The story of Hedy Lamarr — an actress with extraordinary beauty and a mind insatiable for innovation

Hedy Lamarr was a Hollywood star in the 30s and 40s, even dated Charlie Chaplin and was considered the most beautiful woman in the world. In addition, she was responsible for creating a device that today costs 30 billion dollars.

O awesome.club decided to share with you the life story of this actress, who, behind her charming beauty, had a mind with ideas far ahead of her time. Check out!

Hedy Lamarr was born in Vienna in 1914 with the birth name of Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler. Her parents were educated people of Jewish origin. Her father was a bank director and her mother a pianist. From a very young age, Hedy showed an interest in theater, cinema, playing the piano and dancing ballet.

In 1933, one of Austria’s richest men, Friedrich Mandl, saw the girl on stage in a Vienna theater and it was love at first sight. He was so persistent in dating her that despite her parents being against it, she married him. And that’s when Hedy made a mistake.

Marriage has become a cage for Hedy. Because of jealousy, her husband forbade her to act in movies, listened to her calls and kept her locked up. He only let her out of the house accompanied by a trusted employee, and limited her money. Even the actress’ jewelry was locked in a safe. The idea of ​​other people seeing his wife in feature films disturbed him so much that he set up a hunting scheme to find every copy of the film in which she appeared in theaters.

In the end, Hedy couldn’t take it and decided to run away. At one of the parties where her husband decided to take her in public, she took the opportunity to ask a British officer for help. He agreed. The actress was already packing her bags when her husband arrived. He turned on the record player and Hedy heard her own voice begging the officer to help her escape. In the end, Mandl knew everything.

So, the actress took drastic measures: she stole the uniform of one of the employees of the house and sewed all the jewelry she could into her clothes and fled to London.

Hedy Lamarr and Louis Mayer, President of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Life was kind to Hedy: just as she arrived in London, Louis Mayer, the president of the film production company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, was there. Through a studio talent agent, Hedy arranged a meeting with him. Mayer offered her a six-month contract for $125 a week. She refused because she knew her talent was worth more.

But after the meeting, Hedy realized that she had made a mistake, because that was a good chance to become a Hollywood star. But it was too late: Mayer was already returning to the United States and all the ship tickets were sold out. So Hedy decided to venture out again: she boarded by posing as a 14-year-old passenger’s nanny. Mayer was so impressed by the actress’ audacity that he thought about it and offered her a 7-year contract with a weekly pay of $550.

Mayer suggested that the girl use the stage name Hedy Lamarr — in honor of the silent film actress Barbara La Marr, whom his wife admired. So, he gave her one of the main roles in the film Algeria and started promoting her as an actress unknown to viewers, but in fact she was already very popular in Austria and as “the most beautiful woman in the world”. And about the beauty of Hedy, it was quite true: when the public, in anticipation of meeting a new star, saw her on the big screen, she just went crazy. The beauty of Hedy Lamarr was simply breathtaking.

From then on, her image was strongly linked to her exotic beauty. Her biggest film success came with the role of Delilah in the 1949 film Samson and Delilah. Although she appeared in many popular features of the time, along with Clark Gable, Judy Garland, Charles Boyer and became a star, most their characters spoke only a few sentences in the movies. His evolved intellect was bored to death by this. While in the theaters Hedy Lamarr attracted all the attention of the audience, mainly male, the real Hedwig was bored, feeling lonely and homesick.

As a child, Hedy stayed with her father a lot and loved hearing his stories about how things worked. At the age of 5, she already knew how to disassemble and assemble a music box. She absorbed all the information she heard from scientists at meetings organized by her ex-husband, Friedrich Mandl. And during a break in her trailer while working as an actress, she ended up making real discoveries.

And at one of the dinners In 1940, Hedy met a man who shared her passion for🇧🇷 Together with composer George Antheil, they developed the idea of ​​a device they patented as a “secret means of communication”. But apparently both were way ahead of their time as the idea was rejected. However, decades later, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth were developed based on the original concept of Lamarr and Antheil.

Hedy Lamarr had 6 husbands and many lovers. And her last spouse was… her divorce attorney. After divorcing him, Hedy never remarried. And the woman, whose enchanting beauty inspired Disney to create the Snow White designlived her last 35 years alone.

In the 1960s, when her beauty matured, the actress was no longer sought after by Hollywood and her career began to decline. As a result, Hedy Lamarr lived on a small pension of $48 a week.

It was not until 1997 that she received an award for her invention, although she did not receive any monetary compensation for it. She continued creating things for the rest of her life: a fluorescent necklace, a new type of traffic light, and modifications to a supersonic plane, but these inventions also went without any rewards.

The life of Hedy Lamarr was really like an exciting adventure movie. She once participated in a war fundraising campaign for World War II and said that would kiss anyone who donated $25,000🇧🇷 She ended up having to kiss 680 people and made $17 million. However, it is likely that the actress kissed the same man whenever and wherever the campaign went — sailor Eddie Rhodes, who went with her to raise funds across the country and hid in the crowd before each performance.

Hedy Lamarr’s life has always been surrounded by legends and speculation. It has been reported that a TV series about the life of the actress and starring Gal Gadot will be produced. We don’t know about you, but we’re already looking forward to it.

Do you know of any reports of someone being treated differently because of their appearance? Do you believe that beauty can influence your career more than intelligence? Tell us in the comments section.