Posted on 03/08/2018 12:25:24 PM PST by nickcarraway
Isn't it hard to believe how a beautiful actress wasn't taken seriously as the genius inventor that she was?
Along with digital video and consumer drones cf. this weeks Leaning into the Wind one of the greatest boons to documentaries over the past decade has been previously unheard recordings of deceased people, the latest beneficiary being Alexandra Deans excellent Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story. Tapes of Lamarr from 1990 are among the primary source for exploring her life, which was a prime example of how its not always easy being the best at something and when youre the best at having an aesthetically pleasing face, it can make it all the more difficult to be taken seriously in other departments. (To some, shes the source of a running joke about Harvey Kormans characters name in Mel Brooks Blazing Saddles, hence Brooks being Bombshells first on-screen interviewee, followed by the Saddles gag in question.)
The fact that she appeared naked in the famously racy, pre-code film Ecstasy made it all the more difficult for men to believe she could be smart. Even though her big brain came up with the basic structure of what later became wifi during World War II, her innovations were ignored at the time because she was a pretty lady. One shudders to think how much worse it would have been if she were blonde. Because theyre dumb!
Not rated.
Opens Friday at the Clay Theater.
At the time, there was nobody who recognized her frequency hopping algorithm as something useful.
It was esoteric.
As an analogy, think of the mathematics of radar stealth developed by the Soviets in the early-mid Seventies by one of their super brainiacs. They had no idea at all how to use it, so it was an intellectual oddity, and was largely unknown outside the circle of the guy who developed the math in the USSR.
He probably gave long, boring unintelligible lectures at venues like the 33rd Soviet Scientific Exposition in Leningrad, while everyone ate their borscht and drank vodka.
then, around 1975, one of the engineers at the Lockeed Skunkworks got his hands on the papers, and figured out how valuable the math was, and how it could be applied. I had just been sitting dormant, dusty and unused even in the USSR.
Hey. She’s pretty hot, even with a bullwhip in her hand!
But I admire her for her brain!
Fixed it.
Okay, that made me spit my drink!
I wonder, was “Hedy” a nickname?
Just askin’...
Maybe she made him run in the rain and chased him with her car like that guy who posted it the other day...:)
She was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler.
Ahhhh! So that explains the bullwhip!
I think you missed my joke, along with everyone else. #;^)
“You vill SPEAK venn zou are SPOKEN to!”
He was adopted as a baby and obviously a problem child. It was his choice to leave her, not hers.........
She sent him to boarding school -- something she did with each of her children -- and he met a teacher and her husband who were kind, he said.
"They seemed to be paying attention to me," Loder said last week in a phone interview from Omaha, Neb., where he lives.
The couple asked him to move in, and he jumped at the chance. For Lamarr, that was it. She severed all ties, he said.
My take on this is that she was a disciplinarian and the kid an obnoxious punk who found a way to escape his life of alleged misery.........
You're basing your opinion on the one sided words of a grown man who claims he was screwed out of a fortune in inheritance...........
Mel also issued an apology for “almost using [her] name.”
No, I got it, but I have a suspicion I don’t get any points on this thread for that!
LOL! Could be.......
Never heard that...it sounds so...Brookian!
You get a + 1 from me. LOL
Did I want to get the joke?
Soviet theoretical types were world-class; unfortunately, their inefficient and corrupt economic and political systems made it difficult to get anything from the drawing board into operational service.
Back in the 70s, a lot of US intel types were very impressed with the MiG-25 Foxbat, which was the fastest aircraft in the world (this side of the SR-71). Everyone thought it was a world-beater until Viktor Belenko defected and flew one to Japan.
US and Japanese analysts and engineers were stunned to discover the Foxbat was made almost entirely of steel and required huge engines to deliver high performance due to the fighter’s excessive weight. As we later learned, the Soviets lacked the ability to produce titanium in sufficient quantities to meet all of their needs and the decision was made to use steel in the MiG-25.
BTW, the radar missile carried by the Foxbat (the AA-6 “Acrid”) weighed as much as a Volkswagen.
She disclaimed him as her son, sent him to boarding school as a kid and stopped talking to him. She also told him that he was adopted, although the birth certificate records show that she was the mother. She basically cut him out of her life from the time he was a teenager.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.