her life story. They began with a now-forgotten Irish film star, called Constance Smith, whose life I researched for a book, Acting Irish in Hollywood (2006), on Irish film stars in Hollywood. Connie, as she was known, made her film breakthrough in 1946 after winning a Hedy Lamarr look-alike contest organized by an Irish film magazine. Trading on her looks and frequently let down by her lack of acting skills, Connie made it to England and on to Hollywood, where she was placed under contract to 20th Century Fox. Little educated, with no family support and few compatriots to keep an eye on her, Connie at first floundered and then fell from grace, her career determined by latent alcoholism and a long-term relationship with the equally unreliable, but considerably more famous, British documentarist, Paul Rotha. Connie's story ran parallel to that of Hedy in many ways; they even shared a director, Jean Negulesco. But unlike the Austrian, the Irish actress never learned how to better the system, and her life ended in utter destitution. Hedy was rumored to have died destitute too, though she didn't. Stories like Constance Smith's are seldom told, since failure is so invisible. But many, many of the exiles and émigrés who traveled to Hollywood in search of riches ended up having more in common with Connie than Hedy.
Both women moved on to more marriages and more lovers, but through their stories we can take pathways through history that connect us to other pasts and lives lived so differently to our own that is it hard to imagine that less than a hundred years have lapsed since the birth of Hed-wig Kiesler in Vienna. In other ways, she still seems a most modern figure: smart, ambitious, outspoken, and more than a little ahead of her time.
I also want to locate Hedy Lamarr within a history of European exiles to Hollywood and to compensate for her omission in the many histories of these exiles. As in so many other ways, she didn't fit the classic image of the European actor in Hollywood, though her sense of in-betweenness was something that she commented on, over and again, particularly in later life.
After writing this book, I remain compelled by Hedy Lamarr's complexity, her short career, its long aftermath, and her resonance for our contemporary lives. It is too easy to assume that she was simply a victim of male predators and rapacious studio moguls—even if, from time to time, she said she was. When I was considering how to deal with the endless tales of sexual misdemeanors that followed her through life and pursued her beyond the grave, one helpful colleague suggested I attach an appendix listing her lovers (alphabetical order? longevity? merit?) to this volume. In the end, some found their way into this story, others didn't.
We cannot divide Hedy Lamarr's on-screen roles from her offscreen myth. I think she could, mostly, but played a game with Hollywood where she pretended that she could not. What draws me now to this Viennese actress is the question of how her star image became so bright and then so tarnished and then, once again, began to glimmer and beckon film historians, academics, and the public to its light. Waxwork sculptures do not come to life, but we can reanimate the spirits that inspired them with our interest. I hope that I can go some way toward achieving that.
1
A Childhood in Döbling
HEDY LAMARR was born Hedwig Kiesler on 9 November 1914, in Vienna. Later, she added two middle names, Eva Maria, to her given name. Her father, Emil, from Lemberg (Lwów) in the West Ukraine, was manager of the Creditanstalt Bankverien.1 Her mother was born Gertrude (Trude) Lichtwitz, to a sophisticated family in Budapest. Both her parents were Jewish and Hedy too was registered at birth as Jewish. The Kieslers lived on Osterleitengasse in Döbling in Vienna's fashionable 19th District. Later Hedy moved with her family to Peter-Jordan-StraBe, also in Döbling. There she lived on the top two floors of a house owned by a well-to-do tea merchant named Pekarek.
Döbling, at the end of World War I, was an overwhelmingly Jewish area, and by the outbreak of World War II, had a population of around four thousand Jewish inhabitants and its own synagogue. Bounded by the Wienerwald (Vienna Woods), the architecture reflected the tastes of its settled, middle-class citizenry. Ludwig van Beethoven composed part of the Eroica Symphony in Döbling, and in the 1890s it was the summer home to the Strauss family. The actress Paula Wessely also hailed from the area, as did the scriptwriter Walter Reisch, both of whom would later work with Hedy.
The Lichtwitz side of Hedy's family was well-connected and cultured; the Kieslers were less so, but Emil, who was sixteen years older than Trude, had brought to the marriage the benefits of a good job and solid prospects. Trude was just twenty when Hedy was born and elected to give up her ambitions to be a concert pianist when she had her first daughter and only child.
With Trude's family background and Emil's salary, the Kieslers fitted in comfortably in Döbling. On the one hand, there was little to distinguish them from other well-connected non-Jewish families; on the other, with their dominance of the arts in particular, but also of banking and commerce, these families often intermarried and many worked and socialized together. These were the families, who, in fin de siecle Vienna, filled the theaters and concert halls, patronized the leading writers, musicians, and painters of the day, and accumulated the important art collections. These activities guaranteed them an entree into political circles, where artistic expression was more highly valued than ideological debate. In Vienna in particular, as Michael Rogin has argued, “the Haps-burg monarchy sustained itself by show. In keeping with the theatrical quality of political life in the empire, the Viennese theatre was more important than the parliament.”2 Thus, Jewish artistic success became a guarantee of influence that extended far beyond the upper circle.
Along with their cultural standing came a commitment to education and a sense of public duty to help those less privileged than themselves. Much of the Vienna so admired today was built with Jewish money; among those whose names were associated with its culture of design was Hedy's cousin Frederick Kiesler. Born in 1890 in Czernowitz, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Kiesler made his name as an avant-garde theater designer, later qualifying as an architect in America. Standing less than five feet tall, he was an inspired writer and often described as a visionary designer; while Hedy was a child, Frederick was making his name with his concept of the “Space Stage” (a form of theater design influenced by the layout of a circus ring). By curious coincidence, it was Kiesler who arranged for the world premiere of the surrealist film Ballet Mecanique, directed by Dudley Murphy and Fernand Leger, in Vienna in September 1924, when Hedy was just ten years old. The composer of the film's music was George Antheil, whose life was to become so intertwined with Hedy's in Hollywood. In 1926, Frederick Kiesler and his wife moved from Vienna to New York, where they spent the rest of their lives. One of his first jobs in New York was to design the Film Guild Cinema on 52 West 8th Street for the avant-garde programmer Symon Gould. The cinema's program was mostly drawn from Soviet and European art-house films and one might guess that his little cousin's scandalous Ecstasy was part of its 1930s repertoire.3 Later, Kiesler became best known for his Shrine of the Book, a wing of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the repository for the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Hedy was a child of the First World War, an event with sweeping repercussions for the Jews of Vienna. The collapse of the Hapsburg monarchy and the inauguration of the First Republic saw the Viennese Jews, along with the old aristocracy, stripped of their wealth and influence. After the war, fuel shortages and a drastic lowering of living standards left Vienna more susceptible to the city's omnipresent anti-Semitism, and from the 1920s, the Viennese Jews were gradually becoming aware of a new, hostile atmosphere that infiltrated all aspects of society. No doubt the Kieslers felt the shock too, yet life for the young Hedy (pronounced “Hady”) was still protected and very traditional.
The move to Peter-Jordan-StraBe brought the Kiesler family into the heart of Döbling's Cottage District. The term, borrowed from English, is misleading. These were substantial homes, designed and built in the period after 1872 when the architect Heinrich von Ferstel set up the Viennese Cottage Society. Their ambition was to create several streets of one- and two-family houses. No new houses would be built that deprived the existing cottage dwellers of a view, light, and the pleasure
