Hedy Lamarr

Biography: Hedy Lamarr

The daughter of a Vienesse banker, Hedy Lamarr began her acting career at 16 under the tutelage of German impresario Max Reinhardt. She began appearing in German films in 1930, but garnered little attention until her star turn in Czech director Gustav Machaty's Extase (Ecstasy) in 1933. It wasn't just because Lamarr appeared briefly in the nude; Extase was filled to overflowing with orgasmic imagery, including tight close-ups of Lamarr in the throes of delighted passion. Though her first husband, Austrian businessman Fritz Mandl, tried to buy up and destroy all prints of Extase, the film enjoyed worldwide distribution, the result being that Lamarr was famous in America before ever setting foot in Hollywood. She was signed by producer Walter Wanger to co-star with Charles Boyer in the American remake of the French Pepe Le Moko, titled Algiers (1938). That Lamarr wasn't much of an actress was compensated with several scenes in which she was required to merely stand around silently and look beautiful (she would later downgrade these performances, equating sex appeal with "looking stupid"). The prudish Louis B. Mayer was willing to forgive Lamarr the "indiscretion" of Extase by signing her to a long MGM contract in 1939. Most of her subsequent roles were merely decorative (never more so than as Tondelayo in White Cargo [1940]), though she was first rate in the complex role of the career woman who "liberates" stuffy Bostonian Robert Young in H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1942). In 1949, Lamarr, tastefully under-dressed, appeared opposite the equally attractive Victor Mature in Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah (1949). Lamarr's limited acting skills became more pronounced in her 1950s films, especially when she gamely tried to play Joan of Arc in the all-star disaster The Story of Mankind (1957). She disappeared from films in 1958. An autobiography, Ecstasy and Me, enabled her to pay many of her debts, though she'd later sue her collaborators for distorting the facts. In another legal action, Lamarr took on director Mel Brooks for using the character name "Hedley Lamarr" in his 1974 Western spoof Blazing Saddles. In 1990, Lamarr made an unexpected return before the cameras in the obscure low-budget Hollywood satire Instant Karma, in which she was typecast in the role of Movie Goddess. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide less

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The Female Animal (1958)
Cast: Hedy Lamarr James Gleason Jan Sterling Jane Powell Jerry Paris
Tags: Drama Romance
Length: 84min
Harry Keller, the man who directed the extra scenes in Orson Welles' Touch of Evil, receives solo directorial credit in The Female Animal. Hedy Lamarr stars as Vanessa Windsor, a beautiful but ageing film star whose life is saved on the set by...
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My Favorite Spy (1951)
Cast: Bob Hope Hedy Lamarr Norman Z. McLeod Mike Mazurki Fritz Feld
Tags: Spy Film
Length: 93min
Bob Hope is up to his famous nose in danger in this espionage comedy. Second-rate burlesque comic Peanuts White (Hope) is approached by federal agents who think that he's international spy Eric Augustine, to whom Peanuts bears a striking resemblance....
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Samson and Delilah (1949)
Cast: Cecil B. DeMille Hedy Lamarr Angela Lansbury Victor Mature George Sanders
Tags: Religious Epic Epic
Length: 128min
Samson and Delilah is Cecil B. DeMille's characteristically expansive retelling of the events found in the Old Testament passages of Judges 13-16. Victor Mature plays Samson, the superstrong young Danite. Samson aspires to marry Philistine noblewoman...
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The Story of Mankind (1957)
Cast: Peter Lorre Chico Marx Groucho Marx Harpo Marx Vincent Price
Tags: Fantasy Science Fiction Historical Film Psychological Sci-Fi
Length: 100min
Future "Master of Disaster" Irwin Allen produced this curious but inarguably fascinating adaptation of Henrik Willem Van Loon's best- selling historical volume. A Celestial Tribunal has been convened to decide the fate of the Earth after the invention...
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The Strange Woman (1946)
Cast: Hedy Lamarr George Sanders Louis Hayward Edgar G. Ulmer Hillary Brooke
Tags: Drama Psychological Thriller
Length: 100min
B-movie auteur Edgar G. Ulmer managed to direct a few A-pictures during his long career; he was personally selected by Hedy Lamarr to helm this big-budget thriller, a project she put together to change her image as a starlet whose sex appeal...
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Let's Live a Little (1948)
Cast: Hedy Lamarr Robert Cummings Richard Wallace Lucien Littlefield Paul Maxey
Tags: Romantic Comedy Comedy Romance
Length: 85min
Sexual harassment can work both ways as can be seen in this romantic comedy when ad man endeavors to maneuver out of a relationship with his girlfriend. This is difficult as she controls a major account for his company and refuses to renew it unless...
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Copper Canyon (1950)
Cast: Ray Milland Hedy Lamarr Mona Freeman MacDonald Carey Wally Westmore
Tags: Western Traditional Western
Length: 84min
Set just after the close of the Civil War, a former Confederate officer (Ray Milland) joins a vaudeville target-shooting show to avoid detection by the Union army. Working his way West, he falls in league with a group of Southern copper-miners being...
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A Lady without Passport (1950)
Cast: Hedy Lamarr George Macready James Craig Joseph H. Lewis Douglas Shearer
Tags: Melodrama Drama
Length: 72min
A Lady Without Passport stars Hedy Lamarr in the title role. Lamarr plays Marianne Lorress, a concentration-camp refugee who takes up residence in Cuba while waiting permission to enter the U.S. Immigration agent Pete Karczag (John Hodiak) decides to...
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Her Highness and the Bellboy (1945)
Cast: Robert Walker Agnes Moorehead Hedy Lamarr June Allyson Gladys Lehman
Tags: Romantic Comedy Comedy Romance
Length: 112min
This tender but fluffy romantic comedy centers on the romantic travails of a beautiful European princesss who goes to New York to find the newspaper reporter she fell for when he was visiting her mythical country. She stays at the Big Apple's finest...
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Dishonored Lady (1947)
Cast: Hedy Lamarr Dennis O'Keefe Natalie Schafer William Lundigan Margaret Hamilton
Tags: Melodrama Drama
Length: 85min
In this drama, Madeleine Damien (Hedy Lamarr) is a successful magazine editor with a free-spirited private life, but a number of failed relationships and years of burning the candle at both ends have taken their toll and Madeleine is suicidal and on...
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Hedy Lamarr

Biography: Hedy Lamarr

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