Historical Figures

Hedy Lamarr, actress and inventor

Known and recognized for her daring film career, Hedy Lamarr (1914 – 2000) also distinguished herself by inventing a transmission coding system. This transmission coding system is still used today for satellite positioning or Wi-Fi technology.

A bold actress

Daughter of Gertrud Lichtwitz, pianist, and Emil Kiesler, bank manager, Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler was born on November 9, 1914 in Vienna (Austria-Hungary). Educated by a tutor, she learned the piano, dance and spoke four languages. At sixteen, she enrolled in the drama school in Berlin and played in a first film, Geld auf der Strasse (“Money from the street”) from 1930.

Hired by the theater director Max Reinhardt, Hedy made several films over the following years:Storm in a glass of water in 1931, Les Treize Malles de monsieur O. F. in 1931, No need for money in 1933. In 1933, she played in the film Extase by Gustav Machaty, a film that caused a scandal due to a scene of nudity and a representation of the female orgasm. The film was critically acclaimed and Hedwig's sensational performance earned him a sulphurous reputation. She is then the first actress to appear naked in a film.

The transmission coding system

The same year, Hedwig married Fritz Mandl, an Austrian arms dealer who forbade her to pursue her career, and who allegedly tried to have the copies of Ecstasy . In 1937, after leaving her husband with a bang, she embarked for the United States and resumed her film career in Hollywood. Obtaining a seven-year contract with the M.G.M. allowed him to perform, during this period, in about fifteen feature films including Casbah by John Cromwell and The Dancer of the Ziegfeld Folies by Robert Z. Leonard, a successful film. In homage to Barbara La Marr, a great American silent film actress who died in 1926, she took the pseudonym of Hedy Lamarr. In 1939, she married screenwriter and producer Gene Markey; the marriage will only last a year. Thereafter, Hedy would marry four more times and have two children (Anthony and Denise) with her third husband.

In 1941, during World War II, Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil jointly created and patented a transmission coding system to combat German U-boats. Deemed impracticable by the US Navy, the system, called "spread spectrum", was then refused to be finally used from 1962, thanks to the progress made in electronics between the two. This transmission coding system is still used today for satellite positioning or Wi-Fi technology.

The “least cooperative” actress

During the war, Hedy Lamarr stars in the spy film The Conspirators by Jean Negulesco and in the thriller Angoisse by Jacques Tourneur, before completing his contract with MGM in 1945 on the comedy The Princess and the Groom . Desiring more substantial roles than those she had obtained previously, Hedy embarked on independent production by creating her own company. From 1946, she played in Le Démon de la chair where she plays a schizophrenic criminal, a film that remains one of her great classics. But his next film, The Dishonored Woman , was a failure and his independent production experience came to a halt. In 1949, she played Dalila in Samson et Dalila , a film that knows the triumph. Subsequently, she appeared in many films, from comedy to spy film through western, with more or less success until Women in front of desire , in 1957, which is his last official film.

Hedy won no awards during her career except for the Acid Apple Award for Least Cooperative Actress from the Golden Apple Awards in 1949. Hating interviews and media attention, she began to isolate himself, squander his fortune at the end of his career and slowly fall into anonymity. In 1960, then in 1966, she was arrested for shoplifting and then released. In 1990, a repeat offense earned him a one-year probation sentence.

Hedy Lamarr died on January 19, 2000 in Altamonte Springs, Florida.