Beautiful: The Life of Hedy Lamarr

by Stephen Michael Shearer, Robert Osborne (Foreword)

The Surprising Story of Hedy Lamarr, "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World"As a teenage actress in 1920s Austria, performing on the stage and in film in light comedies and musicals, Hedy Kiesler, with her exotic beauty, was heralded across Europe by her mentor, Max Reinhardt. However, it was her nude scene, and surprising dramatic ability, in Ecstasy that made her a star. Ecstasy's notoriety followed her for the rest of her life. She married one of Austria's most successful and wealthy munitions barons, giving up her career for what seemed at first a fairy-tale existence. Instead, as war clouds loomed in the mid-1930s, Hedy discovered that she was trapped in a loveless marriage to a controlling, ruthless man who befriended Mussolini, sold armaments to Hitler, yet hid his own Jewish heritage to become an "honorary Aryan." She fled her husband and escaped to Hollywood, where M-G-M changed her name to Hedy Lamarr and she became one of film's most glamorous stars. She worked with such renowned directors as King Vidor, Victor Fleming, and Cecil B. DeMille, and appeared opposite such respected actors as Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, John Garfield, and James Stewart. But as her career waned, her personal problems and legal wranglings cast lingering shadows over her former image. It wasn't until decades later that the world was stunned to learn of her unexpected role as the inventor of a technology that has become an essential part of everything from military weaponry to cell phones—proof that Hedy Lamarr was far more than merely Delilah to Victor Mature's Samson. She demonstrated a creativity and an intelligence she had always possessed. Stephen Michael Shearer's in-depth and meticulously researched biography, written with the cooperation of Hedy's children, intimate friends, and colleagues, separates the truths from the rumors, the facts from the fables, about Hedy Lamarr, to reveal the life and character of one of classic Hollywood's most beautiful and remarkable women.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Biography Memoir, Film, Celebrity, Media Tie In

688 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 28, 2010

Reviews

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 4 out of 5]

”Hedy Lamarr is photographed at a distance at the start of the scene, approaching the camera in shadow and profile. Suddenly, when she is about to walk off the screen, Lamarr turns her face to the camera in a stunning close-up.
‘One could feel audience’s anticipation of seeing her face for the first time,’ Billie Melby Fuller, the author’s mother said recently. ‘It was palpable. Sitting there in the dark, when the shadowed image of Hedy Lamarr suddenly turns her face full to the camera the impact is audible. Everyone gasped.’”


Hedy Lamarr Algiers

I first saw Hedy Lamarr in her American debut Algiers the very film that Billie remembers seeing. The only difference was I wasn’t born yet in 1938; in fact, my Dad was born the following year as part of wartime baby boom, so I was many decades away from seeing THAT FACE for the first time. I didn’t gasp when Hedy turned her face to the camera, but I did feel everything inside for a moment turn to jelly. I thought to myself how in the world could anyone be that beautiful.

Redheads, blondes, and brunettes stormed the drug stores to buy black hair dye so they could look as much as possible like Hedy Lamarr. Turbans began to sell briskly as woman attempted to look as chic as Lamarr did in Algiers.

Hedy Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna, Austria. Louis B. Mayer, MGM studio chief, suggested the name change when he hired her to come to America. At the time she was still in Austria married to a munitions/arms expert named Fritz Mandl. He was understandably jealous of all the male attention that Hedwig inspired and made sure that she was escorted everywhere. When Fritz discovered that in her first film Ecstasy she had a few seconds of nudity and had the now famous orgasm scene he tried to buy up all copies of the film. He offered as high as $300,000 a print.

Hedwig/Hedy in Ecstasy

When she tired of the marriage and the controlling hand of Mandl she attempted several escapes only to be caught and brought back to her husband. She does eventually escape with the help of her maid, dressed as a peasant, and flees to America. Mandl as you might have guessed was extremely wealthy. When Hitler invaded Austria-Hungary and found Mandl not the goose stepper he wanted him to be Mandl’s assets were seized. Those assets were valued at close to $60 million dollars. For the rest of his life despite their rocky marriage Fritz Mandl called Hedy on her birthday and always referred to her as his Bunny.

