What a weird story.
Posted on 12/20/2011 9:27:15 PM PST by Tex-Con-Man
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Hedy Lamarr avoided the celebrity party circuit, preferring small gatherings with close friends. At home she set up a drafting table and devoted her downtime to inventions, including a bouillon-like cube that when mixed with water would produce an instant soft drink. It was at a dinner at the home of the actress Janet Gaynor in 1940 that she met George Antheil.
According to Antheil’s autobiography, “Bad Boy of Music,” Hedy requested the meeting because she had read one of his Esquire articles about glands. This was Hollywood, and the most beautiful woman in the world was concerned about her breast size. Could Mr. Antheil help? A friendship began that evening, kindled by the encounter of two imaginative and inventive minds...
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What drew Rhodes to the twin story of the Bad Boy of Music and “the most beautiful woman in the world” was their invention of a radio-controlled “spread spectrum” torpedo-guidance system, for which they received a patent in 1942.
That a glamorous movie star whose day job involved hours of makeup calls and dress fittings would spend her off hours designing sophisticated weapons systems is one of the great curiosities of Hollywood history. Lamarr, however, not only possessed a head for abstract spatial relationships, but she also had been in her former life a fly on the wall during meetings and technical discussions between her munitions-manufacturer husband and his clients, some of them Nazi officials. Disturbed by news reports of innocents killed at sea by U-boats, she was determined to help defeat the German attacks. And Antheil, arguably the most mechanically inclined of all composers, having long before mastered the byzantine mechanisms of pneumatic piano rolls, retained a special genius for “out of the box” problem solving.
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(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The review goes into much greater detail and is worth following the link and reading the entire article.
Sexiest woman to trample her footprint into the Earth.
Sexiest woman to trample her footprint into the Earth.
Definately. None can compare.
What a weird story.
Hedley? What the hell are you worried about? This is 1874. You’ll be able to sue her.
One step behind Ava Gardner.
Mickey rooney was Ava’s first husband. He was 21, she was 19.
No wonder Mickey was always smiling.
Gorgeous and smart, but a bit humor-challenged;)
“THAT’S HEDLEY!!!”
(Sorry...it had to be said....:-)
Lets not get crazy ; )
Ava was not ...inventing...
sorry Governor.
Cool drawing. I was going to say this thread is worthless without pictures, but....
Agreed, with Dana Wynter coming in a very close second.
looking at Hedy Lamarr: “Ecstasy”
Never heard of her until my Father-in-Law died and my Husband received a trunk with an autographed picture of her.
She was a beautiful women. Classic beauty, unlike the stars that we have now.
Out of all the chicks from back then the one that would top Hedy was for me is Dorothy Lamour. Main reason I love all the “Road” movies. Even the bad ones.
Bart Kosko, the Fuzzy Logic guru and exponent, was giving a talk years ago on his favored subject. He asked the audience if they knew who had invented frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology during WW II.
Your humble corresponent raised his hand with some relish (he’d just eaten a hot dog).
“Hedley Lamar!” he exclaimed.
Did he answer “That’s HEDY!” :-)
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