Hedy appealed to the Holy Rota in Rome for an annulment of her marriage to Mandl. Her request was denied, and she traveled to Nevada to obtain a divorce.33 Hedy, however, claimed she obtained a divorce in Paris. It seems likely that Mandl had his marriage to Hedy annulled in 1938 on racial grounds.34 They may even have discussed divorce before that; one rumor claimed they were planning to travel to Riga (the Reno of Europe) for a quick dissolution of their marriage.35
According to the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935, a “full Jew” was a person with three Jewish grandparents. Those with less were designated as ”Mischlinge” and fell into one of two categories: first degree equaled two Jewish grandparents; and second degree equaled one Jewish grandparent. Mandl was only too aware that he was of “tainted” stock: “Because I only have two grandparents who are of pure Aryan stock, this question is of the utmost importance to me. Perhaps Cardinal [Innitzer] could also be of some help since he was always well disposed towards me and a good word from him in important places would be very influential.”36
Motivated, like his good friend Cardinal Innitzer, by a desire to keep all parties happy, Mandl was less interested in conforming to Nazi decrees than in protecting his financial interests, in this case his salary from the Hirtenberger Patronenfabrik, which was now in full production, gearing up happily for war. An annulment from the marriage with Hedy, a full-blooded Jew, was—not to put too fine a point on it—worth RM 2,000 monthly to Mandl.37
In 1953, Mandl's third wife, Herta Schneider, charged Mandl with bigamy on the grounds that he never divorced Hedy. In pursuit of her share of Mandl's Argentinean assets (which she valued at £2,600,000), Schneider had filed for divorce, charging among other things that Mandl had dragged her around their luxury apartment by the hair. Mandl counter-claimed that they were never really married, as he had never properly divorced Hedy. According to his solicitors, Mandl had obtained a divorce from Hedy in Texas but the Vatican had refused to recognize it. He married Schneider in 1939, subsequently obtained a Mexican divorce from her, and then married Gloria Vinelli in Mexico City in 1951.38
The story of Hedy's escape from Mandl followed her throughout her life. Its overtones of privilege and melodrama set it apart from other accounts of Jewish exile from Nazi-occupied territories. Most of all, her story eliminated the uncomfortable fact of her Jewishness, an aspect of her identity that she never again mentioned. This may also account for her neglect in the many studies of Jewish émigrés to Hollywood, rendering her a more lightweight character in a narrative focused on persecution and its consequences. What should be remembered is that her Jewish identity would have surfaced had she stayed in Austria. It is nearly certain too, given the pattern of her life, that she would not have stayed with Mandl, whose political activities she loathed and who could not have controlled her in the way he wanted.
Mandl in turn fled Vienna as Hitler annexed the arms factories. With the suspicion that he might be Jewish hanging over him, the businessman escaped along with his father, his sister, and Herta Schneider to Argentina. Before he left, Mandl sealed a deal with the Nazis allowing him to keep his non-Austrian holdings. In return he allegedly carried Nazi funds belonging to Göring, Ribbentrop, and other high-ranking party members to invest in Argentina. As his former wife built her reputation in Hollywood, so he built his, financing Juan Perón's successful electoral campaign and developing a local arms program. It seems that he and Hedy kept in touch over the years, though nothing suggests that they ever again met face to face.
Many years later again, in 1979, Manuel Puig opened his science fiction novel Pubis Angelical with a woman dying in a Mexican hospital. As her life slips away, she becomes not herself but her two shadows, one a Viennese actress who marries a weapons maker prior to World War II and later moves to Hollywood; and the other, “W2I8,” a sexual conscript in an alternative present. Puig makes his actress a tragic heroine. Locked in a fortress by her billionaire husband, whose fortune comes from making arms for the Nazis, she eventually escapes disguised as one of the doubles her jealous husband has planted around his island home. Nothing goes well in this story centered on the theme that men will inevitably betray women. Only the actress's alter ego, the sex slave, triumphs, and then only because she realizes that forcing men to change is futile—it is far better for women to believe in themselves than to become an object of male desire. There is no evidence that Hedy Mandl, by then Hedy Lamarr, ever read Puig's book. She might have found his conclusion simplistic.
5
The Most Beautiful Woman in the World
SWITZERLAND WAS REGARDED by many German and Austrian refugees as a station on their way to France until 1938, when it introduced measures prohibiting Jews from crossing its borders. The better-heeled refugees, whose numbers now included Hedwig Kiesler, chose to spend the winter of 1936–1937 in St. Moritz before heading to Paris. The Swiss resort was a flurry of cocktails, parties, and gossip. As Erich Maria Remarque wrote in his diaries, some refugees began to sink under the boredom, for them drinking began in the early morning; others withdrew into themselves; fights broke out. Certain prominent Jewish dissidents were discomforted to find themselves rubbing shoulders with regular holidayers, whose political views differed sharply from their own. Among the filmmakers, the most prominent was Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's favorite. Billy Wilder was also found in St. Moritz as were the Hollywood stars Eleanor Boardman and Kay Francis.1 Remarque had fled to Switzerland in 1933. His best-known antiwar novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, had been made into a hugely successful Hollywood film, and he was friendly with many people that Hedy would later encounter there, notably Charles Boyer. Back in Germany, Remarque was persona non grata for the same reasons he was feted in Hollywood; the premiere of All Quiet in Berlin had prompted a display of Nazi flag waving, with Goebbels marching out of the cinema to chants of “Judenfilm! Judenfilm!” Nazi supporters set off stink bombs in the auditorium along with releasing hundreds of white mice. Bizarrely, the Nazis then invited Remarque to become Minister of Culture for Prussia. When he declined and went into exile, they responded by banning his books and decreeing that anyone who owned a copy of All Quiet on the Western Front must relinquish it to the authorities.
Remarque was extraordinarily good-looking, deeply romantic, and a serial womanizer. He was also bored in St. Moritz and enchanted by meeting Hedy. She embodied, as his biographer writes, “all the qualities that Remarque found attractive—a stunning beauty, an actress, sophisticated, louche, German-speaking.” Soon they began an affair that lasted until the summer of 1937, when two events occurred in short succession: Hedy left for London and Remarque met the woman who was to become his greatest love, Marlene Dietrich.2
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
