Hedy Lamarr: The Most Beautiful Woman in Film

It is difficult to argue with the statement that Hedy Lamarr--according to the subtitle of Ruth Barton's new book--was the most beautiful woman in film. And yet, there was something missing from her beauty. Whatever perfection was presented to the camera was never truly backed by an inner passion or sexual spirit. Indeed, one could make the claim that while Lamarr was more physically beautiful than, say Barbara Stanwyck or Bette Davis, the latter women were far more interesting to observe and, ultimately, more desirable.

Barton's biography details the rapid career rise of a young woman who was fortunate to be in the right places at the right time--as Hedwig Kiesler, the Jewish Austrian teenage star of the scandalous 1933 experimental Czech feature Ecstasy; as one of MGM's import of new stars in a 1937 sweep of European talent (renamed Hedy Lamarr by Louis B. Mayer himself); and as the apotheosis of the "other woman" concept in Walter Wanger's 1938 Algiers. Her most unusual career move came during World War II, when she found herself as part of a top-secret project to invent a frequency-hopping technology to hide radio-guided torpedoes from detection. (The book is unclear just how Lamarr, who had no engineering education or previous experience in telecommunications, wound up in this endeavor.)

But producer Pandro Berman seems to have bluntly stated what nobody was eager to admit: "Hedy has no talent and is not an important person in any way. Film acting has more to do than looking icy beautiful." Lamarr never truly scored a landmark role that defined her as a cinema icon; the closest she came to immortality was Cecil B. DeMille's ridiculous Samson and Delilah. By the 1950s, with no studio backing her, Lamarr's film career waned. By the 1960s, her career was limited to occasional appearances on television game shows. By the 1970s, she had vanished from public view, with only a few unflattering articles in celebrity scandal tabloids offering a reminder that she was still alive.

If Lamarr's career expired in a whimper, her final years were anything but quiet. She was involved in a glut of lawsuits, targeting everyone from the publisher of her ghostwritten autobiography to Mel Brooks for his "Hedley Lamarr" joke character in Blazing Saddles, to Corel software for using her image in its marketing without her permission. Failing eyesight and dwindling finances added to her life drama, while rumors of comeback vehicles gave her the aura of a Norma Desmond clone.

And yet, Lamarr--as presented in this book--remains an elusive personality. We never quite understand what made her tick and what drove her into the wrong directions, both professionally and personally. Although Barton's text is well researched and is careful to steer away from judgmental language, she never succeeds in answering the enigma of Lamarr's life and appeal. Perhaps the mystery of Hedy Lamarr is, ultimately, the lack of mystery.