“BEAUTY AND BRAINS”

By Raymond Benson

One of the unsung heroines of the 20^th Century—her fame as a Hollywood star notwithstanding—is actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr. Few have known about her extraordinary proclivity to invent stuff, and even less are aware that she came up with a patent (in collaboration with a musical composer, no less) during World War II for a communications system that was later adopted and is still used today.

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, a wonderful documentary on the woman’s life and career, deliberately emphasizes that Lamarr’s scientific knowledge and technical imagination takes precedence over her Hollywood legacy. And while Lamarr appears to have maintained an upbeat attitude throughout the decades, the motion picture reveals that her struggles were many. Lamarr was troubled, misunderstood, and too many times ignored for her efforts beyond being a “pretty face.”

Pretty she was indeed. Lamarr was one of those Hollywood beauties who turned heads and dropped jaws. She was talented, too—a competent leading lady with on-screen charisma and a chemistry with (most) of her co-stars. Unfortunately, the Hollywood moguls, namely Louis B. Mayer at MGM, refused to cast her out of the pigeon-holed slot of “glamour girl.” Only after she broke away from the studio and took better control of the kinds of roles she played did she begin to display a wider range. Perhaps her most well-received role was that of Delilah in Samson and Delilah (1949), for which she campaigned in person to director Cecil B. DeMille. “I am Delilah,” she told him. He believed her.

Lamarr, who was from Austria, had made a controversial picture there in 1933 entitled Ecstasy, in which she frolicked about in the nude. A love scene focused on her face, which portrayed, well, an orgasm. Looking at these clips today, they all seem tame; but then—they were extremely potent. This “scandal” followed her to Hollywood and seemed to forever taint her career in a hypocritical business that exploited young starlets all the time. Nevertheless, she persevered and made a name for herself, becoming one of Tinsel Town’s biggest stars of the 1940s.

More significant, Bombshell contends, is that Lamarr should have been more appreciated for her brainpower. In the early days of the war, prior to the U.S. involvement, Lamarr teamed up with avant-garde composer George Antheil to come up with a way for battleships to communicate with torpedoes and guide them to their targets. The system was called “frequency hopping,” and was based on the way player piano rolls were constructed. If radio signals to a torpedo jumped around in frequency, the Germans would be unable to block the transmissions. The couple received a patent for the idea. Unfortunately, the Navy poo-pooed the notion and shelved it. It was discovered later, after the patent had expired, that the system was indeed developed and put into use. Lamarr and Antheil never profited from their invention, but apparently the system became the basis for much of today’s communications technology in GPS and WiFi.

Writer/Director Alexandra Dean assembles a fascinating portrait of Lamarr in a lean 88-minute feature that relies on vintage footage, film clips, and interviews with family members (Lamarr had a tumultuous love life—she was married six times), filmmakers and film people (Mel Brooks, Peter Bogdanovich, Robert Osborne, Diane Kruger, Gillian Jacobs), and the scientific community. Dean doesn’t pull punches when it comes to some of Lamarr’s more problematic history—her studio-inflicted addiction to drugs, an arrest, the abandonment of an adopted child, and her rejection of her Jewish past. Mostly, though, the film is a celebration of a remarkable woman with an astonishing sense of self, curiosity, and innovation.

Kino Lorber’s 1920x1080p Blu-ray looks marvelous, and the vintage film clips are especially sharp and clear. The soundtrack is 5.1 Surround with optional English SDH subtitles. Special Features include an interview with director Dean, outtakes of interviews with Brooks, Jacobs, and Osborne, and trailers.

For anyone interested in Hollywood and/or World War II history, Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story provides worthwhile, revelatory viewing.

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