This association with Mandl was an interesting one because after war breaks out Lamarr decides she needs to do more for her adopted country to win and her annexed country to be liberated. She begins working with a friend named George Antheil, a composer by trade, and with the information she gleaned from listening to her husband and his friends talking about weapons they design a frequency-hopping spread spectrum that allowed a signal from a ship to a torpedo to change among 88 (the number of keys on a piano) different frequencies to keep the enemy from jamming the signal. They were awarded a patent, but the design was not utilized until 1962. In 1997 she was granted a BULBIE Gnass Spirit of Achievement Bronze Award. The equivalent of an Oscar of invention. Her idea was used in radios, wireless devices, satellites, and she never received a dime or acknowledgement until 1997.

She was so much more than just a pretty face.



She built an amazing art collection. Carl Reiner and his wife had a chance to see it before it was sold and turned into much needed cash later in her life.

”I was very taken with her high intelligence. When we got to her home, she asked if we wanted to come in for a cup of coffee. And then there was the shocking surprise of the knowledge and the collection of good art that she had in her house….My wife was an artist, and she was stunned by the quality and the depth of her understanding of fine art. Her collection was probably one of the best private collections she had ever seen.”

Her relationship with Louis B. Mayer and later with Cecil B. DeMille was difficult. She was always demanding better roles and both studio heads seemed hard pressed to decide exactly what they wanted to do with her career. This indecision cost her roles that certainly would have made her as big a star as Ingrid Bergman. Hedy was slotted to play llsa in Casablanca. How different her career might have been if just that role had been hers. She was cast in a similar film called The Conspirators, but the film is wooden especially when compared to the snap and crackle of the Casablanca script. She didn’t know English very well and early on she had to recite her lines by rote with mixed results. It wasn’t long though before the Viennese lilt of her voice mixed with the studio language school changes made a voice that audience wanted to hear.

She eventually liberates herself from studio contracts and becomes a free agent, but because of her reputation as difficult to work with the best roles continued to elude her. That face, that beautiful face that made audiences gasp, at times became an albatross. It was difficult for producers and directors to think of her as anything more than a gorgeous profile shot. When it came to the best roles Ingrid Bergman always seemed to be the first choice.



Hedy was married six times. It was amazing to me to read about this beautiful, smart woman continuing to make the same mistakes when it comes to men. All of her marriages were whirlwind romances with short dating periods that lead to divisive, chaotic marriages that crashed and burned shortly after flight. Her last marriage ended in 1965. In 1966 she accepted a deal to have her autobiography ghost written. The resulting book was called Ecstasy and Me. The ghost writer sat with her recording hours of her reminiscing about her life. It seems the ghost writer deviated from her intentions and added much more spice to her life story of the sex and debauchery type. Lamarr took the publisher to court, but because she signed the paperwork releasing the material the courts could do nothing to help her. Today when a scandal hits print it enhances an actors bankability, but in 1966 it was the kiss of death and though it didn’t end her career it certainly made it even more difficult for her to be considered for the roles she wanted.



If you want a well rounded view of Hedy Lamarr this book delivers. I didn’t feel that Stephen Michael Shearer pulled any punches. Hedy the seductress, the princess, the schemer, the inventor, the shoplifter, and in my opinion the loveliest woman to ever grace the big screen is brought into the spotlight so we can gaze upon the woman behind the goddess. Shearer laces the book with wonderful Hollywood stories of her co-stars and their reactions to her. One in particular that stuck with me was Claudette Colbert breaking Clark Gable’s teeth in a rather fervent kiss on the set of Boom Town. It cost the studio $50,000 in time while Gable went to the dentist and had to heal.

Hedy died at the age of 85 January 19th in 2000 in Casselberry, Florida. She was found with her last will and testament under her body so it does make me wonder if she felt the end was near. She died a famous woman, but like many grand actresses as a recluse because she couldn’t stand to meet people and see that sparkle of anticipation die in their eyes when they discover she has aged and is not the most beautiful woman in the world anymore.

*************BREAKING NEWS**************

I just heard this from the writer of this book about a PBS production.

Stephen Michael Shearer has just posted a comment on your blog post, BEAUTIFUL: THE LIFE OF HEDY LAMARR BY STEPHEN MICHAEL SHEARER:

Thank you Jeffrey for your respectful review of my book BEAUTIFUL - THE LIFE OF HEDY LAMARR. I appreciate your commenting on it on your blog. And I hope others will enjoy the book as well. This fall, 2017, PBS/American Masters will air a major, feature documentary on Hedy's life BOMBSHELL - THE HEDY LAMARR STORY, which we have been working on now for two years for Susan Saradon's Reframed Pictures. Again, my humble thanks.......

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[Karin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hedy--brilliant and beautiful, but, tragically, her beauty defined a great deal more of her career than her brilliance was allowed to. However, our world today depends a great deal on technology every day that uses something based on her idea and patent, although it wasn't dusted off and actually used until three years after that patent expired--well she got American Composer Antheil to help her. She was inventing right up until the time of her death, although most of her inventions haven't been used. Her career was mishandled by MGM. After seeing what the Nazis did first hand in the 1930s, she fled her controlling first husband and took up an offer to contract with MGM, but during the war when she and other celebrities travelled to sell war bonds, she was frequently able to sell over $1,000,000 dollars in war bonds at a single event.

Brilliance and beauty, however, are not without their costs. Hedy was idolized and adored by her millions of fans worldwide, but she was misunderstood by many close to her. Lamarr possessed physical and mental attributes not often found in one person. And, accordingly, she failed the many normal expectations of others. writes Shearer in the epilogue. He also quotes one of her former co-stars, John Fraser,

She had been fawned upon, indulged and exploited ever since she had reached the age of puberty. Her extraordinary intelligence did not encompass wisdom. How could she have learnt about the values that matter, about kindness and acceptance and laughter, in the Dream Factory that is Hollywood? She had been thrust into the limelight at a pitilessly early age, been devoured by rapactous lovers and producers who saw her ravishing beauty as a ticket to success, and who looked elsewhere when she began to grow older. Beauty and money in moderation are undoubtedly a blessing. In excess, they are surely a curse.

This is a biography worth reading, even if it does spend an awful lot of time discussing films, including ones she didn't get, which, given that I am NOT an old movie buff at all, at times bored me. Even if you have no idea who she is, you benefit from her brilliance every day, and it is worth knowing more about her.

[Jeannine · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first time I saw Hedy Lamarr on Turner Classic Movies, I gasped and thought "who is that?". I'd heard her name, but didn't know her face and I've only seen one of her films (Boomtown).

After reading this book, I'm not really interested in delving too far into her films. According to this book, Hedy Lamarr was a beautiful woman, a bonafide movie star, but never considered a true actress.

Boo hoo.

She discarded husbands at whim. She treated her adopted son horribly. The book is filled from cover to cover with the litany of lawsuits this woman filed througout her life.

Interestingly, Hedy owns a patent on technology that informs today's wi-fi and has been honored by many invention-related organizations for her WWII co-invention. Who knew?

The book is a typical movie-star biography in its format (her films and their synopsi). Love that the book includes contributions from TCM's Robert Osborne - that man is a true treasure for classic movie fans and we need to mine more of his memories and stories before he's gone.

It was a so-so read to get from the library for a day when you have a cold and are stuck in bed. (Like I was). :)

[Una Tiers · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very long book with chronology that wasn't terribly clear. I had to search information on the internet to see how many children she had and how many times she was married.
The lady was very bright and sued and defended often.
Her final days were rather intriguing.
Mixing her storyline with the storyline of the movies she was in made it rather a mess to understand.

[Margaret · Rating 1 out of 5]

She had an interesting life but this author wasn't very good at conveying the story. I do not recommend this book.

[Jeannette Gutierrez · Rating 4 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed reading about this fascinating woman, and her equally fascinating life. When I heard somewhere that Hedy was the inventor of "frequency-hopping," the basis for all modern telecommunications, I knew I had to learn more about her.

She was born in Vienna to an upper middle-class Jewish family, and at a young age became the trophy wife of munitions magnate Fritz Mandl, who, although a Jew himself, was supplying arms to Hitler and Mussolini. The Axis powers declared him an "honorary Aryan," that is, until Germany invaded Austria, at which point he became a Jew again, and they appropriated his manufacturing facilities while he fled to South America.

But I digress... any discussion of Hedy Lamarr should lead off with her otherwordly beauty, since it absolutely defined her life. She was known in her youth in Vienna as "the most beautiful girl in the world," a title that she retained even after she came to the world capital of female pulchritude, Hollywood in 1937, as Louis B. Mayer's personal discovery, after a daring escape from her husband, who basically held her captive in the splendor of their castle.

Still considered by many to be the most beautiful woman ever captured on film, when Hedy appeared on a set, all activity would come to a standstill while cast and crew drank her in. Her first Hollywood movie was opposite Charles Boyer in Algiers, and during her debut scene, in which the camera approaches her from behind while she turns her head to reveal her face, movie audiences across America literally gasped!

During World War II, Hedy was a tireless supporter of the war effort and the troops, selling over $6 million in war bonds and never missing her Friday night shift at the Hollywood Canteen, serving coffee, dancing with the soldiers, and even washing dishes. It was her commitment to the Allied war effort that led her to approach her friend, musician George Antheil, with an idea to achieve more secure radio communications.

You see, during all those evenings on display at the dinner table, decked out in jewels, while her husband, Mussolini, and the architects of Fascist aggression discussed arms, Hedy was listening. Single-frequency radio communications were vulnerable to interception, and she thought that instead of coding the communications, the communications could be sent via a pattern of varying frequencies, and thus be secured.

Hedy and George worked feverishly on a workable technology that could bring the idea to fruition. Lest you think Hedy's role in the invention of frequency-hopping was as merely decorative as her role at the Axis armory dinner table, George Antheil spoke and wrote later about their collaboration, and always gave Hedy her full share of credit. George's contribution was the idea of a "piano roll" that carried the frequency pattern, with identical rolls at the origin and the destination to decode the pattern. They submitted the patent via a wartime program that solicited citizen inventions.

The wartime government hot-listed Hedy and George's patent, but in the end did not pursue the technology. George later speculated that had they not used the words "piano roll", it might have gone into testing and production. In any case, 25 years later, during a routine review of expired patents, the government saw great value in frequency-hopping, and now all military communications, as well as your cell phone calls, are transmitted via a pattern of varying frequencies, minus the piano roll!

Hedy was, for sure, a mixed bag of goods... her extreme litigiousness later in life was perplexing, at best. She'd file suit against just about anybody at the drop of a hat. She shamefully abandoned her adopted son after he entered his troublesome teens, by which point she had biological children of her own. And she could be a tempestuous and demanding wife, which, of course, didn't keep men from lining up to marry her.

She was also a very much an old-fashioned lady, always fastidiously groomed and dressed, and gracious to all. And unlike the hapless celebrities of today, she only dated men who were in love with her, usually married them, and did not cheat on them, nor they on her. Was this due to simpler times, her mesmerizing beauty, or a certain level of self-esteem? And she aged beautifully, in the Helen Mirren way, as opposed to Madonna or Demi Moore.

Hedy went through a rough patch in the 60's, where, as "une femme d'un certain age," the loss of the heartstopping youthful beauty that defined her sent her into a tailspin (it's worth noting that pictures from this time show a stunningly lovely older lady, of the kind you just never see any more.) She was arrested for shoplifting, unleashed a flurry of lawsuits, and dated a string of clowns who exploited her. This phase of her life was saddening to read about.

She settled into a comfortable and dignified old age out of the public eye, much loved by her children, even the son she abandoned, who forgave her in absentia, and to this day, still speaks fondly of her! She befriended a handful of good, ordinary people who genuinely cared about her, and were quite devoted to her until the end of her life, in 2000.

[Laura Edwards · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book falls somewhere between a 2 and a 3. Why is it I have such trouble finding a good celebrity biography? Is it the fact most celebrities are such disappointing people, is the writer at fault or is it a combination of both? With "Beautiful", I'm going with the last. A very boring book. So many excerpts from newspaper articles are slapped together I felt as if I were paging through a scrapbook. And the author sources heavily from John Loder's (one of Hedy's ex-husbands) autobiography which is annoying. Loder is bitter and obviously has a bone to pick, presenting biased testimony, at best. At the beginning, whole story plots are given for obscure German films of people Hedy was acquainted with, completely superficial stuff I did not need to know.

Hedy's flight from her controlling first husband and Nazi Europe should have been enthralling and nerve-wracking, yet the whole episode came off as a shrug of the shoulders in this book. Glossed over in a few, unexciting paragraphs.

One aspect of Hedy's life which Shearer managed to cover more than adequately concerns her inventions during WWII. A good thing because reading about this part of Hedy's life was the main reason I bought the book. He was detailed about the invention and the impact it had on the world today. I was also glad to see Hedy received acknowledgement and thanks for her contributions before she died.

Another plus are the photographs. The cover and back cover shot are wonderful and there are some nice and varied pictures inside. (Does anyone else think she started to resemble Natalie Wood as she grew older?)

Overall, however, many more negatives than positives. Perhaps, it would be better to read a biography by someone who actually met their subject matter. Such a rule doesn't seem to apply when talking about historical biographies, but celebrity biographies seem to be another matter. Maybe I will try to track down a biography on Hedy written by someone who actually met the woman. Wish me luck.

[Tom Mueller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read in preparation of reading Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World.
My interest in her and her life has also prompted me to aquire several of her films, though her early - and controversial - Ecstasy has been elusive.
A good personal friend knew Hedy personally, and by all accounts she was a gueninely very nice person with impeccable morale in addition to her exquisite beauty and intelligence. Hedy was also a doting and well loved Mother and Grandmother.
Extensive endnotes, Appendix and Index.

[Alyson Dickerman · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting story, but the author jumps all over the place. At one moment he's talking about filming a particular picture, and in the very next paragraph he's describing something completely unrelated. There's a lot of detail here about her films, but because Lamarr was notoriously private as well as histrionic, the details of her life are somewhat speculative. There area great deal of hard facts, but the author tends to include caveats about the validity of certain aspects of Lamar's life. And wisely so. A good read if not completely well thought out.

[Cindy · Rating 2 out of 5]

A third of this book was actually about Hedy Lamarr's life, the other 2/3rds read like stats on a baseball card. It talked about all the people involved with each film, and all the dates and costs, etc. It also talked endlessly about projects that she could MAYBE have been involved in but wasn't, and gave all the stats for those too. When I read a biography, I want to know what that person did, not what they didn't. That's my main gripe about the book. Otherwise, the author knew her well and gave a seemingly accurate account of her life, trials, successes, and strange personality quirks.

[Amanda Knox · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing in this book is very good and the research is clearly thorough. Unfortunately, I put the book down for too long and had a hard time getting back into it. It's almost too detailed for what I was looking for (weird complaint, I know). In exchange, I watched the 2017 documentary "Bombshell: The Life of Hedy Lamarr" in which this author appears. The documentary is very good, but from what I did read, so is this biography. If you're up for loads of film and Hollywood details definitely give it a go.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very Repetitive with little personal information. There were unnecessary complete synopsis' of each of her movies including how they end. If you have seen all of Hedy Lamarr's film than you know what happens in them; if you haven't the synopsis spoils the ending. This book was depressing, I got them impression she spent a majority of her life filing lawsuits and getting sued.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author fails to fully develop describe what made Hedy LaMarr special or worthy of such attention. He fails to explain her character or motivations or what her legacy is as an actress.

[Hunter Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is the most exhaustive biography out there. It aligns with everything I've learned about her over the past 30 years (yes I have actually been a fan even longer than that). Extremely accurate. This biography focuses more on her film career than her invention/scientific contributions. For me, that was perfect. If that's what you're looking for (the science aspect) try Ruth Barton's biography over this one.

But I find this one so much more enjoyable to read. Maybe that's not quite the right word, because I probably should have paced myself with it a bit more, as it did kind of put into a reflective and melancholy place. By no means was her life a tragedy, but neither was it a bright and happy existence. Then again, few Hollywood biographies are.

I was especially interested in all the studio intrigue; how her films were made, what the experience was like for her on each of them, the co-stars she clicked with, the ones she didn't, the costumes, and finally...the critical reception of each. It's all here.

You also get a glimpse into the personality of Hedy herself. QUITE the paradox, on so many levels. My impression: She was such an icon of beauty from childhood until her early 50s, that the latter part of her life was a process of adjustment. If you are told you are the most beautiful creature on the planet and are celebrated for that, it takes a toll. Who are you without it? Her mother tried to help with that in her own flawed way. She repeatedly told Hedy she wasn't that special in the looks department. Maybe in an effort to save Hedy from herself, and to help her find other avenues of "becoming?" Who knows? Their relationship was difficult. And the end result is that literally the entire world told Hedy otherwise, and that is the deck of cards she had to play with.

It played out in poor decisions she made as her popularity began to fade in the early 60s. With that beauty on the wane, she sought security in multiple marriages. She was ill prepared for it. When the world was at her feet but her spouse fell asleep at the dinner table, she couldn't grasp how to deal with that. She felt there must be something wrong with her, so she would go on a search for another husband, trying to find that sense of belonging...when really her marriages were just ordinary life as we regular people know it. Most of us are not celebrated as gods or goddesses. We accept flaws in others because we accept the flaws in ourselves. Her choices in film roles progressively slid after her monster hit of "Samson & Delilah." She cared less about the art of acting and more about security/money. At this point, she was ungrounded. The multiple lawsuits for so many different things are mind boggling. Some were legitimate. Some weren't. Some she won; some she didn't.

Was she vain? At least not initially, as that's well documented. But really, if your fortune is in your face, and that is ingrained in you by the public and the film community on a continual basis...is it wrong to try and preserve that face in any way possible? Her plastic surgeries later in life is how she dealt with it. Who can blame her?

Through it all...though at times she may seem mercenary, another side of her is very much in evidence. A tender, loving, sympathetic side coupled with a KILLER sense of humor. She had many opportunities to skewer her husbands in divorce court, and she never did that. Perhaps she understood fully that a part of the marriage failures were her own fault. Then there's the distance between Hedy and her adopted son Jamie. She did indeed reach out to him in her later years. She was not by any means a heartless woman. She was a lot to handle. She required a lot from her friends, but she also GAVE a lot in return. In summary, she was a flawed human being like the rest of us, but in a unique predicament, and at the end of her days, what she truly cared about were her children and her friends.

[Bibliovixen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was written a while ago. I was hoping for more information about inventions that she had helped create or had created on her own. But this was mostly about her acting career and her personal life outside of the inventions. Not a terrible book, but I'm looking for more updated biography now.

[Betsy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hedy Lamarr was, apparently, a very bright woman who was a glamorous, possibly mediocre, actress and also an inventor of weapon systems for the U.S. military during World War II. I was looking forward to learning about how an actress also had the knowledge and ability to be an inventor like this. Instead I got page after page of movie summaries of every movie she was ever in or tried out for. I also got descriptions of all the clothing she wore (no pictures). There was very little about who she was as a person except that she was beautiful (also no pictures except the cover where she looked nice but nothing spectacular). I began skimming about a quarter of the way through and gave up before I hit the half way mark. Very disappointing.

[Kathie · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Beautiful: The Life of Hedy Lamarr" by Stephen Michael Shearer is a biography of film star and inventor, Hedy Lamarr from her early career until her death.
Honestly, I think the book ought to have been subtitled "The Films of Hedy Lamarr" rather than the Life. The author covers every small detail of each film made by the actor. After reading Marie Benedict's novel "The Only Woman in the Room," I had hoped to find out more about this brilliant and damaged individual, but was rather disappointed here. While the author does write well, his focus is more for film buffs than for readers curious about Hedy as a person.

[Pauline · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very long book with chronology that wasn't terribly clear. I had to search information on the internet to see how many children she had and how many times she was married.
The lady was very bright and sued and defended often.
Her final days were rather intriguing.
Mixing her storyline with the storyline of the movies she was in made it rather a mess to understand.

[Paulette · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is interesting, but really detailed. Sometimes too detailed.

[Gabby M · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hedy Lamarr is famous for being both gobsmackingly gorgeous and having helped invent, in the 1940s, some of the technology that would one day lead to WiFi. Born as Hedwig Kiesler in Vienna in 1914, Hedy lived a privileged childhood as the child of a well-off ethnically Jewish couple (her mother had converted to Christianity and Hedy was not raised in the Jewish faith). Her parents were socially active and Hedy apparently felt lonely as a child, which did not stop her from also being very busy during the early years of her own children. Hedy was an indifferent student, though intellectually curious at home, and left even her finishing and acting schools early to pursue a career in entertainment, finagling her way into a job at a silent film studio and debuting on the stage. At only 18 she starred in what became rather a notorious movie, Ecstasy, about a younger woman married to an older man who has an affair with a guy her own age. The role had significant nudity and her conservative parents did not approve. Neither did the man she married only about a year later, a wealthy and powerful munitions dealer with significant ties to right-wing regimes including that of Benito Mussolini. Fritz Mandl, the first of what would turn out to be six husbands, was controlling to the extreme that Hedy had to flee in disguise to get away from him about four years later. She met Louis B. Mayer, who signed her to MGM, beginning what would be about a 15 year-long career as a major Hollywood star. In the 1940s, a staunch patriot of her adopted country, she was top seller of war bonds and worked happily at the Hollywood Canteen. It is in this period that she worked with a close friend, a composer, on an frequency-hopping torpedo whose patent they donated to the government. She adopted a child with her second husband and had two biological children with her third. All of her marriages were impulsive, often happening within just weeks of meeting, and it became a slippery slope, with her inclination to abandon her career for love tanking her earnings, making her more likely to take a bad role with a good paycheck. She was never good with money and frequently embroiled in lawsuits. A trial for shoplifting in the mid-1960s, though she was acquitted, damaged her reputation even further. She eventually became a bit of a recluse and moved to Florida, where she faced shoplifting charges again in the early 90s but eventually played the stock market well enough to leave a substantial sum behind in her will. Hedy was clearly a complex, multi-faceted woman who lived a life including both the highs of fame and fortune and the lows of seclusion and barely scraping by, virtually none of which she’d have ever been able to imagine growing up as a privileged Austrian girl. But author Stephen Michael Shearer isn’t interested in taking a look at her life in the macro and identifying patterns, like an obvious tendency to impulsivity and even recklessness that persisted from her teenage years fleeing her finishing school to lifting eye drops at a Florida drugstore. His book is a straightforward, linear recitation of her life, including sometimes tedious levels of detail about her film, television, and radio roles. It is obvious that he’s a fan, he takes pains to present positive reviews of her work in movies as well as his own, almost uniformly glowing opinion about how well she did with her roles. His attention to her personal life, outside of tracking headlines about who she was dating at any given time, is frustratingly inconsistent. He mentions that Hedy was concerned about getting her mother out of Austria after the Anschluss, then goes like 50 plus pages before he mentions it again with an update, followed by another like 50 pages after that before a conclusion. There’s just no analysis or critical engagement here, it’s a recitation of facts. His attempts to put a bow on it in his prologue and epilogue go straight to cliche, falling back to describing her as a simple, romantic Austrian girl when all of the evidence is that even as a teenager she was clever and resourceful. I’m sure there’s a good book to be written about her, but it isn’t this one. I can’t recommend it.

[Andrew Pratley · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are looking for a biography of someone who was a great Hollywood star then this is it. If you like me are more interested in her scientific achievements then this book will leave you wanting more & going for more elsewhere.

I will since there is another book on this amazing woman by Richard Rhodes which looks promising. As it is I found this book very interesting since it gave me an insight into the Hollywood film industry & the world it created from the 1930's through to the 1950's.

