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| Hedy Lamarr starred in Jack Conway’s Boom Town with Spencer Tracy, Claudette Colbert, Clark Gable, and Frank Morgan (in the exhibition) Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze |
Hedy Lamarr: Actress. Inventor. Viennese is an impressive exhibition curated by Danielle Spera (director of the Jewish Museum Vienna from 2010 - 2022) and designed by Stefan Fuhrer (Fuhrer Vienna) at the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York. You can watch scenes from Georg Jacoby”s Money on the Street (Geld Auf Der Straße, 1930) with Heinz Rühmann, Carl Boese’s No Money is Needed (Man Braucht Kein Geld, 1931), Gustav Machatý Ecstasy (Ekstase, 1933), John Cromwell’s Algiers (1938), Georg Misch’s Calling Hedy Lamarr (2004), and Hedy Lamarr – An Ingenious Mind (2022).
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| Danielle Spera with Anne-Katrin Titze on the KaDeWe Group LAMARR building, Rem Koolhaas and his OMA partners: “Ellen van Loon is the architect and she is great to work with …” |
Hedy’s beauty was an inspiration for Walt Disney’s Snow White, Batman co-creator Bob Kane’s Catwoman, and Sean Young’s Rachael in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Webb Peoples). Alexandra Dean’s revelatory documentary Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (2017), produced by Susan Sarandon, shows how her looks were matched by her inventive brain, while Johnny Depp and Tommy Henriksen’s This Is a Song for Miss Hedy Lamarr on Jeff Beck and Depp’s album 18 (2022) is one of the most recent tributes to celebrate this most extraordinary woman.
Hedy was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014 for her work with composer George Antheil on a frequency-hopping communication system during the Second World War, which is now used in Bluetooth, GPS, and WiFi.
Hedy Lamarr (born Hedwig Kiesler in Vienna, 1914) was brought to Hollywood by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer honcho Louis B Mayer after she escaped her first marriage to a wealthy Austrian arms dealer who fell in love with her watching the at the time scandalous 1933 film Ecstasy. In Hollywood, she starred opposite the likes of Charles Boyer, Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, Lana Turner, William Powell, Bob Hope and Judy Garland, while also working on her inventions to help defeat the Axis powers.
The exhibit explores with the help of images and objects the many aspects of her life. From her happy childhood in Vienna in an affluent assimilated Jewish household, to her love for Austria from afar (there is even one of her classic dirndls on display), from a toy to awards and the plans for the brand new department store in her honour - there is a lot to see and think about. This fascinating woman, who was allowed to sell kisses for war bonds but whose inventions had to be kept quiet, could not be contained in any of the conventional boxes provided for her.
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| frequency hopping performance - Alexandra Dean’s Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze |
From Vienna, Danielle Spera joined me on Zoom for an in-depth conversation on Hedy Lamarr and the Austrian Cultural Forum exhibition Hedy Lamarr: Actress. Inventor. Viennese.
Anne-Katrin Titze: Hello Danielle! Great exhibition! Hedy Lamarr very much deserves this recognition. What was the starting point? Was it Johnny Depp? Was it the new department store in Vienna?
Danielle Spera: Actually it dates back a couple of years ago when there was such a long discussion about Hedy Lamarr’s grave of honor in Vienna. That was in 2014. Then by coincidence I met someone [Georg Misch] who had made a movie called Calling Hedy Lamarr, which will also be shown in the Austrian Cultural Forum. He introduced me to Anthony Loder, to the son of Hedy Lamarr. So one thing led to another.
At that time I was director of the Jewish Museum in Vienna [Jüdisches Museum Wien] and I told him I would like to do a show about Hedy. He agreed and finally came to see the exhibition in Vienna. And the idea came up that we would like to have something - if I say “eternal” it’s too long, but something permanent for Hedy, like a permanent museum, a permanent location where her life and achievements would be celebrated. Finally we succeeded in having this incredible new building.
AKT: Is the building open already?
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| Hedy Lamarr starred in Robert Z Leonard’s Ziegfeld Girl with Lana Turner, Judy Garland, and James Stewart Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze |
DS: It’s under construction. It develops perfectly and the architecture is fantastic. It’s an international architectural bureau [Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)], Rem Koolhaas and his partners.
AKT: You can’t get any better the that!
DS: Ellen van Loon is the architect and she is great to work with and we share the same idea and the same admiration for Hedy’s life.
AKT: There’s always so much more to discover about Hedy. I discovered a lot through Alexandra Dean’s Bombshell film. When I interviewed her then she told me about how she had to make cuts and how there is so much more. In the exhibition in New York, the choice of film clips is interesting, especially the interviews, because they are so telling.
DS: Absolutely!
AKT: The one from the late Sixties and the one from 1970 ORF TV. The first clip reminded me of Rewind & Play by Alain Gomis, where he re-edits a TV interview with Thelonious Monk, plus what wasn’t shown on TV.
DS: I really find that they say a lot about her nature, her sense of humour, her sense of her own life. I’m not sure if I’m sad watching them or if I’m happy. It shows so much about her own soul and how she was. She opened up without being willing to open up. I love her voice and how she speaks German; it’s very very special.
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| Hedy Lamarr 2014 Certificate of Induction to the National Inventors Hall of Fame Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze |
AKT: You can see how torn she is because of the way the interviewer is asking her questions. Especially in the intro to the second interview there is so much spite and you sense what she had to suffer through. Her childhood and love for Vienna very much comes through in the exhibition. She felt very close to it but never went back?
