Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include two additional screenings.
Movie star Hedy Lamarr was a dream come true. “She represented a dream beyond reality, in terms of what you could look like if you were a woman or what a woman you love could look like if you were a man,” says Jeanine Basinger, chairwoman of the film studies school at Wesleyan University in Middletown.
But Lamarr wanted to be more than just a cinema goddess. The tech-savvy actress created an invention that she hoped would change the world. She was rebuffed. As her son says, she wanted to do something important with her life but “she was judged by that face.”
A documentary about Lamarr’s life, “Bombshell,” will be shown starting Friday, Feb. 2, at Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford. On Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 3 and 4, two Lamarr films also will be shown, in a triple feature with the documentary.
Basinger appears in the film, alongside Lamarr’s friends, relatives, co-workers and others who knew all along what those outside of Hollywood circles didn’t: that behind that gorgeous face was a brilliant mind.
Basinger said that Lamarr’s beauty was a burden even in Hollywood.
“Because she was so stunningly beautiful, Hollywood tended to think of her as a close-up, someone who audiences want to just look at. But she was better than people think,” Basinger says. “She did comedy and tragedy, she was in musicals. She had a lot more to her. She was very ambitious to not just be a mannequin, to not just be a beautiful woman who they hung clothes on.”
Lamarr was born Hedwig Kiesler in 1914 in Vienna. Her father encouraged his daughter’s interest in tinkering and gadgetry. But as she grew, so did her beauty, and that began to define her life.
At age 19, she starred in “Ecstasy,” a film that had nudity and graphic sexuality. That film made her world famous, even though it was banned in Germany because Lamarr was Jewish. Her first husband, munitions tycoon Fritz Mandl, kept her locked up out of jealousy. She escaped and went to Hollywood, where she became a star in “Algiers,” “Boomtown,” “Samson and Delilah” and other films.
All the while, she tinkered on the side, playing with ideas for inventions. Her most revolutionary notion was devised as a way to guide a radio-controlled torpedo so that it couldn’t be jammed by enemy interference. She came up with frequency hopping, changing the radio frequencies so constantly that the enemy couldn’t keep up. She developed her idea with her friend, composer George Antheil.
They patented it, but the Navy rejected the invention. Lamarr was told she was more valuable keeping troops entertained and, like the rest of Hollywood, raising money for war bonds.
Decades after she let the patent expire, Lamarr’s and Antheil’s invention was used as a guidepost in the development of WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS and other wireless technologies.
“People in Hollywood knew she was smart and that she had these interests. She spent so many of her later years inventing things. It wasn’t that big of a deal,” Basinger says. “But I do think it was a shock to everybody to realize how significant in retrospect the discovery that she and [Antheil] twigged into.”
Lamarr’s later years — a shoplifting incident, a poorly received autobiography, an estrangement from her children and other misfortunes — dimmed her star, Basinger says.
“At that time we were getting a lot of tragic former Hollywood star stories. People began to think of them as a group, that they were all sort of wacky or even crazy, maybe not very smart and had substance abuse problems,” Basinger says. “That I think is why it seemed like such a shock. People had forgotten the super-confident beauty. Suddenly we have to reevaluate a story we thought we knew.”
“BOMBSHELL: THE HEDY LAMARR STORY” will be shown Feb. 2, 3, 4, 9 and 16 at 2 p.m., Feb. 10 and 11 at 4 p.m. and Feb. 17 and 18 at 3:45 p.m. at Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 600 Main St. in Hartford. On Feb. 3 and 4, it will be followed by two Lamarr films: “Experiment Perilous” and “Dishonored Lady,” all three films for one price. From Feb. 2 to 4, costumes worn by Lamarr in “Experiment Perilous” and “Dishonored Lady” will be on exhibit in the theater lobby. Admission is $9, $8 seniors and students, $7 members. thewadsworth.org.
