There’s a new biography chronicling the life of one of Hollywood’s biggest stars: Hedy Lamarr: The Most Beautiful Woman in Film by Ruth Barton. Holding the book in my hands, I stepped back a few years in time…
Hedy Lamarr may have been the first woman I saw naked.
I know that statement needs some explanation, so here goes…
My father used to keep his Playboy magazines hidden under other books in the lower portion of his night table next to my parents’ bed. At some point, I discovered where they were and when he or my mother was busy, or not around, I would seek them out. The first time I opened Playboy, I came upon a pictorial called “Sex in the Cinema.” There, in front of me, in striking black-and-white was a picture of a gorgeous female creature swimming buck naked. And then there was another picture, of the same striking beauty, in a forest. Reading the text written by film critic Arthur Knight, I learned that this ravishing creature was Hedy Lamarr (article), from the 1933 foreign picture called Ecstasy. I was damned impressed—not only by the Playboy, or by Hedy, but also by the fact the film was made in 1933, about thirty years before I was looking at these photos.
The annual “Sex in the Cinema” feature became a perennial for me to peruse surreptitiously—at least until I either got caught, or managed to get a copy off the girlie magazine black market run by the teenagers around the corner.
I later learned that the Czech-produced Ecstasy, which the Vienna-born Ms. Lamarr made under the name Hedwig Kiesler, was considered an “art film” by some in its day.
Based on the furor over Ecstasy, the 20-year-old Kiesler made a stir even before MGM changed her name and put her under contract. But when Louis B. Mayer waited for the perfect role for his new starlet—whom he had met in London—he loaned her out to producer Walter Wanger for Algiers (1938). Good move, Louie. A remake of the 1937 French hit Pepe Le Moko, the film starred Lamarr as the French tourist in Algiers’ Casbah section who wins the affections of jewel thief Charles Boyer. With sparks flying between the leads, and the trailers pushing the famous “Come with me to zee Casbah” line (which was not in the film), the movie presented a new sex symbol to the screen by the time MGM settled on her debut for the studio.
(NOTE: Pepe Le Moko also became the model for that lecherous skunk Pepe Le Pew, and Algiers’ success inspired Warner Brothers to take a similar story route with Casablanca a few years later).
I Take This Woman (1940)
For her roaring lion debut, I Take This Woman (1940), Lamarr was teamed with Spencer Tracy under the watch of Marlene Dietrich’s mentor/director Josef Von Sternberg. Mayer wanted to mold Lamarr into another Garbo—accent and all—but without the Solitary Swede’s difficult attitude.
Unfortunately, I Take This Woman didn’t click. During production, Von Sternberg and then Frank Borzage were booted from the director’s chair in succession; final credit went to W.S. Van Dyke. The troubled film ultimately flopped at the box-office.
Shot later but released earlier was Lady of the Tropics (1939), in which Hedy plays a half-Vietnamese woman in Saigon, unable to leave the country. Much to the chagrin of her boyfriend (Joseph Schildkraut), she draws the attention of engaged playboy Robert Taylor. While the film didn’t set the box-office on fire, it showcased Lamarr as a woman capable of exuding an exotic type of beauty. The same was true a few years later in White Cargo (1942), which offered her much-talked-about role as Tondelayo, the libido-driven African native whose sarong-draped beauty and duplicitous nature drives plantation owner Richard Carlson cuckoo.
It took Lamarr’s teaming with Tracy and It Happened One Night leads Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in Boom Town (1940) to prove Mayer correct about Hedy’s potential popularity. In this popular melodrama set against the backdrop of Texas oil fields, Gable and Tracy are wildcatters who become feuding magnates, both vying for the attention of Colbert. Lamarr is the other woman, spying for Gable, and also joining him in the bedroom after his marriage to Colbert.
Lamaar’s pact with Louie B. lasted four more years in which she cranked out nine films for the studio,H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941), Ziegfield Girl (1941), and an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat (1942) with Tracy and John Garfield among them. The less than sensational audience response to these pictures inspired Metro to loan her out again to other studios; Lamarr was eventually allowed to jump ship from MGM by agreeing to make a movie on occasion for the studio. She made two with William Powell that did click: Crossroads (1942) and The Heavenly Body (1944).
The Strange Woman Starring Hedy Lamarr
While working independently, Lamarr memorably tackled some unusual roles that MGM wouldn’t give her, and on much smaller budgets. What remained consistent was that Lamarr didn’t play pushovers or women afraid to hide their libidos. This is particularly evident in The Strange Woman (1946), an unusual period film noir from director Edgar G. Ulmer (Detour) set in 19th century Maine. With hints of S&M, incest and just plain sleeping around prominent, The Strange Woman offers Lamarr as a manipulative beauty out to snare a wealthy middle-aged businessman and whomever else she believes will help her. According to the New York Times, Lamarr was afforded “her meatiest assignment in years, a chance at large chunks of choice dialogue an opportunity to wear a wardrobe that won’t go unnoticed by the ladies.”
Dishonored Lady (1947), directed by latter-day Disney stalwart Robert Stevenson (Old Yeller, Mary Poppins), offers Hedy as a fashion magazine editor who attempts to mix a wild party life with success in the workplace. After she attempts suicide, she falls for a medical researcher (Dennis O’Keefe), but men still pursue her (including then real-life hubby John Loder). Add a murder and a court trial and you have complications galore, with Hedy’s femme fatale at the center of the whirlpool. Then in 1948, Hedy appeared in a light comedy, Let’s Live A Little, co-produced by Robert Cummings starring himself as an harried ad-man and beautiful Hedy as his shrink.
As the 1940s closed, the actress had one of her greatest successes, cast opposite Victor Mature in Cecil B. DeMille’s Biblical epic Samson and Delilah (1949). Sex and religion mixed in equal doses with Mature as the hirsute Hebrew strongman and Lamarr, still strikingly beautiful at the ripe age of 35, as the Philistine siren. The film brought in an impressive $12 million, even though some mocked DeMille’s approach to the material and casting: One critic famously wrote “it’s the only epic film in which the hero has bigger t*ts than the heroine.”
My Favorite Spy, Lamarr & Hope
Based on ticket sales, Lamarr proved to be just about as popular as Garfield and more popular than Lana Turner during the 1940s, but the rest of her career was hit-or-miss. She did the Marlene Dietrich sexy saloon gal act opposite Ray Milland in Copper Canyon (1950) and proved to be a fine comic foil as an exotic beauty to undercover impersonator Bob Hope in My Favorite Spy (1951), but her last screen appearances in such films as Irwin Allen’s all-star The Story of Mankind (1957) and the trashy meller The Female Animal (1958) proved to be footnotes to the sex goddess’ once-bright career.
Hedy Lamarr’s private life was riddled with scandal, curiosity and some of the stuff her movies were made of. She was married six times, with her first alliance to wealthy Viennese munitions manufacturer Fritz Mandl, who did business with the Nazis. Her husband attempted to purchase all copies of Ecstasy in print, but was unsuccessful. Lamarr escaped Mandl by drugging her maid and, based on info she learned from him, she invented a guiding system with avant-garde composer George Anthiel for torpedoes used by Allied troops, and for which she held the patent.
She turned down the future Ingrid Bergman roles in Casablanca and Gaslight and was originally cast in the 1966 horror yarn Picture Mommy Dead, but never showed up for the shoot. She was arrested twice for shoplifting in the 1960s and 1990s and settled out of court when she sued Mel Brooks for using her name in Blazing Saddles. After her controversial “autobiography” Ecstasy and Me was issued, she sued her ghostwriters for $21 million.
Hedy Lamarr’s list of lovers was a long and varied one. Some reports claim she had an affair with Adolf Hitler; others assert that she had lovers of both sexes. Reportedly, she had liaisons with the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Errol Flynn, Franchot Tone, Frank Sinatra, Milton Berle, producer Sam Spiegel, Eddie Fisher, Stewart Granger, Spencer Tracy, Billy Wilder and Paul Henreid.
And that goes without mentioning all who were mesmerized by the enigmatic beauty that was Hedy Lamarr.
To learn more about the truths as well as the rumors surrounding Hedy’s legendary presence, the new book by Ruth Barton, Hedy Lamarr: The Most Beautiful Woman in Film published by The University Press of Kentucky reveals the star’s life in Europe and Hollywood and her surprising contributions to technology.
Movies Unlimited is giving away Ruth Barton’s book, Hedy Lamarr: The Most Beautiful Woman in Film, (a $29.99 value). There will be 2 books given away and 2 additional winners can win the Hedy Lamarr Double Feature DVD, which will be given away as well.
For a chance to try to win one of these great prizes, enter the Hedy Lamarr Sweepstakes! Ends 2/15/11.
And now, see Hedy at her best along with co-star William Powell in the trailer for The Heavenly Body from 1944: