“The Most Beautiful Woman in the World", Hedy Lamarr, on This Day in History

 

This day in history: Austrian-born American film actress and inventor, Hedy Lamarr was born on this day in 1914. She was at one time called “the most beautiful woman in the world...Lamarr made her name as a sex object in movies like the scandalous Ecstasy. She rubbed shoulders with the likes of Adolf Hitler and Mussolini at parties thrown by her first husband, a Viennese arms merchant who forced her to leave the movie business. But Lamarr was unhappy in her marriage and disgusted by her husband’s 'shady business dealings with Nazi industrialists,' writes Jennifer Ouellette for Scientific American, so she escaped Austria for Paris, London and eventually the United States in the late 1930s."~Erin Blakemore

"Most people remember actress Hedy Lamarr for her beauty and brains. She co-invented a device that manipulated radio frequencies, making it harder for wartime enemies to jam radio-controlled torpedoes. Although she patented the device in August of 1942, hoping that the U.S. would use it to fight the Nazis, it was never used. Decades later, people realized that modern wireless technology relied on the ideas in her patent. But besides inventing an antecedent to Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth, Lamarr also invented an effervescent tablet that transformed flat water into a carbonated drink. Although the tablet worked—dissolving the tablet in the water did create fizz—the product didn’t taste good and was too similar to Alka-Seltzer. Not every invention can pave the way for Wi-Fi."~Suzanne Raga

Her wartime invention was eventually used in 1962 (at the time of the Cuban missile crisis) on Navy ships.

Her later years were of a different sort. She was arrested twice for shoplifting. Once in Los Angeles and once in Florida (she stole laxatives and eye drops). She would not be the only celebrity who got caught shoplifting. Others were Lindsay Lohan, Winona Ryder, Farrah Fawcett, Britney Spears and Amanda Bynes

In 1974, she filed a $10 million lawsuit against Warner Brothers, claiming that the running parody of her name ("Hedley Lamarr") in the Mel Brooks comedy Blazing Saddles infringed her right to privacy. The studio settled out of court for an undisclosed amount and issued an apology to Lamarr for "almost using her name". Brooks said that Lamarr "never got the joke".

Today is also Inventors' Day in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Gail Borden, who invented condensed milk was born on this day in 1801.

Watch: The Strange Woman (1946)