The world acclaimed her for her beauty and for the sexual scenes he recorded in the world of who, in times when female sexuality was still taboo. Unfortunately your beauty and his days on the big screen overshadowed one of his greatest achievements: the invention of Wi-Fi.
“Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid,” she said wryly. Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, better known in Hollywood What Hedy Lamarr.
Between engineering and the acting
At a young age her teachers told her family that Hedwig was a gifted girl, when she was old enough she began to study engineering, some time later the young woman decided to stop her studies to dedicate herself to dramatic Art. He managed to study at the prestigious school of stage director Max Reinhardt and his first roles as actress they were in the movie Money on the street from director Georg Jacoby. Then he made small interventions in Czech and German production tapes such as The flower woman from Lindenau, you don’t need any money and The suitcase of Mr. OF.
In 1932 Hedwig starred in the Czech director’s film Gustav Machatý, Ecstasy, in which he starred the first full nude in the history of cinema and had to fake a orgasm. The film was branded a sex scandal and received all kinds of censorship and convictions, including from the Vatican.
The escape from a tortuous marriage
The roles played by Hedy left her parents really horrified by the images. The time and prejudices about its place in the who motivated Hedwig’s father to force her to marry an arms industry mogul named Fritz Mandl. Ignoring the will of their daughter, who wanted to continue her artistic career, the parents agreed to the wedding believing that Fritz Mandl it could lead the young woman to “the right path.”
Photograph taken from the internet.
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What Hedwig experienced in her marriage was a constant of violence and control over her own body perpetrated by her husband, she could only undress or bathe if he was present. He also forced her to accompany him to all the social events and business dinners to which he was invited so as not to lose sight of her. Despite living surrounded by luxury, Hedwig hated feeling like a trophy and always having to ask permission to do anything.
Bored with the life her husband forced her to lead, Hedwig resumed her career as a engineering years ago he had put aside to dedicate himself to who. For his part, Mandl maintained close social and commercial ties with the Mussolini government, to which he sold weapons. Hedwig cunningly took advantage of the meetings her husband forced her to attend to gather all kinds of information about Nazi weapons technology. As Hedwig herself would later write, both Mussolini and Hitler attended the lavish parties held at the home of her husband, who, despite being of Jewish origin, was appointed by the various fascist governments “honorary Aryan.”
The continuous and tight control to which the young Hedwig was subjected became so unbearable that during a business trip her husband decided to flee their suffocating marriage by escaping through the window of the services of a restaurant – but according to another version, that she herself recounts in her autobiography, apparently she administered a sleeping pill to her assistant and was able to leave her house disguised as her. He managed to get to the train station and travel to Paris. Hedwig only took some jewelry that allowed him to have cash to continue with his escape.
For several days she was harassed by her husband’s bodyguards until she arrived in London and was able to board the Normandie ocean liner bound for the United States. During the voyage he met the film producer Louis B. Mayer, who had already offered him a job before they reached port. The only requirement he asked was that the name be changed so that it could never be associated with the film. Ecstasy. So that, Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler became, in memory of the actress from who mute Bárbara La Marr, in Hedy Lamarr. In Atlantic waters, he signed his contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
The return to the engineering
Installed in Hollywood, Hedy worked for the director of who King Vidor en Comrade X and Ashes of Love, para Jacques Turn in Night of the Soul, for Robert Stevenson in Redeeming Passion and for Cecil B. Demille in Samson and Delilah. He rejected two films that would end up becoming masterpieces of the seventh art as Gas Light by Thorold Dickinson and Casablanca by Michael Curtiz, and was on the verge of being able to play Scarlet O’Hara in gone With the Wind. Despite this, she became a true rising star of the 1930s.
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Photograph taken from the internet.
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With the outbreak of the Second World War, Hedy offered his services to the United States Government since he had inside information about the weapons of the German army. Located in the military technology department, Hedy realized that the radio signals guiding the torpedoes of the US Navy were very easy to intercept. It was then that, together with his friend the composer George Antheil, he developed a remote-controlled torpedo detection system. Inspired by a musical principle, it worked with 88 frequencies, the equivalent to the piano keys, and was capable of jumping transmission signals between the frequencies of the magnetic spectrum.
The military did not then appreciate the usefulness of the invention that Hedy was offering them until many years later, in 1962, the Cuban missile crisis occurred. Then Lamarr’s technology was used to intercept communications and control torpedoes. Today this method is used for satellite positioning systems, such as GPS, and was the forerunner of Wi-Fi.
Her facet as an inventor
At the end of World War II, Hedy founded her own film company with which she produced and starred in some films mediocre. During breaks from filming, she took the opportunity to continue exploring her facet as an inventor, a facet that was kept secret while she was a star.
His personal life was quite unfortunate. Lamarr was married six times and already in the decline of his film career he fell into the massive consumption of pills and developed a sick obsession with cosmetic surgery. She became kleptomaniac and was arrested on several occasions.After these loud scandals, Hedy Lammarr secluded herself in her Miami mansion to spend the last years of her life isolated from a world that had marginalized her intellectual side and had not recognized her as the inventor of the applications that were being used; he hadn’t even just named her.
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Photograph taken from the internet.
When the recognition of his abilities and achievements finally came, it was too late. His bitterness had grown to such an extent that when in 1997 he was informed of the Pioneer Award He remained unfazed and commented briefly: “It was about time.”
With information from: National Geographic
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