Hedy Lamarr — What Do You Know About Her?

What do you know of this actress, seated now upon the loftiest throne of fame, whose beauty has become, for millions of human beings throughout the world, the measure of beauty in every woman — though it was not by her beauty alone that she rose to that lofty throne?

She is the daughter of Emil Kiesler, director of the Bank of Vienna, which was at that time an institution of international influence. She was born on November 9 and grew up in comfort, was schooled by specialist tutors, and was passionately fond of acting from childhood. So great was her passion for it that at fifteen, while a pupil at a private school, she left it quietly and went to ask for work at a studio called the Sascha studio. There was a vacant position there; she applied for it and it was hers, and she played a part in a picture called "Storm in a Glass of Water."

Upon this a "storm" blew up at home, but Hedy came through it safely. She then acted in a picture called "One Needs No Money," after which she traveled to Berlin, where she at once made the acquaintance of Max Reinhardt, who put her into the play "The Weaker Sex" and then into "Private Life." She drew all eyes and bewitched all hearts, and her beauty became the talk of Berlin.

She agreed to act in a motion picture in the city of Prague, but the subject of this picture was vulgar; she regretted having entered into it, gave up film acting, and returned to Vienna. There she met the famous international financier Fritz Mandl and married him.

When she resolved to return to the stage, her husband objected and refused to let her go back; so she left him and fled to Paris, and then to London. Learning by chance that Louis Mayer was in the English capital, she called on him, and he consented to give her a part in a picture. But she feared her husband would pursue her from Vienna, so she left London for America — that was in 1937. When she reached Hollywood she was seized with astonishment and possessed by the wonder of one under a spell. She had mastered French, German, Hungarian, and Italian, and she now devoted herself to mastering English. Before long she appeared for the first time in the picture "Algiers," and her appearance struck a chord among devotees of the screen. Then she began to bind her brow with the laurels of triumph in the pictures that followed "Algiers," and the longer time went on, the wider her glory spread, the higher her fame mounted, and the fuller and more followed her name became.

She then divorced her first husband, Mandl, and married Gene Markey. But this second marriage did not accord with her life as an actress, and they parted. Then she married John Loder in 1943, and the two settled in an old-style American house in Beverly Hills. She adopted a boy named James, and was blessed with a daughter whom she named Denise.

She loves playing tennis, gliding on the snow, and swimming. Her eyes mingle three colors: pistachio green, gray, and blue. Her hair is dark brown to the point of blackness. Her weight is 12 pounds and her height five feet six carats.