Hedy Lamarr

This is my portrait of Hedy Lamarr, inspired by the photo of her as Sandra Kolter in Ziegfeld Girl (1941). My idea was to highlight a woman who I believe was a neglected - ignored, even - influence on society and women today. I went through several different choices of which women I wanted to paint a portrait of, but Hedy Lamarr was the one that spoke to me the most. Her accomplishments in science and invention are too often forgotten in today's world. 

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Hedy Lamarr was Jewish and was originally from Austria. She was married to a man named Fritz Mandl, a wealthy arms dealer who sold munitions to the Nazis. Quickly, she left him and fled to the U.S. Not before long, she was signed into a contract with MGM. She was a prolific actress with several titles under her name. However, these are not the only accomplishments she should be recognized for. 

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Her father taught her many things about machinery, opening her mind from a young age and encouraging her to be curious of the world around her. He was the beginnings of her scientific mind. With the help of George Antheil, Lamarr developed the initial method for the frequency hopping spread spectrum, which helped the U.S. fight and win against the Axis Powers in WWII. This technology she invented (and whose patent was approved in 1942) was the beginning of what we now called Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technology.  Interestingly, Hedy Lamarr filed the patent under her married name (H. K. Markey) instead of her given name, in the hopes of giving both the invention and herself more credibility. Nevertheless, not only was she a talented actress, she was a savvy, intelligent woman with a scientific mind as well.

 

I chose this photo of Ms. Lamarr for that exact reason. I feel it encapsulates who she was - both what she was recognized for and what she wasn't. For a long time, Hedy Lamarr's work on the frequency hopping technology went under-credited, as the U.S. Army didn't trust such an invention from a movie star like Lamarr. But it was her brains that made it what it was and is, and without her, who knows? Perhaps there wouldn't be any Bluetooth headphones or Wi-Fi to get your computer to load this very website. Maybe, it could be argued, that someone would have invented anyway, somewhere down the line, but they didn't. Hedy Lamarr did. And it is thanks to her genius that we have what we have today. So, this piece is designed to highlight that Hedy Lamarr was as smart as she was elegant; that she should not be written off as a one-dimensional movie star (as many people did). She was much more.