Hedy Lamarr ( / ˈ h ɛ d i / ; born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler ; November 9, 1914 – January 19, 2000) was an Austrian and American actress and inventor. She was known for her success as a film star and for co-inventing a radio guidance system during World War II.

After working briefly in films in Czechoslovakia, including the film Ecstasy (1933), which caused discussion, she left her first husband, Friedrich Mandl, and moved secretly to Paris. She later traveled to London, where she met Louis B. Mayer, who gave her a contract to act in Hollywood films. Lamarr became famous for her role in the romantic drama Algiers (1938). She gained more recognition for her performances in the Western Boom Town (1940) and the drama White Cargo (1942). Her most successful film was the religious story Samson and Delilah (1949). She also acted on television before her final film was released in 1958. In 1960, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

At the start of World War II, Lamarr worked with composer George Antheil to create a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes. This system used spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to prevent enemy forces from blocking the signals. The system, called a "Secret Communication System," aimed to send secure signals across many different radio frequencies to avoid interference. Similar technology was not used in real systems until 1962, which was after the war and three years after the patent for the Lamarr–Antheil invention expired. Frequency hopping, which was already in use before the patent, became a key part of spread spectrum communication. Today, this technology is used in secure wireless networks, such as Bluetooth and early Wi-Fi, to protect data from being intercepted or disrupted.

Early life

Hedy Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in 1914 in Vienna, Austria. She was the only child of Gertrud "Trude" Kiesler (née Lichtwitz) and Emil Kiesler.

Her father was born to a Jewish family in Lemberg, which was part of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria in Austria-Hungary (now Lviv, Ukraine). He worked as a deputy director of Wiener Bankverein in the 1920s and later became a director at the combined bank Creditanstalt-Bankverein. Her mother was born in Budapest, Hungary, to an upper-class Jewish family. She converted to Catholicism and raised her daughter as a Christian, though Hedy was not baptized.

As a child, Lamarr enjoyed acting and was interested in theater and film. At age 12, she won a beauty contest in Vienna. She also learned about technology from her father, who explained how machines worked during their walks together.

Film career

Hedy Lamarr was taking acting classes in Vienna when she wrote a fake note from her mother and went to Sascha-Film. She got a job as a script girl there. While working, she appeared as an extra in the romantic comedy Money on the Street (1930) and had a small speaking role in the comedy Storm in a Water Glass (1931). Producer Max Reinhardt cast her in a play called The Weaker Sex, performed at the Theater in der Josefstadt. Reinhardt was impressed with her performance and invited her to join him in Berlin.

However, she never trained with Reinhardt or acted in any of his Berlin productions. Instead, she met Russian theatre producer Alexis Granowsky, who cast her in his first film, The Trunks of Mr. O.F. (1931), which starred Walter Abel and Peter Lorre. Granowsky later moved to Paris, but Lamarr stayed in Berlin and was given the lead role in No Money Needed (1932), a comedy directed by Carl Boese. This film made her internationally famous.

In early 1933, when she was 18 years old, Lamarr was cast in Ecstasy (Ekstase in German, Extase in Czech), directed by Gustav Machatý. She played a young wife who is ignored by her older husband. The film showed close-up scenes of Lamarr’s body and a moment of intense emotion. Lamarr said she was tricked by the director and producer, who used special camera equipment, but the director denied her claims.

Although she was upset and lost interest in acting, the film gained worldwide attention after winning an award at the Venice Film Festival. In Europe, it was seen as an artistic work. In America, it was criticized for being too sexual and was banned there and in Germany.

Lamarr performed in several stage plays, including a starring role in Sissy, a play about Empress Elisabeth of Austria in Vienna. Critics praised her performance, and fans sent roses to her dressing room. She turned away most admirers, including Friedrich Mandl, a man who became very interested in meeting her.

Mandl was an Austrian arms dealer and one of the richest men in Austria. He was connected to Italian leader Benito Mussolini and later to German leader Adolf Hitler. Lamarr’s parents, who were Jewish, did not approve of Mandl because of his ties to these leaders, but they could not stop Lamarr from marrying him.

On August 10, 1933, Lamarr married Mandl at the Karlskirche. She was 18, and he was 33. In her autobiography, Ecstasy and Me, she described Mandl as a controlling husband who opposed her acting career and kept her isolated in their home, Schloss Schwarzenau. Mandl had business connections with Italy and Germany, and both leaders attended parties at his home. Lamarr attended meetings where scientists and military experts discussed technology, which sparked her interest in science.

Lamarr’s marriage to Mandl became unbearable, and she decided to leave Austria in 1937. She claimed she disguised herself as her maid and fled to Paris, though other accounts say she convinced Mandl to let her wear her jewelry to a dinner and then disappeared.

After arriving in London in 1937, she met Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM, who was searching for talent in Europe. She initially refused his offer of $125 a week but later joined him on a ship to New York and secured a $500-a-week contract. Mayer suggested she change her name to Hedy Lamarr to distance her from her past and the controversy of Ecstasy. The name honored Barbara La Marr, a silent film star. Mayer brought her to Hollywood in 1938 and promoted her as the "world’s most beautiful woman."

Mayer loaned Lamarr to producer Walter Wanger, who was making Algiers (1938), an American version of the French film Pépé le Moko (1937). She played the lead opposite Charles Boyer. The film created a "national sensation," and she was billed as an unknown Austrian actress, generating excitement among audiences. Mayer hoped she would become as famous as Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich. One viewer said her beauty on screen "took one’s breath away."

During her time in Hollywood, Lamarr often felt lonely and homesick. She avoided crowds and beaches, and she was surprised when fans asked for her autograph. In December 1938, writer Howard Sharpe described her as someone who felt out of place in the spotlight.

In later films, Lamarr was often cast as a glamorous, exotic seductress. Her second American film was I Take This Woman, co-starring Spencer Tracy and directed by Josef von Sternberg. Von Sternberg was fired during filming, and the movie was delayed. Lamarr later appeared in Lady of the Tropics (1939), where she played a seductress in Saigon opposite Robert Taylor. She returned to I Take This Woman, re-shot by W. S. Van Dyke. Lamarr later recalled working on the film: "We were seated around a table one day, rehearsing our lines. It was my first Metro film, and little Hedy was learning English, when Spencer turned to me and said, briskly, 'Get me a taxi.' I obligingly arose and started to walk toward the soundstage door, not realizing that it was the next line in the script."

In Boom Town (1940), one of her most popular films, she co-starred with Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, and Spencer Tracy. The film earned $5 million. Lamarr said of her co-stars: "Clark Gable, so warm and friendly to the insecure actress … Claudette Colbert, such a lady to me, although much higher in the MGM pecking order." MGM reteamed her with Gable for Comrade X (1940), a comedy similar to Ninotchka (1939), which was another success. She described Gable as "one of the nicest people I’d met" and a "great practical joker."

Lamarr was paired with James Stewart in Come Live with Me (1941), playing a Viennese refugee. She called Stewart "one of the sweetest men in the world" and appreciated the film for being different from her earlier roles: "I was so happy about this picture, it was my first chance to do a charming, humorous story. Until then, my image was that of an exotic creature." Stewart also appeared in Ziegfeld Girl (1941), where Lamarr, Judy Garland, and Lana Turner played aspiring showgirls—a big success.

Lamarr was top-billed in H. M. Pulham, Esq. (1941), although the film’s protagonist was played by another

Producer

After leaving MGM in 1945, Hedy Lamarr partnered with Jack Chertok to create a production company. Together, they made the thriller The Strange Woman (1946), which was based on a novel of the same name by Ben Ames Williams. Lamarr’s acting in the film received positive reviews from critics. The New York Times wrote, "Every actress would want to perform an outstanding role, and Hedy Lamarr has achieved that. Her performance in the serious drama about a smooth-talking sinner in Bangor, Maine, a century ago, gives her the most significant acting challenge in years, with many opportunities to deliver strong lines."

Lamarr and Chertok later created another thriller, Dishonored Lady (1947), in which Lamarr also starred.

Inventing career

Hedy Lamarr did not receive formal training and mostly taught herself. She used her free time, even while working on movie sets, to create and draw designs for inventions, such as a better traffic light and a tablet that would dissolve in water to make a flavored carbonated drink.

In the late 1930s, Lamarr attended meetings about weapons with her husband, Fritz Mandl, who sold arms. These meetings may have helped him make more sales. During these meetings, she learned that navies needed a way to guide torpedoes through water. Radio control was suggested as a method, but an enemy could interfere with the signal and change the torpedo’s path.

Later, she talked about this idea with George Antheil, a composer and pianist. Her idea to stop interference by changing frequencies matched Antheil’s earlier work in music. In a special film piece from 1923–24, Antheil tried to make multiple player pianos play together in time using synchronized piano rolls. Together, they realized that radio frequencies could be changed in a similar way using a small mechanism.

Because their idea was strong, the National Inventors Council (NIC) introduced Antheil to Samuel Stuart Mackeown, an electrical engineering professor at Caltech, to help with the electrical systems. Lamarr hired the law firm Lyon & Lyon to prepare a patent application. The patent, U.S. patent 2,292,387, was granted on August 11, 1942, under her legal name, Hedy Kiesler Markey. The Navy rejected the invention because it was too large to fit in a torpedo. Lamarr and Antheil were ignored by the Navy and did not continue working on the invention. Instead, they were advised to focus on selling war bonds because Lamarr was a well-known celebrity.

Later years

Hedy Lamarr became a U.S. citizen on April 10, 1953, when she was 38 years old. In 1966, she wrote a book called Ecstasy and Me. However, she later said on television that she did not write the book, and much of it was not true. Lamarr took the publisher to court, claiming that a person named Leo Guild, who wrote the book for her, made up many details. Later, someone named Gene Ringgold took Lamarr to court, saying that the book copied material from an article he wrote in 1965 for Screen Facts magazine.

In the late 1950s, Lamarr and her former husband, W. Howard Lee, worked together to design and build the Villa LaMarr ski resort in Aspen, Colorado.

In 1966, Lamarr was arrested in Los Angeles for stealing items from a store, but the charges were dropped. In 1991, she was arrested again in Orlando, Florida, for stealing $21.48 worth of laxatives and eye drops. She agreed to not break any laws for a year in exchange for the charges being dropped.

During the 1970s, Lamarr spent more time alone and avoided public activities. She received offers for scripts, commercials, and stage projects, but she was not interested. In 1974, she sued Warner Bros. for $10 million, claiming that a joke in the movie Blazing Saddles used her name in a way that violated her privacy. The movie’s creator, Mel Brooks, said he was honored by the reference. Warner Bros. agreed to settle the case without going to court, paying a small amount of money and offering an apology. In 1981, as her eyesight worsened, Lamarr moved to Miami Beach, Florida, and lived more privately.

In 1996, an image of Lamarr created using CorelDRAW software won a contest for the software’s cover design. For several years, the image appeared on boxes of the software. Lamarr took Corel to court for using her image without permission. Corel argued that she did not own the rights to the image. The two sides reached an agreement in 1998, but the details were not made public.

Lamarr received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1966 for her work in the movie industry. The star is located at 6247 Hollywood Boulevard, near Vine Street.

Lamarr had a difficult relationship with her older son, James Lamarr Loder. When James was 12 years old, their relationship ended suddenly, and he moved in with another family. They did not speak for nearly 50 years. Lamarr did not include James in her will, and he later took legal action to claim part of her $3.3 million estate. He eventually received $50,000 as part of a settlement.

In her later years, Lamarr lived in Altamonte Springs, Florida, before moving to Casselberry, Florida, in her final months. She mainly stayed in touch with family and friends by phone. After moving to Casselberry, two neighbors visited her home weekly to check on her.

On January 19, 2000, Lamarr died at her home in Casselberry at the age of 85. Her cause of death was heart disease. Her son Anthony Loder scattered part of her ashes in Austria’s Vienna Woods, as she had requested.

In 2014, a memorial for Lamarr was placed in Vienna’s Central Cemetery. The rest of her ashes were buried there.

Marriages and children

Hedy Lamarr was married and divorced six times and had three children:

• Friedrich Mandl (married 1933–1937), chairman of the Hirtenberger Patronen-Fabrik.
• Gene Markey (married 1939–1941), a screenwriter and producer. During her marriage to Markey, Lamarr adopted a boy, though this was later disputed by the child. Lamarr and the boy stopped speaking to each other when he was 12 years old. Their relationship ended suddenly, and they did not speak again for nearly 50 years. Lamarr left him out of her will. Lamarr and Markey lived at 2727 Benedict Canyon Drive in Beverly Hills, California, at a place called Hedgerow Farm. The home still exists.
• John Loder (married 1943–1947), an actor. The two had a daughter, Denise, who married Larry Colton, a writer and former baseball player, and a son, Anthony, who worked for illustrator James McMullan. Anthony Loder was featured in the 2004 documentary film Calling Hedy Lamarr.
• Ernest "Teddy" Stauffer (married 1951–1952), a nightclub owner, restaurateur, and former bandleader.
• W. Howard Lee (married 1953–1960), a Texas oilman who later married film actress Gene Tierney.
• Lewis J. Boies (married 1963–1965), Lamarr's divorce lawyer.

After her sixth and final divorce in 1965, Lamarr remained unmarried for the last 35 years of her life.

Throughout her life, Lamarr claimed that her first son, James Lamarr Loder, was not biologically related to her and was adopted during her marriage to Gene Markey. Years later, her son found documents showing he was the out-of-wedlock son of Lamarr and actor John Loder, whom she later married as her third husband. However, a DNA test later showed he was not biologically related to either, as reported in the book Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story.

Awards, honors, and tributes

• Chosen as the "most promising new actress" in 1938 by a poll of Philadelphia film fans led by Elsie Finn, a film critic for The Philadelphia Record (1939).
• Selected as the "ideal type" of woman in a poll of male and female students by the Pomona College newspaper (1939).
• Named the "most beautiful actress" in a secret poll of 30 Hollywood correspondents by the American magazine Look (1939).
• Won "top honors for facial features" in a poll of 400 members of the California Models Association (1940).
• Included by makeup expert Max Factor, Jr. among ten Hollywood actresses with the most appealing voices (1943).
• Voted the year's tenth best actress by British moviegoers for her role in Samson and Delilah (1951).

• Honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the motion picture industry (1960).
• Voted tenth best actress by British moviegoers for her performance in Samson and Delilah (1951).

• Jointly honored with George Antheil with the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Award for their work on spread-spectrum technology (1997).
• Became the first woman to receive the Invention Convention’s BULBIE Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award, called the "Oscars of inventing," for her creative lifetime achievements in science and invention (1997).
• Awarded the Viktor Kaplan Medal by the Austrian Association of Patent Holders and Inventors for her inventive work (1998).
• Posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for her role in developing frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology (2014).

• A street in Vienna, called the Hedy-Lamarr-Weg, was named after her in the 12th District (2006).
• A quantum telescope on the roof of the University of Vienna, named in her honor, was installed by IQOQI (2014).
• An honorary grave for Lamarr was created at the Vienna Central Cemetery in Group 33 G, Tomb No. 80, near the presidential tomb (2014).

• Google celebrated her 101st birthday with an animated Google Doodle and her 109th birthday with a second doodle highlighting her film career and scientific work (2015; 2023).
• The asteroid 32730 Lamarr was named in her honor by the IAU Minor Planet Center (2019).

In popular culture

• Appeared in Herman Wouk's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Caine Mutiny, where Lieutenant Barney Greenwald refers to Lamarr during a tense post-trial scene (1952).
• Is the main character in Marie Benedict's biographical novel The Only Woman in the Room, a bestseller and book club selection (2019).
• Was parodied as the villain Hedley Lamarr in the Mel Brooks western comedy Blazing Saddles, where the character, played by Harvey Korman, is repeatedly mistaken for "Hedy Lamarr" and corrects people by saying, "That's Hedley" (1974).
• Her son, Anthony Loder, is in the documentary film Calling Hedy Lamarr, which includes recordings of her personal phone calls (2004).
• Is the inspiration for the fictional character Charlotte Keppel in the mockumentary The Chronoscope, a film that uses a time-viewing device to satirize 1930s politics (2009).
• The story of her frequency-hopping invention and later recognition as an inventor is covered in the documentary Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and aired on American Masters (2017).
• Was chosen from 150 technology figures to be profiled in a short film by the British Computer Society, highlighting her role in communication history (2010).
• Mentioned in the I Love Lucy episode "The Dancing Star," where Lucille Ball jokes about not seeing Hedy Lamarr at a pool party (1955).
• Her frequency-hopping invention is discussed in an episode of the Science Channel series Dark Matters: Twisted But True, which explores scientific discoveries (2011).
• Her role in wireless communication is highlighted in the premiere episode of the Discovery Channel series How We Invented the World (2013).
• The character Whitney Frost in Agent Carter was inspired by Lamarr and Lauren Bacall (2016).
• Celia Massingham portrayed Lamarr in the Legends of Tomorrow episode "Helen Hunt," set in 1937 Hollywood (2017).
• Alyssa Sutherland portrayed Lamarr in the Timeless episode "Hollywoodland," which shows her film career and wartime inventions (2018).
• Mentioned in the first episode of the animated series Marvel's What If…? (2021).
• Honored in Star Trek: Prodigy with the introduction of the Lamarr-class USS Voyager-A, a starship named after her (revealed 2023; appears in season 2, 2024).
• The off-Broadway play Frequency Hopping dramatizes Lamarr's collaboration with Antheil and won a science and technology award (2008).
• The one-woman show HEDY! The Life and Inventions of Hedy Lamarr tells her life story on stage (2016).
• The one-actor play Stand Still and Look Stupid: The Life Story of Hedy Lamarr focuses on her film career and inventions (first staged 2016).
• The dance production Hedy Lamarr: An American Muse includes a tribute to her, performed by Linze Rickles McRae and others (2023).
• Anne Hathaway studied Lamarr's films and used her breathing techniques for her role as Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises (2012).
• Referenced in the song "Feed Me" from the musical Little Shop of Horrors, where a plant promises a date with Hedy Lamarr (1982; 1986).
• Johnny Depp and Jeff Beck recorded the song "This Is a Song for Miss Hedy Lamarr" for their album 18 (2022).
• In the video game Half-Life 2, Dr. Kleiner's pet headcrab is named Lamarr after Hedy Lamarr (2004).
• A photograph of Lamarr by Trude Fleischmann was displayed in the New York Public Library exhibition Thirty Years of Photography (2010).
• Featured in the exhibition Lady Bluetooth at the Jewish Museum Vienna, which highlights her legacy as a Hollywood star and inventor (2019).