Hedy Lamarr died 25 years ago today. But 1958's "The Female Animal" was Hedy's high camp finale!

It's Hedley!

Excellent free copy from YouTube! Pairs well with "Female on the Beach," enjoy!

R1 beat me to it!

The trailer is a hoot, especially portraying Jane Powell, as the daughter who is too young, too inexperienced... and also 30 when she played the role!

Why do people say that Hedy couldn't act?

Stripped of Pretense AND Shame!

Why didn't she have a more successful movie career?

Bombshell documentary

Extradoinary Women documentary

Those above 2 documentaries are the only ones I'm aware of on Hedy.

Are there others?

I loved that documentary BOMBSHELL but after watching clips of Hedy in real life in it, I found it hard to believe she was this supposed genius inventor. She didn't seem particularly bright to me.

I watched this based on Rick's review a few years back. It's hilarious; Hedy is too young for the part, George Nader way too old, and goody-goody 30-year-old Jane Powell is risible as a teenage bad girl.

However, this should cement Jan Sterling as a DL goddess.

Yes, I found it hilariously awful. Amazing that Hedy worked in Hollywood 20 years and never learned to act. My favorite part was how often everyone referred to Nader's character by his name, Chris Farley!

Add me to the list of those who love Jan Sterling in this

Why didn't Hedy Lamarr make a movie for 5 years after Ecstasy? The next one was Algiers half a decade later.

What a waste of 5 years of her prime.

I think when Hedy made Ecstasy she was a teenager with no acting experience romping around in the nude on a lark. It was practically a porno film.

So I don't think she initially pursued an acting career and instead married young for money. Not much later (1938?) she escaped that marriage as well as war in Europe (didn't her husband have some Nazi connection?) to sail to America. She had the great good luck to meet LB Mayer who was also on the ship and signed her up before they docked. He was looking for a replacement Garbo and her beauty (not talent) convinced him. He changed her surname to Lamarr after a late silent screen star he admired, Barbara LaMarr. And I don't think Hedy ever took acting seriously.

I forgot that there was an E! Mysteries & Scandals on Hedy.

It's not on YouTube at the moment though unfortunately.

R16, good points

Hedy Lamarr was the subject of a DL thread when I first discovered DL over 20 years ago (I think around 2004?). The thread had hundreds of clever replies, maybe even got a Part 2. I thought I'd gone to heaven and have never left.

Glad to see her back here but I'm sadly betting she won't get the same traction she got 20 years ago.

R5, because they've seen her films, obviously. . . Hedy always seems to be in a dream state. She glows, but is never engaged by what's going on around her. She is in some good noirs: Crossroads (clever plot, plus William Powell and Claire Trevor), and Experiment Perilous (directed by Jacques Tourneur).

Another documentary

I met a guy in Atlanta that was her assistant for years . He swore she still got tons of fan mail and answered each and every one. That was part of his duties . He then backed up his claims by pulling out a gold cigarette case with "HL" in diamonds . He said she had scads of stuff like that given to her by men over the years . He also said she was a salty old thing and could really get nasty very quickly. I think he left her employ when she went to a home .

"Joan Bennett, with her hair styled and colored like mine. I think she must have copied my stills."

R1 It was too easy. Practically trope at this point.

Who is the guy with Hedy in this picture?

Here's an excellent copy of "The Female Animal" free on YouTube. It makes "Female on the Beach" look like "All About Eve," so enjoy! And yes, Jan Sterling and her "Double Indemnity" wig steal the show...

Most of those Golden Age actresses seemed to have greatly benefited from excellent plastic surgery in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.

But not Hedy. I wonder if her face was too delicate to take it.

Actually, Hedy's own son talks about Lamarr's plastic surgery addiction as she became older. Lamarr actually looks a little worse for wear in "The Female Animal." When she was on talk shows in the '60s, Hedy's surgery was noticeable but looked good. But after she fell out of the spotlight, she started looking like Wildenstein-lite.

She would have been great in Casablanca.

Algiers is going to be released on Bluray later this month...

"Why do people say that Hedy couldn't act?"

No. We say she couldn't talk. Her opportunies would always be limited with an accent like Zsa Zsa.

But whenever I see her I think about the son who hated her. Apparently she had a hair-trigger temper.

I always thought she was among the most beautiful of the Golden Era stars.

Somewhere out there is a clip of Hedy and handsome grown son appearing on To Tell the Truth in the 1960s. Hedy also appeared a decade or so earlier on What's My Line? (maybe even twice - once as a panelist and once as a Mystery Guest) and the bad plastic surgery was already in full force.

Bow down, bitches.

Hedy still looked good at her 1966 trial for shoplifting. Her look is reminiscent of how Vivien Leigh was styled in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone.

Her later surgeries, ca 1970, rendered her unrecognizable.

What was up with the shoplifting? Klepto? Mentally ill?

She needed attention!

Did Hedy have any flaws?

No, R38.

I think she said she never really learned to think in English. This might explain why she seemed somewhat slow on the uptake in dialogue scenes.

She was very good in H. M. Pulham, Esq. (1941) with Robert Young. Look it up.

She was also good in Samson and Delilah, as wild as that DeMille movie is.

Face, flawless... as a talent, let's just say she wasn't a very inventive actress!

Though she looked perfect in photo stills I never found Hedy as gorgeous and vivacious as Vivien Leigh who had a similar look. Maybe it was the remote quality in Hedy I don't like. I, for one, think Hedy looks ridiculous in Samson and Delilah, overwhelmed by costuming and hairstyles.

Both their looks aged badly though. Maybe their bone structure was just too fragile.

In remember in her memoir she described her acting as a mix of Greta Garbo and Judy Garland.

To Tell the Truth for R33.

Yes. We know.

For r13.

No need to repeat everything.

Jan Sterling always had bad hair. I saw her mostly peroxided but then I saw her a brunette and she looked worse!

So, I guess Anthony Loder never had much success as an actor?

IMDB.

When someone starts another Lamarr thread showing her at her peak in the 40’s it astonishes me that someone could be that beautiful. When the brunettes are beautiful they are in another league.

Who did Hedy think was beautiful?

Ann Miller and Joyce Van Pattten

She invented Wi-Fi.

I'm fully convinced that Hedy did NOT discover wi-fi but merely was a loving hostess to the man who did.

I think the people who don't think that Hedy was smart, just assume that because of how beautiful she was.

No, we've watched her in several TV interviews. She was not very bright.

R56, you can't judge by that.

What is your favorite HL movie?

I love her in ZIEGFELD GIRL and DISHONORED LADY.

While hardly a challenging role, Hedy showed some rare warmth in "Ziegfeld Girl."

What are the best books on her?

I thought her cosmetic surgeries were fine, but what was the point? She'd have aged-out of sexpot roles and just been offered mom roles anyway.

I saw a double feature of Ecstasy and Algiers at the Theatre 80 St. Marks around 1980. Both prints sucked, but those movies weren't all that available at the time--especially Ecstasy. It wasn't like it was going to be on TV.

I thought her cosmetic surgeries were notoriously bad?

On Merv.

Yeah she was still looking pretty good there...what was that, late '60s?

Moms Mabley, Leslie Uggams, Woody Allen and Hedy...quite the guest roster there!

Well, maybe it's not that Hedy wasn't bright. But somehow she just doesn't seem to be able to give engaging responses to questions about her life. Not a great talk show guest, I think. Maybe her English was never perfected? Or maybe she just didn't think she was very interesting and couldn't take people's interest in her seriously.

Maybe she was some kind of savant. She truly does not seem overly bright (though not dumb, either). But she did work on that torpedo invention that pre-dated wi-fi--with George Antheil (the composer)--they did patent it together. I feel he gets lost in the shuffle while she seems to get all the credit--because of a desire to prove that a beautiful woman can also be bright.

Patrick Agan was working on a biography of Hedy and spent some time with her in the 1990's.

I read the book in manuscript and had it for a long time, I think I finally tossed it when Patrick passed away. Just looked on Amazon and I guess it was never published.

Her "autobiography" is okay and might be the best place to start.

R69, why didn't he release it? Or someone else could have

Miss Lamarr looked frightening in 1972.

Pretty pretty?

Did she not have proper lighting over her mirrors at home??

It's hard to fathom how such a supposedly intelligent and strong woman, with every advantage, including several wealthy marriages, could wind up with so little and get arrested for shoplifting in a five and dime store (or was it a drugstore?) in Florida. Of course, I guess the shoplifting was some sort of plea for attention, but still....

Curious also about that Merv interview upthread in which she seems to be disowning that "autobiography" Ecstasy and Me. He never got her to elaborate what she meant by that though she did say she was working on a true autobiography. Would that be the book to which r69 refers?

R70 I don't know. I thought it had been submitted to his publisher but maybe they turned it down.

His book on Clint Eastwood is pretty good. And his book Decline And Fall of the Love Goddesses is also good.

In "The Female Animal," Hedy's line delivery sounds like she still doesn't understand English, after two decades in Hollywood.

I just bought the Bombshell doc on Blu-ray It has outtakes also

That's good doc.

Is Bombshell the best documentary ever?

The old Road To movies with Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Lamarr were fun formulaic movies.

There was an old movies channel that used to show them when I was a kid. They also used to show the old Topper movies with Cary Grant.