Hedy Lamarr

This bombshell was both beautiful and brainy! Her contributions to science and the silver screen have cemented her as a timeless superstar! We wouldn’t have had wifi and other wonderful ways of communicating if it hadn’t been for this willful woman! Rolling… We’ll fall head over heels in love with Hedy Lamarr on this week’s episode of FYI!

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[Music] this bombshell was both beautiful and brainy her contributions to science and the silver screen have cemented her as a timeless superstar we wouldn't have had wi-fi and other wonderful ways of communicating if it hadn't been for this willful woman rolling we'll fall head over heels in love with hedy lamarr on this week's episode of f y i welcome to for your info english you got it[Music][Applause] hello hello and welcome to another exciting edition of fyi folks today i learned so much i knew very little about our subject hedy lamarr i remember seeing a movie based on her life which we'll talk about a little bit later on but i learned so much in these episodes on hedy lamarr and those are always the most interesting episodes for me because when we did aviation i kind of know what i'm talking about okay obviously i have a lot to learn but this was a topic i knew very little about so we're going to look at the biography of one of the most amazing women or should i say one of the most amazing human beings to ever walk the face of the earth and let's start with our intro as we always do i started out by saying this bombshell and remember that b is silent it's not bomb it's bomb this bombshell and you might remember this word when we looked at marilyn monroe a bombshell es un bombon if you're in mexico mamacita mujed explosiva this bombshell was both beautiful and brainy and the word brain is ferebro so if you are brainy it means you're very intelligent it means you're very smart and then i said her contributions and i want you to pay attention to the pronunciation her contributions no bhushan's sino business her contributions to science and the silver screen and there's another word you should know if you listen to our hollywood episode the silver screen is la pantaya grande they have cemented her as a timeless superstar and cement is ormigon but as a verb it means it has really consolidated her as a superstar and not just on the silver screen as we're going to discover but also as an inventor and if there was anyone who was ever timeless i think it's hedy lamarr then i said we wouldn't have had wi-fi and please please don't say we fee my ears bleed when i hear weefy we wouldn't have had wi-fi and other wonderful ways of communicating and there's another you like the you in contributions communicating if it hadn't been si no reminds me of the expression where there's a will there's a way well willful is stubborn determined willful it means you're strong-willed and i think that's the reason that she has been cemented as a superstar and we're going to discover all that in today's episode then i had a little wink to hollywood a wink or a nod es and i said rolling and this is what they say when the camera starts rolling they say rolling and a lot of times you'll hear this too lights camera action and i wrapped up the intro saying we'll fall head over heels in love with hedy lamarr and to fall head over heels in love is enormous that's a really difficult word for me to say enamored say that five times fast the story i'm going to tell you today doesn't really have a happy ending a hollywood ending as they say and they lived happily ever after no this reminds me more of a sad story a tragedy which i guess you could say has a happy ending of some sort i mean some kind of justice was done but there's one thing that's clear her life was marred by tragedy and marred means estropeado[Music] her life was marred by tragedy but this sultry siren and the word sultry i don't know if you're familiar with that one but sultry means sexy seductora sensual right sensual we can say this sultry siren and the siren is but also a sirenist a siren's a beautiful woman a siren i think you also say cedena for mermaid in spanish well she wasn't a mermaid she was a siren on the silver screen and an inventor engineer and some would say the mother of wi-fi and other technology that we're using nowadays let's go back and see where it all started it all started in vienna austria a little girl named hedwig eva maria keisler was born in 1914 november 9th 1914 to be exact hey wait she's a scorpio like me ah that explains everything no i'm just kidding but it's true she was brilliant she had an iq now do you say coefficient intellectual i think we say an iq of a hundred and fifty-four that coupled with a degree in psychobiology what i don't even know what that is psychobiology folks from vassar college which is a very reputable institution but since she was a little girl in vienna austria she loved to tinker and to tinker us experimentat it's a word we use often with inventors they're into tinkering and she was into tinkering from a young age from the tender age of five where she took apart a radio that her father had and put it back together also she used to do all kinds of scenes and role playing with her dolls so she had a natural inclination towards towards es atheia engineering and performing and she ended up doing both of those things but again there was so much tragedy in between and even at the end that i'll let you guys be the judge is this a fairy tale with a happy ending or is this a sad shakespearean tale you be the judge i will start by telling you she got married six times that's right so six times she met the wrong guy the wrong partner these marriages were between 1933 and 1965 and do you know who the last guy she married was now this is an ironic turn of events here but it was her divorce lawyer i guess he figured and she figured well if we're going to be spending so much time together with so many divorces we might as well just tie the knot casarnos nosotros oh and her first husband was a real piece of work oh yeah a uh a nazi arms dealer he dealt