Beautiful Invention: A Novel of Hedy Lamarr. Margaret Porter.
Gallica Press. October 2018. 378 pp. ISBN#: 9780990742036.
“I
enjoy drawing up plans and designing and making things…They don’t realize that
Hedy Lamarr is an invention.” Yes, Hedy
Lamarr was a beautiful actress but also an intelligent woman who invented a war
weapon that was almost used to defeat the Germans in WWII.
Born
Hedy Kiesler, an Austrian, Jewish woman, she aspired to be a wonderful actress,
but the films she chose to act in first was Ecstasy. Hedy appears naked and fakes an orgasm which
equally gained her universal praise and scorn in the earlier years of the 20th
Century.
She marries a German munitions
dealer who soon becomes her jailor. She
winds up escaping from him after realizing she couldn’t ignore her yearning to
become a full-time actress. Hedy signed
a contract with Louis Mayer after much haggling but seems frustrated by not
being given films she feels are equal to her acting abilities. Still, her looks and talents catapult her to
fame and stardom status! Her love life
is certainly interesting if not very stable.
Margaret
Porter gives a deft depiction of the lives of actors and actresses who more
frequently “use” each other for better scripts or positions in the middle of a
turbulent time of history with the rise of Adolph Hitler and the beginning of
WWII. Hedy moves through six marriages
and has several children, including one adopted son. She is also an avid gardener and
inventor. She generously contributes her
time for the war by selling bonds and attending clubs to sign autographs and
dance with soldiers and sailors on leave.
She
researches science facts to create the torpedo that can attack without being
detected. The work behind this creation
is no small feat and highly complex.
Hedy herself is a complex character, always searching for deeper meaning
and creation, never satisfied. Her private and public life parallel the
historical and political turmoil of Europe and America – dramatic and
life-changing!
Enjoy
the scenes where Hedy stuns observers with her appearances in elegant gowns and
hats, once an actress, always an actress!
Yet also relish the brilliance of her thinking as she seeks solitude to
do research and create a soda machine and later a war weapon to be used against
Germany. Most of all, just revel in the
enigmatic and intelligent talent of one of the most famous actresses in the
Gilded Age of American Theater! Highly
recommended!
