Hedy Lamarr: a life in brief

Hedy Lamarr was a star of the big screen during the “golden age” of MGM studios. She was also a scientific pioneer, co-inventing a technique that lies behind many communication systems today.

Lamarr was born in in 1913. Her given name was Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler.

She took her first screen role as a teenager in . She became internationally known for her powerful presence in the Czech film Ecstasy in 1933. ​ ​

She married six times, first to an Austrian manufacturer who supplied arms to the Nazis. She left him and fled to the USA. She would become a US citizen in 1953.

In Hollywood she signed a contract with MGM, who called her “the most beautiful woman in the world”. She took the screen name Hedy Lamarr.

Her first Hollywood movie was Algiers, and she was an instant hit. In the 1930s she made a succession ​ ​ of popular films such as and Boom Town, which co-starred and Spencer ​ ​ ​ ​ Tracy. It’s said she was the producer’s first choice for the part that went to Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. She also played a lead in Tortilla Flat and and . ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

In 1939, while married to , she adopted a son called James. In the she and her third husband, , had two biological children, Denise and Anthony.

While Lamarr’s movie career was at its peak, she made a vital contribution to the effort to defeat during World War Two. She and her friend , the composer, established a patent on their idea for a “Secret Communications System”. This was a -signalling device that could change frequencies to stop others decoding its message.

The invention has had a significant contemporary legacy. It was an important building block in the development of technology to keep military communications and mobile phones secure. Nonetheless the importance of their scientific work wasn’t understood for many years. Then in 1997 Anthheil and Lamarr were given the Electronic Frontier Foundation Award. In the same year Lamarr became the first woman to be honoured with the BULBIE Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award, known as the “Oscars of inventing”.

Lamarr’s screen career began to tail off in the 1950s. Her last movie was The Female Animal in 1958. ​ ​

Lamarr’s best-selling ‘autobiography’, Ecstacy and Me, was released in 1966. But Lamarr accused the ​ ​ ghost writer of twisting the content, and she sued the publisher. That same year Lamarr was arrested for shoplifting but not convicted. It would happen again in 1991.

Lamarr struggled with drug addiction. In her final years she lived more or less as a recluse at her home near Orlando, Florida. She died at the age of 86 in 2000.