Hedy lamarr bio movie about a country

The pretty faces that give Hollywood its glamour eventually fade, but Alexandra Hall’s documentary reveals a remarkable woman who parlayed her beauty into an incredible life — from nude scenes in a notorious 1933 Austrian film, to eleven years in Hollywood as MGM’s ‘most beautiful girl in the world’, to a seemingly incompatible achievement: she invented a revolutionary communications technology for the WW2 war effort, and only belatedly received credit for it. A remarkable audio interview with the legendary lady brings a fabulous life into focus.

Bombshell, The Hedy Lamarr Story
Blu-ray
Kino Lorber / Zeitgeist
2017 / Color & B&W / 1:78 widescreen / 88 min. / Street Date April 24, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 22.99
Starring: Hedy Lamarr, Jeanine Basinger, Peter Bogdanovich, Mel Brooks, Gillian Jacobs, Wendy Colton, Jan-Christopher Horak, Diane Kruger, Guy Livingston, Anthony Loder, Jimmy Loder, Lodi Loder, Denise Loder-DeLuca, Art McTighe, Fleming Meeks, Robert Osborne.
Cinematography: Buddy Squires, Alex Stikich
Film Editor: Alexandra Dean, Penelope Falk, Lindy Jankura
Original Music: Jeremy Bullock, Keegan DeWitt
Produced by Alexandra Dean. Katherine Drew, Adam Haggiag
Written and Directed by Alexandra Dean

In documentaries they say choosing a subject is everything, and if you want anybody to see your film you’d better have access to some special resources. Bombshell, The Hedy Lamarr Story is Alexandra Dean’s account of one of Hollywood’s most glamorous actress. It succeeds because Dean has found new material making possible a much richer portrait of a previously private life, beyond the screen image. In our new age of Women Ascendant it’s a toss-up whether Hedy Lamarr was more helped or hindered by the great beauty that starting at age 13 gave her a life completely out of the ordinary. Men worshipped her from afar, b

2017 American film

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (referred to onscreen as simply Bombshell) is a 2017 American biographicaldocumentary film directed, written and co-edited by Alexandra Dean, about the life of actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr. It had its world premiere at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival and released theatrically on November 24, 2017. The film was broadcast in the United States on the PBS biography series American Masters in May 2018. As of April 2020, it was also available on Netflix.

Synopsis

The film follows the life story of Lamarr from her youth as the daughter of assimilated Austrian Jews through her rise to fame, the Nazi onslaught, her departure for the United States, six marriages, her acting career, her landmark invention, decline, and finally her death at the age of 85 in the year 2000. The focus of the film is on her co-creation with George Antheil of the technology of frequency hopping.

The film delves into Lamarr's different, seemingly unhealthy relationships with Louis B. Mayer (the head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios), Max Jacobson (Dr. Feelgood), and director Cecil B. DeMille. The film also shows how Lamarr became so reclusive at the end of her life.

Release

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Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian-American actress and inventor who pioneered the technology that would one day form the basis for today’s WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth communication systems. As a natural beauty seen widely on the big screen in films like Samson and Delilah and White Cargo, society has long ignored her inventive genius.  

Lamarr was originally Hedwig Eva Kiesler, born in Vienna, Austria on November 9, 1914 into a well-to-do Jewish family. An only child, Lamarr received a great deal of attention from her father, a bank director and curious man, who inspired her to look at the world with open eyes. He would often take her for long walks where he would discuss the inner-workings of different machines, like the printing press or street cars. These conversations guided Lamarr’s thinking and at only 5 years of age, she could be found taking apart and reassembling her music box to understand how the machine operated. Meanwhile, Lamarr’s mother was a concert pianist and introduced her to the arts, placing her in both ballet and piano lessons from a young age. 

Lamarr’s brilliant mind was ignored, and her beauty took center stage when she was discovered by director Max Reinhardt at age 16. She studied acting with Reinhardt in Berlin and was in her first small film role by 1930, in a German film called Geld auf der Straβe (“Money on the Street”). However, it wasn’t until 1932 that Lamarr gained name recognition as an actress for her role in the controversial film, Ecstasy.

Austrian munitions dealer, Fritz Mandl, became one of Lamarr’s adoring fans when he saw her in the play Sissy. Lamarr and Mandl married in 1933 but it was short-lived. She once said, “I knew very soon that I could never be an actress while I was his wife … He was the absolute monarch in his marriage … I was like a doll. I was like a thing, some object of art which had to be guarded—and imprisoned—having no mind, no life of its own.” She was incredibly unhappy, as she was forced

(1914-2000)

Who Was Hedy Lamarr?

Hedy Lamarr was an actress during MGM's "Golden Age." She starred in such films as Tortilla Flat, Lady of the Tropics,Boom Town and Samson and Delilah, with the likes of Clark Gable and Spencer Tracey. Lamarr was also a scientist, co-inventing an early technique for spread spectrum communications — the key to many wireless communications of our present day. A recluse later in life, Lamarr died in her Florida home in 2000.

Early Life

Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler on November 9, 1914, in Vienna, Austria. Discovered by an Austrian film director as a teenager, she gained international notice in 1933, with her role in the sexually charged Czech film Ecstasy. After her unhappy marriage ended with Fritz Mandl, a wealthy Austrian munitions manufacturer who sold arms to the Nazis, she fled to the United States and signed a contract with the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio in Hollywood under the name Hedy Lamarr. Upon the release of her first American film, Algiers, co-starring Charles Boyer, Lamarr became an immediate box-office sensation.

Often referred to as one of the most gorgeous and exotic of Hollywood's leading ladies, Lamarr made a number of well-received films during the 1930s and 1940s. Notable among them were Lady of the Tropics (1939), co-starring Robert Taylor; Boom Town (1940), with Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy; Tortilla Flat (1942), co-starring Tracy; and Samson and Delilah (1949), opposite Victor Mature. She was reportedly producer Hal Wallis's first choice for the heroine in his classic 1943 film, Casablanca, a part that eventually went to Ingrid Bergman.

'Secret Communications System'

In 1942, during the heyday of her career, Lamarr earned recognition in a field quite different from entertainment. She and her friend, the composer George Antheil, received a patent for an idea of a radio signaling device, or "Secret Communications System," which was a me