Barton - Hedy Lamarr: The Most Beautiful Woman in Film

Screen Classics

Screen Classics is a series of critical biographies, film histories, and analytical studies focusing on neglected filmmakers and important screen artists and subjects, from the era of silent cinema to the golden age of Hollywood to the international generation of today. Books in the Screen Classics series are intended for scholars and general readers alike. The contributing authors are established figures in their respective fields. This series also serves the purpose of advancing scholarship on film personalities and themes with ties to Kentucky.

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Patrick McGilligan

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Hedy Lamarr

The Most Beautiful Woman in Film

Ruth Barton

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY

Copyright 2010 by The University Press of Kentucky

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Barton, Ruth.

Hedy Lamarr : the most beautiful woman in film / Ruth Barton.

p. cm.(Screen classics)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 9780813126043 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Lamarr, Hedy, 19132000. 2. ActorsUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.

PN2287.L24B37 2010

791.430'28092dc22

[B]

2010013914

This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

Member of the Association of American University Presses

For Willie, Conal, Eoin, and Paddy

Without the persistent advice and encouragement of Patrick McGilligan, this book would never have been finished. I would also like to thank the University Press of KentuckyLeila Salisbury and Anne Dean Watkins and my anonymous readersfor their many and helpful comments along the way. I am particularly grateful to Chris Horak, without whose advice this would have been a lesser book; I haven't acknowledged his interventions on every occasion but they are threaded through everything I have written. Like everyone who has ever conducted archival research, I am indebted to the expertise of librarians. For their generous assistance, I wish to thank Ned Comstock at USC Special Collections and the staff at the Columbia University Archives, Margaret Herrick Library, Kiesler Stiftung Wien, New York Public Library, the UCLA and USC archives, and the Wien Bibliothek. Most of all, I would like to thank Rick Berg at USC for his enthusiasm, comments, and DVDs.

Many others also helped with answers to personal queries and assistance with research. Special thanks to Charles Amirkhanian; Marie-Theres Arnbom; Susanne Bach; Thomas Balhausen; Marlis Schmidt and Peter Spiegel, Austrian Film Archive Vienna; Matthew Bernstein; Christian Cargnelli; Kathleen Choo, Seminole County Library; Cordula Dhrer and Gerrit Thies, Deutsche Kinemathek; Martha Eggerth and Marjan Kiepura; Scott Eyman; Tag Gallagher; Jeanpaul Goergen; Stefan Grissemann; Anton Haslinger; Col. David Hughes; Gertrude Kittel; Ji Hornek, The National Film Archive in Prague; Noah Isenberg; Marie Karney; Fabienne Liptay; Diana Long, City of Altamonte Springs Library; Puppe Mandl; Terry McDonald, Trinity College Dublin Library; Barbara Obermaier; Tatjana Okresek; Mauro Piccinini; Ursula Prutsch; Richard Reilly; Rainer Rigele; Christian Rogowski; Florian Seebohm; Elyse Singer; Peter Paul Sint; Chuck Stansel; Richard Thorpe; Michael Tilson Thomas; Aris Venetikidis for Photoshop assistance; Anthony Weller; and Michael Wilson.

Research in the Cecil B. DeMille archives was carried out by McKenna Kirkpatrick. I am very grateful to him for his assistance.

Shortly after starting work on this project, I moved from University College Dublin to Trinity College Dublin (TCD). I would like to thank D. G. Fisher, Conn Holohan, Paula Quigley, and Kevin Rockett for their collegiality, and the research program at TCD for the financial assistance that enabled me to conduct the research for this book.

Most of all I would like to thank my familymy parents-in-law, John and Clare, my mother, Anne Barton, and my husband and three sons. This book is dedicated to them, with love.

ON A SEPTEMBER DAY in 1973, Richard Dow, a caretaker at the Hollywood Wax Museum, started his workday as usual. I walked down the dark corridors to the back of the museum, and I reached behind a black curtain to turn on a sequence of spotlights, he told reporters afterward. It was then that he saw the demolished figure of Madame Tussaud. The more lights I switched on, the more damage I saw. I walked down one corridor and I tripped over the head of a mad scientist. Now feeling more than a little uneasy, Dow started to take stock of the damage. All in all, thirteen statues had been destroyed. These included: Jean Harlow, Vivien Leigh, Susan Hayward, Tyrone Power, Sony Bono, a couple of U.S. presidents, and Hedy Lamarr. Now we'll have to keep a security man on after hours, mused Spoony Singh, the museum owner. We used to have a watchman. We went through a string of them. But they complain of having to be there all alone with those wax figures. After a while some of them claimed they could see the figures moving. The break-in led the museum to take stock of its silent luminaries; sadly Hedy Lamarr did not make the cut. She was melted down and later replaced by Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft.

If that break-in had occurred two or three decades later, the outcome for the Viennese actress, whose reputation derived from a brief, naked run through a wooded copse, followed by a swim, filmed by a long-forgotten Czech director for a 1930s European art film, might have been otherwise. When Hedy Lamarr arrived in America, her reputation preceded her. Few people had seen Ecstasy, the film that had made her famous. Fewer would later remember the plot of Ecstasy or their last glimpse (depending on which version they saw) of the character played by Hedwig Kiesler, as the eighteen-year-old was then called, on the station platform in the early hours of the morning, gently kissing her sleeping lover, folding her coat under his head, and walking away from him.