Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story Page #5

---

without knowing how she was

going to put it together.

She didn't have the training

to make it happen.

And she said that,

"The idea was mine,

but the implementation

was George's."

My mother met George Antheil

at Janet Gaynor's party.

And she liked

George Antheil a lot.

So, when she left

the party early,

she wrote her phone number

in lipstick

on the windshield of his car.

They discovered that they had

a great deal in common.

At the time,

I think they both felt

like they were not understood

for their true qualities.

George Antheil was really quite

an unusual American composer,

extremely avant-garde.

Now musicians all over the world

love to play Antheil's music,

they love to get

into that confrontational space

that was his.

He had a gun,

then he would pull it out

and he'd bang it

down on the piano

right at the beginning

of the show,

and shout, "Lock the doors!"

Sometimes it sounds

like his music is jazz

put into a Cuisinart.

It's just, you know,

chopped up and there it is.

Well, George Antheil

wrote a book

called Bad Boy of Music,

and in chapter 32,

"Hedy Lamarr and I invent

a radio torpedo."

He says,

"We began talking about the war,

which in the late summer

of 1940,

was looking

most extremely black."

Hedy said that she did not feel

comfortable

sitting there in Hollywood

and making lots of money

when things were

in such a state,

and that she was thinking

seriously of quitting MGM

and going to Washington D.C.

to offer her services

to the newly established

Inventors Council.

She was very patriotic,

she loved America.

She was grateful to be here,

and she wanted Hitler dead.

So did George Antheil.

George had a kid brother

12 years younger

whose name was Henry.

1941, he boarded a plane,

and moments later,

the plane was shot down

by two Soviet fighters.

This is the first American

killed in World War Il.

George, he was just devastated.

He wanted revenge

for his brother's assassination

and opportunity

with someone who knew

what she was talking about.

Hedy and George worked

on three inventions together,

all weapons meant to help

the Allies fight Germany.

I have letters

from George Antheil.

In one of the letters, he wrote,

"All she wants to do

is stay home and invent things.

She is an incredible combination

of childish ignorance

and definite flashes of genius."

"She calls

in the middle of the night

because an idea hit her."

So, my mother was a pest.

She had to invent,

she had to invent,

and she pulled George Antheil

in with her.

The most successful

of their inventions

was a secret

communication system

based on Hedy's idea

of frequency hopping.

George is taking

all these notes,

and I think there was

some sort of a-ha moment

where he said,

"You know, I have this system,"

I guess he got from dealing

with player pianos,

"that we might be able to adapt

and make... make

your concept work."

George Antheil got thrown

out of Trenton High School

when he was 17,

so he had no special training

in engineering.

What he did know was how

to synchronize player pianos.

George's

most famous composition

was for a film called

Ballet Mcanique.

He scored it

for 16 player pianos.

George's big realization was,

if piano rolls

can activate piano keys,

why couldn't they activate

radio frequencies

in both torpedo and the ship?

The basic idea

is that by using

two miniature piano rolls

that would start

at the same moment

and turn at the same speed,

a ship and a torpedo

could secretly communicate

on the same pattern

of frequencies.

Ultimately, Hedy and George

wanted their torpedo and ship

to communicate

on 88 different frequencies,

like an encryption system,

basically,

that nobody could crack.

Wonderfully clever idea.

And the Inventors Council

agreed.

The members of the National

Inventors Council...

And it was a council

of actual engineers

with a major inventor

in his own right,

Charles Kettering,

who was struck by the value

and the originality

of Hedy and George's idea.

So they helped George and Hedy

by connecting them up

with a physicist at Caltech

in California who was

an expert on electronics.

And he presumably designed

the electronics part

of this device.

The day came

when this invention

was issued a full patent.

Hedy and George

donated their invention

to the National Inventors

Council,

but it was generally understood

that if the military

used an invention,

the inventors would be paid.

They gave it to the Navy,

and as George Antheil

liked to tell the story later,

I went in to see the Navy Brass

and they threw the patent

on the desk and said,

"What do you want to do,

put a player piano in a torpedo?

Get out of here!"

And that was that.

Sons of b*tches.

Shame.

Shame on them.

Well, that's why

I was in the Army,

because the Navy

was never that bright.

After the Navy

rejected their invention,

Hedy wanted to continue

developing it.

But George,

who always had bills to pay,

wasn't interested.

I think George was very proud

that he had done it,

but I think he just got over it.

I think that for Hedy,

she saw it as perhaps

her ticket to be recognized

for the brilliant woman

that she was.

And the patent, like all things

submitted to the military,

was put in a safe somewhere

and labeled Top Secret.

So it disappeared from the world

for the rest of the war.

The Navy basically told her,

"You know, you'd be helping

the war a lot more, little lady,

if you got out

and sold war bonds

rather than sat around

trying to invent

new kinds of torpedoes.

Leave that to the experts.

Get out there

and raise money."

You don't get to be

Hedy Lamarr and smart.

No.

No.

I worked for the government

at the bond tour.

Really? How?

By appearing,

by dancing with these people.

Hedy used to go

to the Hollywood Canteen

and entertain the troops.

Hedy Lamarr

hands out autographs.

She was not yet

an American citizen

and she was there working

on behalf of the United States

and its soldiers every night

as often as she could be.

It's a great thing, really.

Hedy sold something like

$25 million worth of war bonds,

which if you translate that

into modern dollars,

comes out around $343 million

worth of war bonds.

To be told to just raise money

for the war,

it's unfortunate.

That was the way that people

thought that she would do good

in the best way within

her realm of capabilities.

F-35, somebody have it?

I've got it!

Go ahead!

Oh no.

Like, go and sell a kiss

to a strange man.

Maybe... maybe she would have felt

a little bit better

about her accomplishments

if she received recognition

for her intellect.

Oh, you'll get used to it.

I don't want to get used to it.

I have my own life.

My own life!

To add insult to injury,

the U.S. Government seized

Hedy's patent in 1942

as the property

of an enemy alien.

I don't understand.

They use me for selling bonds,

then I'm not an alien.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes