Hedy Lamarr live on an extraordinary life . She was an actress who pushed limit , an inventor who went unappreciated in her clock time , and a sex symbolization who was very much appreciated in her fourth dimension . And chip in the life sentence she led in the 1940s you might expect her to have a rather thickheaded FBI single file . But you ’d be wrong .
I ’ve obtained Hedy Lamarr ’s FBI file through a Freedom of Information Act petition . And the most surprising thing about the data file is just how thin it is — a measly three pages .
Why does it storm me that Lamarr ’s file is so small ? For starting motor , the FBI ’s absorption with sexual activity and Hollywood pass me to consider that there might be at least a twelve page about her breakout role in the 1933 film Ecstasy . The film is famous not only for her naked swim scenes , but for being the first mainstream photographic film to depict a womanhaving an orgasm .
The orgasm scene is safe for TV by today ’s standards . But Hollywood has never been well-fixed with a cleaning woman ’s pleasure , and the film was ban for eld in the United States . It should be noted that the Bachelor of Arts in Nursing did n’t stop President Franklin D. Roosevelt from screen it in the White House in 1935 .
And if the FBI was n’t concerned in Lamarr ’s many intimate exploits ( including * pant * family relationship with womanhood , detail in her1966 memoirs ) then you ’d think they would ’ve taken notice of her inventions . During World War II she help invent a wireless communication technology call spread - spectrum radio , which could n’t be go bad by the Nazis .
The engineering science was the substructure for wi - fi and the wireless telecom industry as a whole , as explain in the comprehensive 2011 bookHedy ’s unwiseness : The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr , the Most Beautiful Woman in the World .
So what ’s in the FBI single file ? Information regarding fundraisers she throw during World War II that allegedly had tie to communistic organizations . But as we have a go at it , looking cross - eyed at a red wax crayon got you branded a communist in the fifties . The Indian file also includes a big , productive b7E editing . That type of editing is for keeping secret any “ techniques and procedure for law enforcement investigation . ” So yeah , it ’s laborious to speculate what the FBI was put there .
The 2d Thomas Nelson Page of the file cite to a Mandl ( probablyFritz Mandl ) , whom Lamarr was married to from 1933 until 1937 . The redaction make it grueling to check what charge may have been made there , but grant to Lamarr ’s memoir he was a tyrant . Despite both Mandl and Lamarr ’s Judaic inheritance , the fascist were quite cozy with Mandl and his arms dealing . Lamarr take flight the country and add up to the United States after their divorce .
Is it possible that Lamarr ’s single file is larger ? Sure . My experience with the FBI ’s disc memory insurance have n’t been great over the years . It ’s all possible that much of Lamarr ’s file has been easy culled over the days . And many files from this era that have to do with Hollywood have long since been transfer to the National Archives , so it ’s a minute unknown that this one has n’t yet .
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