DS: She came back once in 1955 which was an important year for Austria. The war was over already ten years, but at that time Austria was occupied by the Allied Forces. I think Hedy wanted to get an answer to what had happened to all the belongings of the family. If we are talking about oilfields, there are no big oilfields in Austria. But her father had a small oilfield near Vienna.
I think Hedy’s goal was also to find a mean for restitution. By coincidence I just met the son of a lawyer who dealt with her in 1955. The Allied Forces were still in Austria and the small oilfield was in the Russian, the Soviet Zone. She couldn’t go there and I suspect in later years she didn’t come back because she was struggling with getting old and not looking as beautiful as she used to.
She was always longing for Vienna and it was always in her heart and mind. Even in her last days she was watching the Vienna New Year’s Concert. She had a beautiful carefree childhood. It was different from her life in Hollywood later on. It was a longing for her carefree childhood and being taken care of.
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| Hedy Lamarr as Mrs. Hedy Mandl: “I felt like Cinderella eating off golden plates.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze |
AKT: Not to forget - in-between this happy childhood and Hollywood there is the history with Fritz Mandl, her first husband who was an arms dealer. If I understand correctly, he was of Jewish background but made her convert to Catholicism in 1933? Is that correct?
DS: Yes. I’m sure he was a strange personality. But he made an incredible impression on women. He was married several times. He always had the most beautiful wives. His life was incredible. I personally know a woman who left her family, her small children to move to his house. He must have had an incredible aura around him.
Hedy was young, he was very very wealthy, maybe the wealthiest man in Austria. We can only suspect, maybe he was also the father figure. She was a trophy for him and he literally locked her in. She was only allowed to see her parents and had to sneak out. She couldn’t go shopping on her own. He had hired personal shoppers to bring dresses to her house. She was really like trapped in a golden cage. Obviously the way she got out of this life must have been like in a movie.
AKT: It does sound like it. An escape dressed as a maid on a bicycle at night! Also the whole journey on the boat to the US and meeting Louis B Mayer! Knowing how to get a better contract than he originally offered! I like in the exhibition that you show the entirety of articles written about her in Hollywood. One was titled: “Every Wife’s Phantom Rival.” Then if you look closely, you see the subheading stating that in this story you’ll learn that she was a greater gift to women than men. How did you pick these articles?
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| Danielle Spera on The Lamarr Look in Hollywood: “They didn’t offer her character roles she really longed to play.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze |
DS: This was really hard as we don’t have a lot of space there. There’s also this questionnaire which is so much about her sense of humour.
AKT: And of course there is her beauty, which inspired Snow White and Catwoman and [Ridley Scott’s] Blade Runner [Sean Young’s Rachael] and on the other hand you have her inventions, and her fascinating mind. She is really the ultimate woman of the 20th century.
DS: But she was not cherished for that! She was not acclaimed and that was very sad for her. She wanted to be acknowledged as the woman she was, that she was an inventor and had a bright mind. She didn’t want to be seen as what she herself said: “Just stand still and look stupid”, you know? This is what the studios wanted from her. They didn’t offer her character roles she really longed to play.
AKT: I just recently rewatched Ziegfeld Girl, inspired by seeing the exhibition. Besides the gorgeous Adrian costumes and Judy Garland and Lana Turner, you can sense Hedy’s sense of humour there. I noticed for the first time that Garland’s song Minnie From Trinidad has a line about changing a name to Lamarr. Do you have a favourite Hedy Lamarr film?
DS: Well, actually I like Ziegfeld, of course. Algiers is interesting because it’s her first movie in Hollywood. But I really like Das Geld liegt auf der Straße, Money on the Street. She’s really funny and so young, only 16 turning 17 and she plays with real big stars such as Heinz Rühmann, for example.
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| Hedy Lamarr: Actress. Inventor. Viennese, at the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze |
AKT: 16, pretending to be 17, that’s also Judy Garland in Ziegfeld Girl! A lot of their life is in there, the education, the pills, the way the studio system was controlling the stars. Using the beautiful women up, really.
DS: I think there has to be a lot of new research on that. What the studios did with all the stars.
AKT: I totally agree.
DS: Look at Cary Grant’s life! They all had to take medication and they all were told it’s just vitamins and don’t you worry. In fact is was drugs which changed the personality. Hedy’s son describes it. Hedy sometimes was very kind and could change in a second.
AKT: The manipulation happened all over the world. I recently spoke with Claudia Cardinale’s daughter [Claudia Squitieri] about her mother and her controlled career. Through the roles the actresses and actors were pigeonholed. I just looked at my review of the Hedy Lamarr documentary and I had forgotten the last line. That you can’t put Hedy Lamarr in a box.
In the exhibit there are all these boxes that show us how they can’t contain it all. She escapes all of the boxes. And then to most people’s great surprise, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, satellite technology - all these inventions are in some respect linked to Hedy Lamarr’s patents!
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| Hedy Lamarr - A skilled negotiator Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze |
DS: Absolutely, yes. And it’s really sad that she was not cherished for that. Only very late in her life. She sent her son to be handed the achievement, but maybe in her heart she felt that finally the acknowledgement was there.
AKT: Thank you for this conversation!
DS: Of course! I’ll be in New York in May. Thank you, wonderful, see you hopefully soon in person!
Read Alexandra Dean on style and substance in Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story.
Read Alexandra Dean on Hedy Lamarr, Snow White, Catwoman, Mel Brooks and escape from the Nazis.
Hedy Lamarr: Actress. Inventor. Viennese at the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York runs through May 15, 2023 and it is Free Admission Daily 10:00am - 6:00pm.
