Hedy’s Folly

This one ticks a lot of boxes; a gifted child, a transgressor, pre-war Germany, Austria in the 20′s. It’s the new biography of Hedy Lamarr called Hedy’s Folly. Turns out she was intellectually gifted and is credited with inventing frequency hopping which is now used in a number of applications.

The book is now firmly on my holiday reading list and I’m interested in three areas of her life.

Her childhood in Vienna and her exposure to the art and intellectual arguments of the period. Apparently her father encouraged her studies. She studied ballet, piano and obviously acting. She was ‘discovered’ at age 16 by Max Reinhardt and undertook training in Berlin during the late 20′s and 30′s. This is of particular interest to me because a minor character in my novel Navaratri is around the same age as Hedy and her parents are involved in the Berlin film industry.

I’d like to understand the influences that led to her starring in one of the great transgressive films of early cinema, Ecstasy, shot when she was 19. The film is notorious for two reasons. Hedy’s nudity and her orgasm. Whilst the nude scenes are modest by today’s standards, what is remarkable is that Hedy was required to spend a good deal of time naked in the open (here). There are several long shots which means she was some distance from a robe. This is not all that remarkable given the popularity of naturism at the time, especially in Berlin. It is known that members of the Berlin film industry were involved in naturism, so perhaps she had already been on some naturist outings. However, the orgasm scene (here) is even more extraordinary because it has been suggested she was not acting. Even if this is not true, it is the first time a female orgasm was acted on film.