to make the eradication of Ecstasy impossible.16 Although this story was widely circulated and repeated throughout Hedy's life, Mandl later stated that it was all just a publicity stunt dreamed up to promote the film.17 It does seem odd that he arranged for the film to be destroyed well after it had completed its Viennese run, and there are no reports in the trade press of his alleged campaign. True or false, the myth enhanced Ecstasy's currency as forbidden fruit, as may have been intended.
With work out of the question for now, Hedy soon became bored. Mandl may not have literally locked her inside his castle, as she and others later claimed, but by moving his young bride into the Villa Fegenberg where she had only staff for company week after week, he effectively kept her away from temptation. Horse riding passed the time as did swimming in a pool fed by natural springs, but there was little else to do other than wear the expensive clothes Mandl chose for her. Her husband would appear late at night and on weekends with his guests. One day, she later told Farley Granger, “she decided to entertain herself by taking all sixteen toilet seats from the house out on to the lawn that swept down to the lake to paint them in the sun. As she was beginning the last one, she spotted a long line of black Mercedes limos in the distance coming up the long drive to the house. Her husband had not bothered to call her to warn her that he was bringing important guests for the weekend.”18 Berta Kaiser, then a fourteen-year-old kitchen maid at the Villa Fegenberg, remembered that Mandl himself would come to the kitchen to oversee the preparations for the evening's entertainment, never Hedy, who was too young to know about such matters. She was just there to be beautiful. Still, the staff was fond of her and awed by her looks and fine clothing. The couple, Berta Kaiser also noticed, slept in separate bedrooms.19
Soon Hedy realized that Mandl deliberately kept her short of cash and assured her that she could shop on credit when she wished. Determined to outwit him, she went shopping with a vengeance, buying up thousands of schillings worth of clothes, furs, evening gowns, and coats. According to Hedy,
My program of buying went on for weeks and, during it, I became a new person. I was gayer, happier, and at the same time (imbued with this new secret purpose) more amenable to my husband's wishes…All of which led him, far from suspecting my true design, to do that which I had hoped he would do, namely give me an allowance of my own. “Hedy,” he said, “your purchases are staggering even to a man of wealth. I will not have this go on. I shall therefore stop your credit and give you cash for your needs. This allowance is not comparable to your extravagance; but it must from now on, suffice.”
I had won!20
In her autobiography, Hedy relates another incident that she claims occurred soon after she married Mandl. Finding herself unsupervised one afternoon, she slipped out of their mansion and into a crowd of shoppers. Soon she spotted Mandl behind her on an escalator. She rode to the bottom and hurried out a side exit, finding herself in a familiar part of town; nearby, she remembered, there was a notorious peephole club. Pushing enough money for the fee and a large tip in the surprised attendant's hand, she slipped into the club and headed upstairs to join the afternoon regulars in the booths. In front of her eyes, a formally dressed man and two nude women were forming a “sandwich” tableau on a round bed draped in red velvet. Behind her, Hedy heard Mandl's voice and guessed that his tip would be more generous than hers. She quickly exited the booth, and, like Alice, found herself on the other side of the glass, now transformed from voyeur to spectacle. Before Mandl could climb the stairs, a young man walked in and started to undress. Surprised that Hedy was not performing her part, he wondered if this was her first time, while musing that she looked familiar. As Ecstasy had been showing all around town, this could well have been so. Hedy began to undress and at that moment, Mandl banged on the door, demanding to know who the hell was in there. “What the hell do you care?” came the reply, “a broad and me.” Unable to believe that this might be his wife, Mandl apparently departed, leaving Hedy to enjoy “the strangest love-making any girl ever had” and to be tipped afterward in gratification.21
Did this happen? Not surprisingly, no one has since stepped up to confirm or deny the story. The incident is only one of a number in the book that describe how its author finds herself in a position where a stranger takes advantage of her and where she comes to enjoy the experience. It's a scenario that, in various forms, underpins many a Hollywood narrative: the heroine stands up to a forceful man who breaks down her resistance by seducing her. Maybe this and the other incidents did occur, or maybe the ghostwriters invented them (though this seems a risky creative decision), or maybe in later life Hedy's sexual fantasies usurped the reality of life with Mandl in a city on the brink of war, in an environment where to be Jewish was to be increasingly fearful.
In Schwartau, Hedy presided over a dinner table that accommodated writers such as Ödön von Horváth, and Franz Werfel and his wife, Alma. According to Hedy's autobiography, they also counted Sigmund Freud among their circle. If these names reflected Mandl's cultural interests, some of Mandl's other guests were more sinister. Certainly, they included Mussolini, but, according to Hedy, another diner was Adolf Hitler.22 It seems unlikely that Mandl would have entertained the German leader, even if Hitler were in Vienna at this time; later, Mandl actively moved against Hitler. Mussolini was another matter; he and Mandl shared many interests, not least a friendship with another well-known Austrian fascist, Count Ernst Riidiger von Starhemberg. Von Starhemberg was the owner of thousands of acres of land and some thirteen castles across Austria; in the 1923 Putsch, he fought for Hitler, whom he counted at that time as a personal friend. By the time Von Starhemberg met Mandl, however, he had run through the family fortune and needed the munitions baron's financial support to stay at the forefront of the politics of the day.
• • •
Mandl and von Starhemberg made a formidable pair. The latter was socially well connected; Mandl brought money and ruthless business acumen to the partnership. Their vision was clear: when democracy became unworkable, Mandl told an interviewer in 1933, then you need a strong pair of clean hands. These were Count von Starhemberg's, he pronounced confidently, a man who had supported his political ideals with his own fortune.23 These ideals were now invested in a private militia, the Heimwehr, and in February 1934 the twosome deployed the Heimwehr to crush the socialist revolution in Vienna. Equipping the Heimwehr and aligning himself with von Starhemberg were characteristically immoral moves on the part of Mandl, not least because a considerable proportion of the Heimwehr's membership was motivated by anti-Semitism. Von Starhemberg himself was, like Mandl, quite immune to the finer points of ideology, on occasion inciting a crowd with Nazi-inspired slogans and, when it was more convenient, reassuring the foreign press that the Heimwehr completely rejected Nazi racial theories.24 Mussolini bought weapons from Mandl at top rates to help finance his and von Starhemberg's activities, and for a time, as part of his strategy to strengthen Austria against Hitler, the Italian leader threw in his lot with the two Austrians.
This then was the company the young Hedy Mandl found herself keeping. It was at one of von Starhemberg's balls that a conversation took place that suggests there were more sinister reasons for her marriage to Mandl. According to Jewish-German writer Heinz Liepmann, it is based on an encounter with Hedy that took place on the night of 22 November 1934. By this stage Dolfuß had been assassinated and von Starhemberg was vice-chancellor and minister of State Security. The guests at the ball included Prince Nicholas of Greece, Madame Schiaperelli, Franz Werfel and Alma, Prince Gustav of Denmark, actress Nora Gregor (now von Starhemberg's lover), and General Malleaux of the French General staff. But the figure that caught Liepmann's gaze was that of a young woman whose beauty, heightened by the simplicity of her gown and the size of her diamond pin, outshone this display of wealth. This was Frau Mandl, dancing in the arms of her much-older husband, Fritz. Soon after he entered the ballroom, Liepmann observed Mandl leave with Count von Starhemberg and sensed a shudder of foreboding run through the collection of guests. What were these two men planning? Seizing his chance, Liepmann asked an acquaintance to introduce him to Hedy. “Let us sit down for a moment,” she suggested. “Only then did I notice,” Liepmann recalled, “that her soft alluring beauty was really intoxicating