with the nazis and he sold arms or weapons to mussolini and his side he was filthy rich a guy named frederick mandel and well she she was paying attention she would go with him on a lot of these conventions and she was taking note but he didn't want a smart woman he wanted a woman who would quote unquote know her place or who would be subservient to her man she didn't he didn't want a woman with an opinion so that didn't last very long but she made the most of it and she learned about arms and arms making and that information would later help her and the u.s military during world war ii and in between that in between a fascist arms dealer and her divorce lawyer there were a lot of real pieces of work and a piece of work is um but she knew it and she knew she had to escape she knew she had to get away and to get away from this control freak this control freak she decided to devise a plan and she it was almost theatrical it was hollywood-esque and what she did is she dressed up as her own maid that's right she disguised herself and that means this fratharze and the maid is the person who cleans the house and she fled to paris in the middle of the night she escaped that marriage she knew that she could never be successful as an actress and be married to that man in fact in one of her movies we're going to talk about right now ecstasy she is nude and the movie is also the first female orgasm well he was so jealous and such a control freak that he tried to buy all the copies of the film and the movie and have them destroyed so she knew that wasn't going to work and she didn't want to piss him off remember the guy's a nazi arms dealer so she devised a plan or she came up with a plan and she escaped she fled to flee or to run away and she got to paris successfully but one thing she said later in life because obviously she was unlucky in love was that her true love in life was her father and i know what you could think what that's disgusting guys i think it was platonic love i think it was respect i think she never met a man who was as good as strong as loving as her father and she talked a lot about these walks she used to take with her father when she was a little girl they would go on walks maybe nature walks and he would explain everything to her and this got her curiosity aroused and well we know the rest she ended up being an engineer an inventor and one of the most important performers ever i just mentioned the movie ecstasy about a minute ago this was a movie that came out in 1933 it's a czech movie in case you want to check it out okay really bad joke but do you get it check check from czechoslovakia the czech republic check it out but i'll warn you don't watch it with the kids because it was very controversial again just the name ecstasy and this was perhaps the first non-pornographic movie to portray demostrate sexual intercourse and a female orgasm and of course it starred hedy lamarr as i said before her first husband was extremely jealous and tried to buy all the copies again you can check out the movie and you be the judge but let's put it this way she's a young girl she's in a situation she's you know trying to impress people in a foreign country in hollywood and they took advantage of her in fact they lied to her the director told her that it was barely going to be visible this full frontal nudity and when the movie came out she realized he lied to her he misled her and i think this is a good moment to talk about how hollywood does that very often the hollywood system takes young men and women and leads them on to lead them honestly engage like if you want to be famous you got to take off your top if you want to really make it you got to get on the casting couch so i think it's worth mentioning part of the reason she had so many problems was being exposed to the hollywood system which is a disgusting system in my opinion it's a bunch of old men usually scum of the earth la scoria who are preying on young people's hopes and dreams they sexualize children i don't think i have to tell you about that but as a father i would be severely upset if my daughter went to hollywood now if she said she wanted to do that i'd have to respect her but i would warn her that it is a disgusting gross industry i'm not saying everybody but how many times have we heard stories of hollywood just wrecking people's lives and we'll see the same way she was made a star she was also taken off that same pedestal by the same people and you can imagine her dismay her dismay is consternation when she saw that the director had lied to her and she was fully naked in broad daylight on the screen and she stormed out of that theater rightfully so but that wasn't her shot at the big time the big time is you know estarenprimera no this was just something that they kind of wanted to erase if you think about it because some considered it even pornography remember they were uh they were much more puritan back then at least on paper than now i mean you couldn't show an ankle before antes no enzenyavas so she didn't hit the big time until she met the head of mgm studios louis b mayer he's one of those m's by the way and what happened was they met in london in 1937. this is after she had fled to paris and he told her you are one of the most beautiful women i have ever seen and i want to make you a star you're exactly what i'm looking for and if there was a person who could do that it was lewis b mayer and so she she negotiated with him and she wasn't happy with what he was offering even though she knew she wanted to be a star she knew that she deserved more so initially he offered her 125 dollars a week remembers actors back then used to work on contracts and she turned him down le rechateau and finally he came back to her and offered her 500 a week that is almost five times the amount and she worked hard she was in so many movies she worked opposite superstars like spencer tracy jimmy stewart clark gable and she was on her way to the big time she was becoming a household name and one of the cool things one of the things i found interesting was that she worked tirelessly