Hedy Lamarr is a fascinating character who led an incredible life in so many respects. Being a female star in those days had its ups & downs. It had also its pluses & minuses. What made it worse, for her, was the fact that Hedy's looks (which were undeniably incredible) overshadowed her undoubtedly immense intellect to her great frustration. I do wonder how such a figure would be treated today? I can only hope much better.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hedy Lamarr was considered to be the most beautiful women in Hollywood, but she was certainly also the brainiest. She co-invented what eventually became wi-fi. The credit for that came only at the end of her long life. Likewise, her ability as an actor has only recently been re-evaluated. Lamarr was troubled and enigmatic, especially in her relationships with her family and children. This book spends too much time moving movie-by-movie through Lamarr's film career. I would have preferred more of an effort to get behind that beautiful face to the real Hedy. Interesting and informative, but falls short of the biography Lamarr deserves.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh! This book could not have been longer or more tedious if Shearer had tried! The beginning was interesting and it was finally nice to read about her inventions, but the author went into great details about the plots of every movie she was in or even considered making. Then there were lengthy descriptions of everything she wore in those movies and elsewhere. Add to that the litigiousness of her life— she sued even more people than she married, and with less cause. Thankfully, the last 20-25% was acknowledgements, bibliography, etc. while some spoke of what a lovely person she was personally, I did not find much in this to recommend her.

[Helen Robare · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very informational but not written in a way that would be boring. The author gets right into Hedy Lamarr's life right from the start. The reader can tell that the author did a lot of research into the actress's life.

I knew that Hedy had beauty and brains and this book delves into both sides of her talents. I also knew that she had a hand in making the device that would end up allowing the age of information that we live in now. What I did not know about was the trials and tribulations she endured in the film-making business.

If you like biographies where you might learn things you never knew, I would recommend this book.

[Christine Sinclair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hedy Lamarr had it all. Beauty, brains and a brilliant career in Hollywood. But she also had six husbands, was estranged from her oldest adopted son, filed countless lawsuits throughout her life and was put on trial for shoplifting in 1966. Very late in her life, she finally received acknowledgement and gratitude for her invention, with George Antheil during WWII, of a frequency-hopping system then used to direct torpedoes, now in use worldwide in cellphones and other wireless communications. Hedy Lamarr left a lasting legacy, not only in films, but in technology as well.

[Kim Caswell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have not seen many Hedy Lamar films. But she certainly was beautiful and I was untested in the woman whose responsible for why we all have cell phones today. She was a fascinating person. The 3 stars is more because the author had a tendency to ramble and over explain her movies. I didn’t need to know everything that happens from beginning to end. And it really was near the end of the book that he shows real sympathy for her. But I’m not sure he liked the woman he researched. The recognition she finally got for her contributions to science was very touching.

[Katerina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tedious and drawn out. I wanted to like this book but straight off the bat it was not gripping. The aspects of Lamarr's life that were (for many)the most interesting have been but glossed over. Instead long and detailed descriptions of movies and lovers are all one gets. It feels like a mere compilation of information I could have gotten online with less reading time.
I suppose I was looking for the inventor, the brain behind the woman and this was more focused on her romantic affairs desire for money and capricious nature.

[Jillaire · Rating 1 out of 5]

Intrigued by what little I knew about Hedy Lamarr, I decided I wanted to read a biography about her. This was so slow and poorly written that I just couldn't slog through it. I couldn't read about every. single. movie. Maybe I should have expected it, but it just bogged down. And there were frequent issues with sentence structure that made it difficult to read. Poor writing. Poor editing. I closed the book one night and just had no desire to open it again. Now I'll probably just have to read a Wikipedia article about her instead! :/

[Lynne M · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not very familiar with Hedy Lamarr as an actress, but I have heard of her because of her renown as an inventor. This is definitely a detailed, fascinating read about a woman who was far more than just a beautiful face. In fact, it seems as though she was someone who was bored by acting and wanted to stretch herself as a person, especially during World War II. She may be remembered today as a beautiful actress, but her true legacy goes far beyond her work in films.

[Iulia Lawson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before reading this book I had very little idea of who was Hedy Lemarr and why she needs to be remembered. However, thanks to this book from Micheal Shearer we get to go behind the "exotic actress" smoke screen that the Hollywood Moguls and many historians built up and get to meet Hedy Lemarr the woman.

I will definitely read this book again and again because this woman is a technology icon but living up in the 1950's beauty and brains was to much for the world to take.