Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
The Surprising Story of Hedy Lamarr, "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World"
As a teenage actress in 1920s Austria, performing on the stage and in film in light comedies and musicals, Hedy Kiesler, with her exotic beauty, was heralded across Europe by her mentor, Max Reinhardt. However, it was her nude scene, and surprising dramatic ability, in Ecstasy that made her a star. Ecstasy's notoriety followed her for the rest of her life. She married one of Austria's most successful and wealthy munitions barons, giving up her career for what seemed at first a fairy-tale existence. Instead, as war clouds loomed in the mid-1930s, Hedy discovered that she was trapped in a loveless marriage to a controlling, ruthless man who befriended Mussolini, sold armaments to Hitler, yet hid his own Jewish heritage to become an "honorary Aryan."
She fled her husband and escaped to Hollywood, where M-G-M changed her name to Hedy Lamarr and she became one of film's most glamorous stars. She worked with such renowned directors as King Vidor, Victor Fleming, and Cecil B. DeMille, and appeared opposite such respected actors as Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, John Garfield, and James Stewart. But as her career waned, her personal problems and legal wranglings cast lingering shadows over her former image. It wasn't until decades later that theworld was stunned to learn of her unexpected role as the inventor of a technology that has become an essential part of everything from military weaponry to cell phones--proof that Hedy Lamarr was far more than merely Delilah to Victor Mature's Samson. She demonstrated a creativity and an intelligence she had always possessed.
Stephen Michael Shearer's in-depth and meticulously researched biography, written with the cooperation of Hedy's children, intimate friends, and colleagues, separates the truths from the rumors, the facts from the fables, about Hedy Lamarr, to reveal the life and character of one of classic Hollywood's most beautiful and remarkable women.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Publishers Weekly Review
In this authoritative biography, Shearer (Patricia Neal: An Unquiet Life) surveys the career of actress Hedy Lamarr (1913-2000), born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna. In her teens, she was cast in German films, and in 1933, after she appeared nude in Ecstasy, she was catapulted to international fame. During an Atlantic crossing on the Normandie, Louis B. Mayer offered her an MGM contract and changed her name to Hedy Lamarr. Promoted as "the most beautiful girl in the world," she appeared in more than two dozen films between 1938 and 1958. Metro denied her a loan out to do the lead in Casablanca, but her vibrant screen presence in Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah (1949) left a lasting impression on both filmgoers and Paramount; it raked in over $11 million to become the most profitable Paramount production up until that time. She faded from films in the 1950s, made numerous 1960s TV appearances and then dropped from the limelight, retiring to Florida in 1987. Providing probing and detailed coverage of her five marriages, children, various lawsuits, radio roles and shoplifting headlines, Shearer has combined extensive archival research with insightful interview quotes. The result is a fascinating biography that recreates Hollywood's Golden Age of Glamour. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
School Library Journal Review
Thanks to Mark Rotella's Amore: The Story of Italian American Song (see p. 34), Harry Warren's 1952"That's Amore," made famous by Dean Martin, is ringing in my head. Except I can't help singing a library version of the lyrics: "When you see a new book by a favorite scribe--that's amore! When those covers just shine like a glass of great wine--that's amore!... When you walk down those stacks in a dream but you know you¿re not dreaming signore...Scuzza me, but you see, that in my library--that's amore!" It is no secret that I am passionate about reading, so connecting amore to books isn't that much of a stretch. And I especially love nonfiction books. It seems like my whole reading life I have invariably reached for biographies, science and technology tomes, social histories, memoirs, music, cookery books, and even books about well...reading books. This year I found some intoxicating reads to love--each terrific and worthy of introducing to you. Here are the ten books I fell the hardest for. Pick them up, dive on in, then share with colleagues, friends, and family. Celebrate our love of reading! That's amore!
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Shearer's biography does not simply chronicle the life of Hollywood legend Hedy Lamarr, from her cosseted childhood in an assimilated Jewish family in Austria to her early breaks in Max Reinhardt's internationally famous theater company; her scandalous, career-launching nude scene in the Czech film Ecstasy; her tortured first marriage to Jewish Nazi arms manufacturer Friedrich Mandl (dubbed an honorary Aryan by the Third Reich); and her daring escape from the sadistic Mandl and Nazi Germany to Los Angeles and MGM. The real beauty of the book is how well and how wholeheartedly Shearer tells this remarkable story. It helps that much of Lamarr's life reads like a novel, packed with surprise twists and stereotype-destroying details, such as Lamarr's fascinating after-hours research in military communications systems (done with avant-garde composer George Antheil), research that formed the foundation for the technology used in Wi-Fi and cell phones. For this she won an award in 1997, three years before her death, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. One finishes the book feeling that one has read a complete portrait of Hedy Lamarr, actor and inventor, a biography that reveals, with drama and wit, how much more there was to this complex, brilliant woman than her ethereal natural beauty.--Helbig, Jack Copyright 2010 Booklist
Kirkus Book Review
In this proficient biography of the sultry, litigious Hollywood star, Las Vegas Review-Journal writer Shearer (Patricia Neal, 2006) takes pains to render a fair reevaluation of her acting.Exotically beautiful and groomed for the high-toned films of the 1940s and early Technicolor, Hedy Lamarr (19142000) often groped for the right roles. As a result, she didn't fully explore her acting potential, writes the author in this nuts-and-bolts account. Lamarr is quoted as saying, "My face has been my misfortune," and indeed she was considered in her era the most beautiful of the Hollywood actresses. She was typecast as the vamp and temptress, largely due to her notorious early German film Exstase (1932), in which she appeared naked. Her German accent didn't help. Born Hedwig Kiesler in Vienna to a middle-class Jewish couple, Lamarr bluffed her way into small acting parts at the Sascha-Tobis-Film in her teens. She briefly attended Max Reinhardt's school in Berlin, then followed him back to Vienna to act in various stage productions, befriending Otto Preminger. After achieving exposure in Exstase, she married the wealthy Austrian industrialist Fritz Mandlthe first of six mostly disastrous marriages to men she believed would fix her financiallybefore fleeing him (and the Nazis) to board an ocean liner carrying the party of M-G-M mogul Louis B. Mayer. Felicitously, by their arrival in New York in late 1937, she had a new name and a movie contract. From her first film, Algiers (1938), Lamarr set a new standard of beauty, "with those huge, marbly eyes, the porcelain-skin, the dreamy little smile, and the exotic voice that was an artful combination of Old Vienna and the MGM speech school. During the '40s, she worked with all the greats, culminating in Samson and Delilah (1949), then moved on to television roles to support her spiraling law suits and several children. Unfortunate shoplifting sprees later marred her chances at working. Only late in life was the invention she had worked on with composer George Antheil as early as 1941an anti-jamming device instrumental in torpedo operationsfinally recognized.A dogged, basically factual tale of a Hollywood survivor.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
TextPublication details: New York : Thomas Dunne Books, 2010.Edition: 1st edISBN: