As well as Ecstasy and Me, and the subsequent legal action, Ms Lamarr was in and out of the courts over the years. She called up Sam Spiegel once, and after the call he mused, "What a pity that they all turn crazy". When her book came out she complained to columnist Sheila Graham that, having earned $7m in her time, she was on relief at $48 a week. The figures all seem exaggerated - and that was something that nobody would once have accused her of. She was arrested a couple of times on minor shop-lifting charges (cosmetics and clothes), particularly in Florida where she had retired.
The charges were settled, but she was eventually found dead in a small home in Orlando where she lived alone. She was 86, and she had experimented disastrously with plastic surgery. Unrecognisable, she lived largely on the phone, but she still dreamed up odd inventions. Occasionally, international film festivals sent her invitations with the prospect of tributes. She nearly made it to Telluride (in Colorado) one year, but then at the last moment she made exorbitant demands for a costume allowance and make-up artists to accompany her.It is a sad story, all the sadder when you recall those lovely nude scenes, the moment when the student body of Columbia voted her the woman they'd most hope to be marooned with on a desert island; and the time in 1942, at the Hollywood Canteen when Lamarr had offered to kiss any man who'd buy $25,000 of War Bonds In a couple of days, she raised $17m. That is legend, and if the maths is tough for you it works out to be 680 kisses I bet everyone was handled personally and with feeling. And maybe just a hint of a smile.And then there is George Antheil, born 1900 in Trenton, New Jersey, a noted modernist composer (he did the music for Ballet M?nique) who would move on to doing conventional movie scores.
It seems that Antheil and Hedy Lamarr met at a Hollywood dinner party in the early Forties They started talking They were both concerned about the war. She had some knowledge of armaments from being married to Fritz Mandl He was a genius for sound effects, et cetera She was a very lovely woman. She told George some story she recalled about sound waves being used to guide weapons and torpedoes.Now I concede that this is not going to be nearly as easy a scene to write as the one where she and Mr Mayer change her name. And I don't know if it will play without diagrams and a quick course in physics. And truth to tell, I don't know what on earth happened or how far George was spinning a line to get better acquainted.But apparently on 11 August, 1942 - you can look it up - they both received a patent for radio-controlled missiles. It seems that beneath the cover of "movie star", Hedy was actually spending time at the San Diego naval base, working on frequency hopping and a kind of technology that would become vital to the mobile phone. But there is no moment after the war when a grateful president pinned a medal on Ms Lamarr's breast.
