HEDY LAMARR - AUTOGRAPHED SIGNED PHOTOGRAPH 1986 - HFSID 157004

HEDY LAMARR
Color photograph of the actress shown wearing vibrant red lipstick, signed in blue felt tip on verso
Photograph signed: "Hedy Lamarr/ 1986" on verso in blue ink, color, 8x10. Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000), born Hedwig Kiesler, who appeared in European films beginning in the 1930s, made a big splash at age 18 in the universally-banned Czech film Ecstasy (1933). Pushing the boundaries of social norms, Lamarr was one of the first actresses to simulate an orgasm on screen. She was also shown in full-frontal nude shots several times throughout the film, which was an unusual and monumental occurrence in the socially conservative 1930s. After traveling to America, the actress was signed to a long MGM contract. Although often underused by the studios, she was memorable in the complex role of the career woman who "liberates" stuffy Bostonian Robert Young in H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1942). In 1949, Lamarr appeared opposite Victor Mature in Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah. Her last starring role was in The Female Animal (1958). Little was known about Lamarr's technological genius until recently. In 1942, she patented a frequency hopping electronic system that was used later on secret communications devices and in the building of advanced weaponry. Brilliantly intelligent and passionately anti-Nazi, Lamarr had conceived the basic idea for this technology while listening to the conversations of her first husband, an Austrian industrialist, at dinner parties with Hitler. The method she pioneered, applied by the U.S. Navy with good effect in World War II, was essential to the next generation of Wi-Fi and cell phone technology. Faint surface creases. Edges slightly creased.Otherwise, fine condition.