With all respect to the women portrayed in the Oscar-nominated film Hidden Figures (2016), an earlier “hidden figure” was hidden in plain sight – in Hollywood, no less – with her figure being part of the façade.

The world knew movie star Hedy Lamarr for her looks and the movies they graced during three decades in film. Very few knew Lamarr as the inventor who conceived technology that paved the way for Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth.

Drama in Story and Its Telling

Lamarr’s life story could have been a movie itself, and now it is: the documentary Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story.

On one level, Bombshell is a tale of escape – from Lamarr’s native Austria-Hungary as it fell under German domination; from her first husband, a controlling man who manufactured and sold weapons for Hitler and Mussolini; and from a 1930s immigration system stacked against refugees.

But the story rises to a higher level amid the current debates about feminism; science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education for women and gender inequality in the workplace.

Filmmakers Alexandra Dean and Adam Haggiag were about six months into their Lamarr documentary when they made an amazing discovery: Reaching out to reporters who had written about Lamarr in the past, they contacted former Forbes writer Fleming Meeks. “I have been waiting 25 years for somebody to call me about Hedy Lamarr,” he responded, “because I have the tapes.”

It was back to the drawing board for the filmmakers, because suddenly Lamarr could narrate her own story. To add context, the filmmakers spliced in interviews with her children and friends, as well as well as entertainment figures such actress Diane Kruger, who is producing a TV miniseries about Lamarr, and director Mel Brooks, whose admiration for the actress led him to famously name Harvey Korman’s Blazing Saddles character “Hedley Lamarr.” (Brooks’ laugh lines seem rather stale in today’s #MeToo environment.)

Born Hedwig Eva Kiesler in Vienna to Jewish parents, Lamarr was a quintessential “daddy’s girl,” which later may have contributed to her many failed marriages. Early on, she discovered that her looks enabled her to influence others. As teenager, she left school to pursue a career in acting. During the early ’30s, she appeared in five German and Austrian films and started going by her nickname, “Hedy.” In the last of those, Ecstasy (1933), she performed nude, which was considered shocking. It contributed to her rising fame but likely cost her respect, and opportunities, later in her career.

After fleeing Austria and her marriage, she made it to London and met legendary producer Louis B. Mayer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, who was there to scout European actors and actresses fleeing fascism. She persuaded him to give her a contract with MGM, and he persuaded her to change her name, settling on “Lamarr,” at the suggestion of his wife, to honor silent-film star Barbara La Marr.

Patriotism and Perfidy

Hoping to bring her mother to America, Lamarr became concerned about the the number of ships being sunk by German U-boats, which eluded counterattacks by jamming the radar of Allied torpedoes.

Though Mayer kept her busy with 14 films during the war years, Lamarr, a lifelong inventor, made time to study torpedo guidance and came up with “frequency hopping,” the idea of transmitting radio signals by rapidly switching among many frequencies known to both transmitter and receiver. She worked with avant garde composer George Antheil to turn her theories into reality; they obtained a patent in August 1942 and made it available to the Navy.

But the Navy wasn’t impressed, suggesting Lamarr could do more for the war effort by pitching war bonds. (She did, and quite successfully.) It was years later that the Pentagon’s perfidy would be uncovered: The government repaid Lamarr’s patriotism by labeling her an enemy alien and seizing the patent, which it proceeded to use in subsequent years. Neither Lamarr nor Antheil made a dime.

She was just as headstrong about her movie career. After getting out of her MGM contract, Lamarr set out to produce her own movies, which was rare in the studio era. But she had another powerful weapon, herself. She produced and starred in The Strange Woman (1946) and Loves of Three Queens (1954), in some cases spending her own money to get the projects done. For making her own career choices, Lamarr was said to be “difficult,” a label still used today to punish women who don’t toe the line in the entertainment industry.

Sad Decline

So by the end of 1965, Lamarr had given away her greatest invention, refused to sit quietly on the Hollywood gravy train and been through six failed marriages. (The film suggests she found several of her husbands “boring” because they couldn’t engage her intellect.) On top of all that, she became addicted to prescription drugs under the care of Dr. Max Jacobson, Hollywood’s infamous “Dr. Feelgood.”

Her later years were marred by strange arrests for shoplifting items she could afford, repeated plastic surgeries that did not produce the desired effects, and increasingly reclusive behavior.

Bombshell paints Lamarr as a brilliant woman who was too far ahead of her time in a couple of America’s most combative arenas: entertainment and war. It holds a viewer’s attention throughout by convincingly tying the actress’ life experiences to issues that remain relevant, even controversial, today.

###

Stu Robinson does writing, editing, media relations and social media through his business, Phoenix-based Lightbulb Communications.

Tags: Adam Haggiag, Alexandra Dean, Fleming Meeks, gender inequality, George Antheil, Hedy Lamarr, Hollywood, Louis B. Mayer, STEM