From movie sets to army backstage,
The Austrian actress, a star of the 1940s, was a pioneer both on screen and in technology. Story told by Virginia Giraud*.
Hedy Lamarr is the most beautiful woman in the world. In the 1930s, this claim by director Max Reinhardt was unanimous. On the other hand, who knows that this beauty is also a genius with an IQ close to that of Einstein? It’s true, sometimes it’s hard to listen to her when you’re captivated by her figure: a perfect oval face, large clear eyes, a porcelain complexion, a mouth with sensual curves, lively black hair in loose curls… Here’s Venus, who would have it. inspired Snow White’s face at Walt Disney.
A Viennese born in 1914, Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler rose to stardom in 1932 with her role in the film. ecstasy, by Czech Gustav Machati. In this movie (a variation on the theme Lady Chatterley), the public discovers the first female nudist on the big screen. The director even captured his heroine’s flushed face in a scene where she arrives for the first time. The film is as much a success as it is a scandal.
In the video, Hedy Lamarr from Ecstasy to WiFiAlexandra Dean Documentary
Debut at MGM
In 1933, the actress married Friedrich Mandl, an arms dealer who counted Mussolini and Hitler among his clients. Relegated to the status of a hostage by her husband, she overheard the fascists’ discussions of the rockets before leaving her husband and traveling to England, where Louis B. Mayer, one of the founders of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. , recruits artists fleeing the rise of Nazism. He negotiates a seven-year contract and restarts his career. But the young Austrian was quickly disappointed. With her strong accent and her dream physique, she is limited to “exotic beauty” roles, unable to compete with American-made talent such as Judy Garland, with whom she shares the screen. Ziegfeld girl. Hedy can’t sing or dance.
A revolutionary concept
When the United States entered World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the actress set out to invent a weapon that would win the war for her adopted country. She remembers the conversations of her ex-husband. Knows that US Navy missiles are easily tracked by German U-Boats because they communicate with their sender via radio. With the help of his friend, the avant-garde composer George Antheil, Heady envisioned rockets equipped with another data transmission system where only the rocket and its sender would know the range of frequencies being used. To the U-boats, these changes would appear random, so it would be impossible for them to follow the progress of the American vehicles. Thus, Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil envision the basic transmission principle of telecommunications; spread spectrum with frequency hopping.
The Madonna of geeks
The army agrees to accept the acrobat duo, but doesn’t take them seriously…well, at least not until 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis. Since the 1980s, their invention has enabled the development of GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. When Antheil died in 1959, Hedy Lamarr was left alone, haloed by the authority of their work. In 1997, at the age of 83, he received the Electronic Frontier Foundation Award. Today, the incarnation of the poisonous Delilah Cecil B. DeMille’s unforgettable peplum has become the ultimate madonna of geeks. And holy mother of wifi!
See also: Alexandra Dean’s American documentary Hedy Lamarr. From Ecstasy to Wifi” urbandistribution.fr:
* Virginia Giraud holds a doctorate in history. Find him on the podcast At the heart of the story From Europe 1 Studio, on your favorite listening platform.
Source: Le Figaro
