History of Feminism
Related: About this forumHappy Birthday, Hedy Lamarr!! Please Read ...
How the Most Beautiful Woman in the World Invented a System for Remote-Controlling Torpedoes
by Michelle Legro
When you talk to a sympathetic mind about technology, gender, age and experience disappear completely.
In 1937, the dinner table of Fritz Mandl an arms dealer who sold to both sides during the Spanish Civil War and the third richest man in Austria entertained high-ranking Nazi officials who chatted about the newest munitions technologies. Mandls wife, a twenty-four-year-old former movie star, whom he respected but also claimed didnt know A from Z, sat quietly listening.
Hedy Kiestler, whose parents were assimilated Jews, and who would be rechristened one year later by Louis B. Meyer as Hedy Lamarr, wanted to escape to Hollywood and return to the screen. From these dinner parties, she knew about about submarines and wire-guided torpedoes, about the multiple frequencies used to guide bombs. She knew that she had present herself as the glamorous wife of an arms dealer. And she knew that in order to leave her husband, she would have to take a good amount of this information with her.
Richard Rhodess fascinating new book Hedys Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World, explores a golden age of creativity among artists in Europe and America, whose job was to entertain but who were inclined to something more, and the wars effect on these brilliant, frustrated exiles.
Rhodes, author of four books about the creation of the atomic bomb, intersects Hedys story with that of American composer George Antheil, who lived during the 1920s with his wife in Paris above the newly opened Shakespeare & Co, and who could count among his friends Man Ray, Ezra Pound, Louise Bryant, and Igor Stravinsky. When Antheil attended the premiere of Stravinskys Les Noces, the composer invited him afterward to a player piano factory, where he wished to have his work punched out for posterity. There, Antheil conceived of a grand composition for sixteen player pianos, bells, sirens, and several airplane propellers, which he called his Ballet mecanique. When he premiered the work in the US, the avant-garde composition proved a disaster.
more at link:
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/12/08/hedys-folly/
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)"Hedy invented as a hobby. Since she made two or three movies a year, each one take about a month to shoot, she had spare time to fill. She didn't drink and didn't like to party, so she took uip inventing. ... As a young woman, before she emigrated from Austria to the United States, she married a munitions manufacturer and listened in on the technical discussions he had with his Austrian and German military clients."
Her skill in listening, like the skill of Alexander the Great when listened as a kid to visiting Persians talk and boast about their battle tactics, served her well.
madrchsod
(58,162 posts)this is one of the films that caused one of her many so called scandals..
http://www.bikiniscience.com/chronology/1930-1935_SS/HL3310_S/HL3310.html
nudity in hollywood films were banned until 1960...