft? An unlikely pairing, but it might have been interesting. It’s a stupid story, but it’s been out there for years, even in her obituaries!

Hedy‘s work at MGM was better anyway. In Tortilla Flat, she broke new ground as the fiery Dolores and got a Box Office Blue Ribbon for it. True, Crossroads wasn’t much, but her playing Tondelayo in White Cargo was something else. It was a major departure from Metro’s family-friendly films, but it paid off handsomely for L. B. and for Hedy. It may not have been Oscar-worthy, but it sure was a cure for the wartime blues.

Gaslight was another story. It was Metro’s plan to reunite Hedy with [her Algiers co-star] Charles Boyer but things were quite different from when they had made Algiers. Now Hedy was a big star and she wanted to be treated as such, which didn’t include second billing at her home studio. Boyer was adamantly against that, so the reunion never happened. Bergman said, “Who cares about billing? I just want to work with Boyer,” and took over the part. Hedy never mentioned any regrets over it.

As for Saratoga Trunk, that was a movie she did want to make but, as we know, it didn’t happen even though [Lamarr said] “I had my heart set on it from the moment I read the book.” According to Hedda Hopper, Jack Warner wanted to sign Hedy to a contract, as hers at MGM was ending. He had been very pleased with the box office for The Conspirators [which Lamarr had made on loan-out to Warners in 1944] and maybe he wanted another [former] MGM star a la Joan Crawford on his roster.

Hedy was increasingly leery of the studio contract system by that time, and turned him down. Warner didn’t like no for an answer so when it came to casting Saratoga Trunk, he seemed to studiously avoid offering it to Hedy. Instead, he offered it to Bette Davis, no, Vivien Leigh, no, and, finally Bergman, who said yes. Hedy was sad about it, but told Louella Parsons that she was charmed that Bergman had taken such pains to look like her in the movie. Ouch. A pity, as Hedy would have been terrific in the part of the Creole adventuress.

Georg Misch’s documentary Calling Hedy Lamarr depicts the actress as a woman without strong maternal feelings. During your research, did you find any information about that side of Lamarr’s personality?

Hedy always spoke very lovingly about her children Denise and Anthony Loder. At the time I met her, she was no longer a money-making star and often hinted that they were somewhat resentful of the fact that the money train wasn’t stopping at her house anymore. Nonetheless, she was always talking about them; Tony had a cold, Denise’s daughter was adorable, etc.

You have to remember that Hedy was an only child who was privately brought up and acquired a strikingly independent personality at an early age. She learned self-reliance as a survivor skill and that, coupled with a canny intelligence, made for a determined young lady. The first chance she got, she bolted toward a public existence, as, at an early age, she knew what she wanted did not include an early marriage and children. She made her opportunity to become and actress and acted on it.

Her parents weren’t happy about her becoming an actress, but she won them over by sheer determination. When Hedy spoke of her mother, Gertrude, which wasn’t often, she painted her as being a rather cold and aloof woman, and felt personally cheated of a major maternal role model. Nonetheless, she worked hard to get Gertrude out of Europe and treated her lavishly when she arrived in Hollywood during World War II.

Frankly, I think Hedy thought of children as “instant people” — little adults to a great degree — and expected them to not only be intelligent but to also make intelligent decisions. When her adopted son chose to leave her house to live with one of his teachers and her husband, she let him, but then he had to live with his choice. She said he’d become jealous of Tony and Denise, and she felt he’d be happier with his decision. By the way, she set up a trust fund for him at that time, and did not just let him float away as has been suggested.

Hedy was always mentioning Tony and Denise with pride and was especially taken with her granddaughter Wendy Colton. If anything, she felt sad that she could no longer indulge them in the movie star luxuries she’d showered on them as children, and maybe felt a little guilty that she hadn’t prepared them better to handle a world when [those perks] would stop.

Did you know Hedy Lamarr personally? If so, what was your impression of her? Of those you’ve spoken with about Lamarr, what did they have to say about her as a person?

Yes, I did know Hedy and she was delightful, a bit demanding at times but also very charming and always ready to laugh. And despite the fact that she always had to be “Hedy Lamarr” in public, she was a very human person. She always felt her looks kept her at a disadvantage when meeting new people. Her beauty undeniably opened many doors, but it also closed many another. I admit that when I first met her I wanted to meet “Hedy Lamarr” like everybody else, but after chatting with her for a while I was taken by her sense of humor about herself and the way she was perceived.

[That happened] at a party at my literary agent Jay Garon’s penthouse on Central Park West in 1973, and from the minute she walked in every eye in the place was riveted on her — and that all expected Delilah or Tondelayo or whoever. She may have been sixty and there was no Harry Stradling or James Wong Howe to light her entrance, but Hedy didn’t need one that night. People wanted to see a movie queen and see one they did. She took over the room by pure aura and nobody was disappointed.

