Bombshell: the Hedy Lamarr Story Hedy Lamarr Was the Original Wild Child

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story Hedy Lamarr was the original wild child

After inventing the movie sex scandal, she married a Nazi collaborator, escaped him, and FLed to Hollywood. There she became a movie star known as “the most beautiful woman in the world.”

Songs were written about her beauty, Snow White and Cat Woman were modeled on her iconic look. She married six husbands and had affairs with everyone from Spencer Tracy to JFK. But today, ﬁfteen years after her death, the world has forgotten Hedy Lamarr, the great beauty.

This documentary will re-discover her, not only as an actress, but as a brilliant mind. It turns out “the most beautiful woman in the world” was also a secret inventor. In the midst of World War II, she used her free time to co-invent a radio-control technology meant for 1940s-era torpedoes, which would ultimately pave the way for secure cell phone communication, WiFi, Bluetooth, and drone warfare. This is the story of what happens when an actress, admired and ridiculed for her wild life, is secretly a genius who changed the world.

2 © Dogwoof Ltd / Reframed Pictures 2016 A Scandalous Debut

At the age of eighteen, Hedy Kiesler scandalized the world. She had been born into an upper middle class family but instead of attending the upscale girls school, Lamarr went to acting auditions and landed the lead role in “Ecstasy,” the most eagerly awaited European film of 1933. Hedy’s conservative parents walked out of the first screening, in mute shock. A year later they married off their only child to the first man who asked for her hand. It happened to be a very wealthy Nazi collaborator.

Hedy was asked to entertain Hitler and Mussolini at her husband’s enormous castle. Over dinner, Hedy overheard Nazi military strategy, including plans for high tech submarines with remote controlled torpedoes. She was terrifed and decided to escape Austria and start a new life overseas.

4 © Dogwoof Ltd / Reframed Pictures 2016 THE FACE THAT CHANGED HOLLYWOOD

Hedy’s breakout Hollywood ﬁlm was “Algiers.” Hedy was mesmerizing on screen and it made her into the most revered beauty in America. Disney changed Snow White from a blonde to a brunette, so she would resemble Hedy. Joan Bennett was one of the many stars who changed their hairstyles to match Hedy’s distinctive look.

Hedy would star in 15 more Hollywood ﬁlms, including Ziegfeld Girls, Boom Town, and her biggest hit, Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah, but her career would never reach the heights of the woman she hoped to replace in Hollywood, Marlene Dietrich.

Even as her acting career soared, inventing remained Hedy’s secret passion. At the height of her movie career, Hedy Lamarr starred with Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart and Bob Hope, but she spent her evenings working at her drafting table, trying to ﬁght the Nazis.

When Lamarr met the avant-garde composer George Antheil, who also moonlighted as an inventor, she had found an ideal inventing partner. It was 1940, and Hedy and George were both obsessed with the threat of the Nazi submarines in the Atlantic. They dreamed of building a remote control torpedo that could hunt down U-Boats with deadly accuracy. To allow ships to send remote commands to the torpedo, Hedy and George designed a “secret communication system,” patented it under Hedy’s married name “H.K. Markey,” and handed the patent to the U.S. Navy.

It would become the foundation for “spread spectrum communication,” a building block of the WiFi systems we use every day.

6 © Dogwoof Ltd / Reframed Pictures 2016 How did a glamorous actress who dropped out of school at FIfteen, and an outlandish composer who got expelled from high school, come up with such a sophisticated technology? The answer lies in Lamarr’s remarkable life story.

Hedy married everybody. She married Hollywood producer Gene Markey, dashing British actor John Loder, Texas oil millionaire Howard Lee, hotelier Howard Stauffer and lawyer Lewis Boies. She also slept with half of Hollywood, JFK’s military aide Tom McGlaughlin, and President JFK himself, who sent her oranges every time he visited Florida.

The late ‘60s and ‘70s were dark years for Hedy Lamarr. She became a recluse after multiple botched plastic surgeries, only brieﬂy dragged into the national spotlight after two shoplifting arrests.

Andy Warhol cast a transvestite to play Hedy in a short movie about her plastic surgery, and Mel Brooks used a bastardization her name as a joke in his 1974 comedy “Blazing Saddles,” turning Hedy into “Hedley Lamarr.” The most beautiful woman in the world had become a national punchline.

8 © Dogwoof Ltd / Reframed Pictures 2016 As Lamarr’s fame faded, her inventions started to come out of the shadows. The Navy handed Hedy’s patent to an engineer at the Hoffman Corporation and he put it to use, inventing a submarine radar system called a “sonobuoy”. Soon it was incorporated into early WiFi Bluetooth and GPS.

An enterprising ex-military man in Colorado named David Hughes was so impressed with this new technology, that he decided to track down its inventor. He was shocked to discover she was none other than the movie star he’d worshipped as a child.

He reached out to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and they presented Hedy Lamarr with a major inventing award at the end of her life. Her response? “It’s about time.”

10 © Dogwoof Ltd / Reframed Pictures 2016 Interviewees

Anthony Loder, Hedy’s Lamarr Son Denise Loder, Hedy Lamarr’s Daughter Richard Rhodes, Author of “Hedy’s Folly” Stephen Michael Shearer, Lamarr biographer Philip Glass, Composer and expert on George Antheil Robert Osborne, Film Historian and Friend of Lamarr Peter Bogdanovich, Film Historian Nino Amarena, inventor who strategized with Lamarr David Hughes, who discovered Lamarr’s patent Tony Rothman, Harvard Professor and Physicist Mia Farrow, friend of Lamarr Arlene Roxbury, best friend of Lamarr Reshma Saujani, Founder and CEO Girls Who Code

Reframed Pictures is a predominantly female team of producers and directors led by the renowned actress Susan Sarandon. Director Alexandra Dean, and Producer Katherine Drew will take the lead with this documentary. The team at Reframed Pictures has a deep knowledge of Hollywood and extensive experience producing biographies for television and innovative programming about science and technology.

12 © Dogwoof Ltd / Reframed Pictures 2016 About Dogwoof Dogwoof has established a frst-rate reputation as the leader for global distribution of high quality documentaries.

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We represent some of the most talked about docs of recent years, titles such as BAFTA and Oscar nominated CARTEL LAND and BLACKFISH, worldwide theatrical hit DIOR AND I, and Berlinale winner MARINA ABRAMOVIC THE ARTIST IS PRESENT.

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© Dogwoof Ltd / Reframed Pictures 2016 13 HEADY DAYS Director: Alexandra Dean Executive Producer: Susan Sarandon Producer: Katherine Drew Co-Producer: David Koh Co-Producer: Dan Braun World Sale: Dogwoof Completion: 2016

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