Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story

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Hedy wanted to do

something important

with her life.

She wanted to make her mark.

But she was totally judged

by that face.

One of the most

glamorous stars

show business

ever has produced...

One of the most glamorous stars

the screen has ever known...

And one of the most beautiful

women in the world...

Well, shall we all

say it together?

- I think we all know.

- The most beautiful girl

in the world

Hedy Lamarr.

She becomes the model

for Snow White.

And she inspired Catwoman.

Oh, my God, I mean, she was...

she was the best-looking

movie star that ever lived.

She became my inspiration.

Thank you, thank you,

Hedy, thank you.

It's not Hedy, it's Hedley,

Hedley LaMarr.

I don't know whether it's true,

but you hear things.

I heard that she was

a scientist.

So is this true?

Within the nerd community

at Google,

Hedy Lamarr was

this beloved figure.

For me, she is

this perfect underdog,

like,

crime-fighter-by-night story

because she lived this life

of great accomplishments

and people

didn't really know about it.

I remember sitting up

in a bare attic with my mother,

she said,

"Look, I got a patent."

"You got a patent, Mom?"

- "Yeah."

- "You invented something?"

"Yeah, I invented a secret

communication system, look."

And, today, we have Wi-Fi

and Bluetooth.

That's my mother's technology.

You see?

No.

Well, it is kind of hard

to explain.

Hedy had one of the most

recognizable faces of her time,

and yet, she said

she was never seen

for who she was.

So, who was she?

Tell me something

that I didn't know about you.

I want to be a simple... I am!

I'm a very simple,

complicated person.

Could you help her?

- Yes, but not here.

- But you know what I mean?

You know what I mean!

This book you're writing now,

Hedy, are there...

Incidents, things that

nobody ever knew about me.

- Regrets?

- Oh, no, no regrets.

You learn from everything

all the time.

When I was a child,

she was always working

on her story.

She was going to let

the world know her version

and her story

and her autobiography

in her words, but yet,

it never came to be.

Hedy became a recluse.

She wouldn't even see

her family.

We wanted to spend time

with her,

but she kept us away.

There was so much scandal.

There were different chapters

of scandal.

There was her movie Ecstasy

that she made as an adolescent,

the nudity and the explicitness

of that,

and then the multiple

marriages and divorces,

and then the arrests.

My mother has a hard side

and an easy side,

and as her son, growing up

with Hedy was difficult.

I mean, she had so many sides

and so many faces,

and even I couldn't understand

who Hedy Lamarr was.

I'd been waiting for somebody

to contact me

about Hedy Lamarr

because I had the tapes.

Where did I find it?

It's embarrassing.

I found it

behind that blue trash can.

I'd had stuff stowed there

and I moved it out of the way,

and there it was.

So, in all,

there were four tapes

and this is the first one.

Ready?

Yes?

This is Fleming Meeks

at Forbes.

Oh, hello! Thank you so much

for the roses.

You're very welcome.

I love them!

I'm very pleased.

I was a staff writer at Forbes

and my father was

an astrophysicist at MIT,

and he called me one day,

and he said,

"I've just talked

with this friend of mine here

and he told me

this amazing story

about Hedy Lamarr,"

and, of course, I pursued it.

I want to sell my life story

to Ted Turner

because it's unbelievable.

The opposite

of what people think.

The brains of people

are more interesting

than the looks, I think.

People have the idea

I'm sort of a stupid thing.

I never knew I looked good

to begin with.

Because my mother

wanted a boy

named Georg (George).

So unfortunately

I didn't become that and...

she wasn't too thrilled

about that.

I was...

different, I guess.

Maybe I came from

a different planet, who knows.

But whatever it is...

inventions are easy

for me to do.

My mother was very inventive.

In this article,

"Hedy's interest in gadgets

really started

at the age of five

when she took

an old-fashioned music box apart

and put it

back together again."

And this was

her childhood music box.

You wind up

this little rabbit here

and it plays

an Austrian melody.

My mother was curious.

She had a very intellectually

curious mind.

She wanted to know

how things worked,

and her father told her things.

Although her father's

official position

was as bank director,

he was also interested

in technology.

So, when they went

for their walks,

he would point out to her

how things worked.

The streetcar

with its electric trolleys

leads these wires

to a factory

that generates electricity.

She learned

to associate invention

with this father,

whom she adored.

My father...

He was a wonderful person.

I miss him.

They lived in Vienna

in a fashionable district,

the 19th District.

It was heavily Jewish

but also

very artistically inclined.

Hedy's parents were both

assimilated Jews.

That was very common in

the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

They were wealthy,

they were cultured.

They took their daughter

to the opera, to the theater.

Everyone was connected with

this world of make believe.

I miss Austria.

Have you ever been there?

I've been to Austria, yes.

Not Vienna?

Fall is the best time

to go there.

Where did you go to school?

In a private school in Vienna.

My favorite thing in school

was...

What's that thing

when you mix things?

- Chemistry.

- Chemistry! Thank you.

Well I'm good at that.

In a different era,

she might very well

have become a scientist.

At the very least,

it's an option

that was derailed by her beauty.

By the time she was a teenager,

when she walked into a room,

conversation stopped.

She was probably

a little dazzled by this power,

testing it out,

seeing how it works

and so forth.

There's a word for what I was.

A... what?

'Enfant terrible.'

I know that.

I know that much French.

Well good!

There are stories about her

heading to the photographer

to get her photos taken

with and without clothes.

She lived in a society

where there were

many prominent women who had

not only incredible careers,

but loads of lovers.

Women, especially in the arts,

could have certain

kinds of liberties

that they would not find

in normal bourgeois society.

Hedy decided one day,

at the age of 16,

that she was ready

and went off to the largest

film studio and walked in.

Very quickly,

within a couple days,

they had her in a walk-on.

I have seen

the little weird Viennese films

that she made in the beginning

where she's

a little bit awkward

but clearly beautiful.

But it's clearly

the 1933 film Ecstasy

that really brought her

into everyone's consciousness.

Hedy became world famous

the moment she appeared naked

in Ecstasy.

The Pope denounced it

and Hitler refused it

to be shown.

People were just shocked by it.

It was quite controversial

because she simulated an orgasm.

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