Standing in the doorway in the cocktail party light, pausing long enough for everyone to get a good look at her, she flipped her long hair back with one hand — and all questions about her fading beauty, her acting talent, her rumored facelifts, her eccentric ways, her serial divorces, her shoplifting scandal, her bankruptcies, her eviction notices, that rotten book Ecstasy and Me which had painted her as a selfish, sex-crazed bisexual … that was all gone when she was there in person.

She seemed to know that in this room full of strangers, they would all recognize her as a friendly, sexy memory, and that a smile from her would make all that bad publicity fade away. Everybody seemed to recognize, seeing her in the flesh, that she was just as vulnerable as anyone to temptations and desires and surviving them. Hedy was an honest lady and she understood what the public wanted, and, with a sigh more often than not, [she] gave it to them.

She sat on a small couch and everyone came over to be introduced, me included. As I bent over her hand, her eyes met mine and were filled with humor. I wasn’t the first writer to fall for her. She patted the cushion beside her and I sat down and she began to chat asides like “will he ever get over this you think?” as another flustered gentleman walked away. I admit I became an instant eunuch, listening to every dulcet comment about that woman’s dress or that “awful” canapé. Hey, I came in a hungry writer kid and here was Delilah asking my opinion.

I began to understand that she had finally recognized it was her sex appeal that had brought the customers in. In a way, she was like her great friend Errol Flynn in that people expected a startling sex symbol and the person came later. He had approached her to co-star with him in 1953 in his aborted William Tell picture, and it would have been fascinating to see what on-screen chemistry these two great beauties might have ignited.

Some people loved her, others didn’t. Hedy was a Scorpio and she believed every line of that sign’s interpretation, especially Linda Goldman’s interpretation in her Star Signs. “If you want to know me, read that,” she said shortly after we began talking almost nightly several years later about a possible book. I thought that was either a warning, or an insight to a working relationship.

I remember having lunch with MGM’s master hair stylist Sidney Guilaroff and he was very guarded. It was a rainy afternoon in Hollywood, and he pulled up to my apartment in a vintage pink Thunderbird to take me to a 3rd Street steakhouse. Hedy had me get in touch with him and it was almost like she was lurking over his shoulder, there to censor his every word. They only did two pictures together, Boom Town and A Lady Without Passport, but she must have made a hell of an impression. When he finally coughed up his memoir and took credit for Hedy’s Boom Town short hair, she called him up and asked for a free copy. (Hedy told me she’d chopped off her hair to begin with, but that he saved the results for her new look in Boom Town.)

Hedy gave me Ann Sothern’s number also, and Ann started laughing as soon as I mentioned her name. “MGM’s acting coach somehow thought we’d be great friends and I said I couldn’t handle a glamour girl and Hedy said she didn’t want to know Maisie! Once we met, though, we both laughed and became very close. She was stuck with an image and so was I, neither of which was the real us, so once we established that[,] it was all funny. When I divorced Roger Pryor she was there for me just as I was when she got rid of Gene Markey [a movie writer/producer who was Hedy’s first Hollywood husband.] What a time that was.”

So I’m answering your question and giving my whole book away! OK with me. Hedy was a very generous person so I will be too. Plus there’s so very much more to her story. P. S. I went home from that party and wrote a story about it for Movie World magazine, and used a marvelous unseen before close-up of Hedy which will be in my book.

Patrick Agan is a survivor of the last days of the movie magazines and the author of over half a dozen books on Hollywood, including biographies of Clint Eastwood, Dustin Hoffman, and Robert DeNiro. He’s interviewed hundreds of celebrities during his career, mostly for his book series Is That Who I Think It Is? Research for his book The Decline and Fall of the Love Goddesses enabled him to handle and understand the many hours of late-night talking with the legendary Hedy Lamarr. "No Man Leaves Delilah," the title of Agan’s Lamarr manuscript, will be a full exploration of the life of "The Most Beautiful Woman on the Screen."

The Decline and Fall of the Love Goddesses (1979) covers Rita Hayworth, Jayne Mansfield, Betty Hutton, Linda Darnell, Veronica Lake, Betty Grable, Susan Hayward, Dorothy Dandridge, Frances Farmer, and Marilyn Monroe.

Patrick Agan can be reached at pagan5@peakpeak.com.

Calling Hedy Lamarr review

Fifty-minute audio interview with Hedy Lamarr friend Roy Windham

Q&A with NOW PLAYING Author Anthony Slide

Barbara Payton: Q&A with Biographer John O’Dowd

Joan Crawford Q&A with Neil Maciejewski

Author/biographer James Robert Parish discusses Mel Brooks

Honorary Oscars Bypass Women

Jean Arthur article

Miriam Hopkins biography in the works

Ann Sheridan Biographer Ray Hagen Discusses the 1940s Warner Bros. Star

Franchot Tone: Biographer Lisa Burks Discusses the 1930s MGM Leading Man

Norma Talmadge and Constance Talmadge at the Donnell Media Center

DVD Beaver Review of Boom Town

Comments RSS