on her english what she worked tirelessly on her english but didn't she speak english perfectly in her movies she made it seem that way at least remember she was born in vienna austria her real name is hedwig which if you want to pronounce it correctly it's hedvig i don't think it's a really good name but that's where she got hedy from she got the name hedy from there now where did she get the second part of her name her stage name well she got this from the mayors that's right louis mayer and his wife they were with hedy and they were aboard the normandy a very famous ship and margaret mayer louis mayer's wife helped her come up with the name because she wanted to distance herself from hedwig keisler why well that was that woman who did that almost pornographic movie so they decided on barbara lamar who was a famous another tragic story from hollywood i guess i should say infamous barbara lamarr so they got the last name from her hedy lamarr barbara lamar now i don't know if that was maybe an omen or something but this woman barbara lamarr who they got her stage name from died at 29 years old remember we don't say with 29 at 29 years old from complications of her dope addiction dope is heroin i don't know if i was looking for a name i think i would go with something that reminded me of something more positive possibly i don't know now i know what you guys are thinking but what about the inventing you're telling us all about the acting well she got bored of hollywood she got bored of the stereotypes the dumb bimbos that's an ugly word but uh she got tired of being typecast as the damsel in distress and they loved her i mean the world fell in love with her it was like an overnight success now all of us know it doesn't work like that because she had spent all her teenage years performing but the moment she was introduced to the world they fell in love with her as i said in the intro it was head over heels they called her the most beautiful woman in the world but she felt that that's all they saw her as as just a piece of meat some model some trophy wife some beautiful woman which isn't a bad thing but she knew that she had so much more to offer so this is when she started tinkering let me just remind you this is with 30 films under her belt so she had already gotten a lot of experience in hollywood and she was sick of it arta she even started her own production company after leaving mgm in 1945 and she tried to make movies where the woman wasn't stupid or you know the stereotypical bimbo but the the production company didn't really turn a profit so she started tinkering she remembered when she was a kid she loved taking things apart and putting them back together and one of the people that reminded her of her love of tinkering is howard hughes they became very good friends and she suggested to him because he wanted to make the fastest plane in the world he also wanted to make the biggest plane in the world i'm sure you're familiar with the story of howard hughes because of the aviator well just remember this that howard hughes had a lot of ideas but also some of those ideas some of the most important ones came from his friend hedy lamarr she took one look at the wings on his plane and said wait a second those are really square or rectangular and and boxy i don't know if that's you know that's the best design so what did she do being a genius being a nature lover she said to him i'm gonna get you some books and she got books about fish and birds and she looked through these books and she looked for the fastest birds and the fastest fish and she told them howard that's how you have to design them and he did and it changed aviation forever let's listen to her talking about her relationship with howard hughes and we'll hear her telling us the same story i just told you we'll hear it straight from the horse's mouth directamente de la fuente here's hedy lamarr i thought the airplane was too slow i decided that's not right it shouldn't be square the the wings so i bought a book of fish and i bought a book of birds and then used the fastest bird with a connectedness with the fastest fish and i do it together and showed it to her that you're a genius i don't know about you guys but that is inspirational and with those ideas i guess she made a pretty penny as an inventor well guess what this story doesn't have such a beautiful ending she didn't earn a dime diathentimos nium dudo as you say she didn't earn a dime in fact some of her patents were confiscated she was even accused of being an austrian spy and by the time she could do anything about those patents they had expired and some say that now if she had gotten the money for those patents given the use we give her inventions today she would have gotten around 30 billion dollars in today's money and she didn't see a dime of it this story does have a happier ending than this one but i'm gonna tell you about that in the bonus episode we're going to talk about all her other inventions remember she had stuff that helped with wi-fi cellular technology but also she developed many other things as well which we'll take a look at we'll also take a look at her struggles with mental health and we'll get advice from hedy herself all that in the bonus episode if you guys would like to join us in the bonus episode and you'd like to get pdfs with all the vocabulary and expressions in each episode you can join us over at patreon.com slash alberto alonso we have got a tremendous community over there so a shout out to all my patrons especially my super duper students javier roberto david jose maria mila alex patricio and edgar and don't forget about my interstellar students issa paco diego and carmen i sure hope all of you will join us we're going to look at so much stuff in the bonus episode and remember every week you'll have access to that bonus episode and those pdfs and you can even join me in a review class and a monthly master class you can find out more again on patreon.com alberto alonso so i sure hope you'll join us in the bonus episode of today's 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