January 12, 2011 • 19 mins
Hedy Lamarr was an extraordinarily beautiful film star, but she wasn't just another pretty face. In this podcast, Sarah and Deblina recount Hedy's biography and her little-known career as an inventor. Tune in to learn more about Hedy Lamarr.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm fair Dowdy and I'm debling a chalk re Bardy.
And when you think about old Hollywood and the most
beautiful actresses of all time, there are probably a lot
(00:22):
of well known names that immediately come to mind. For example,
maybe Ava Gardner, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace, Kelly, Audrey Hefburne is
my personal favorite. And I just saw Roman Holiday, a
great one and so pretty in that it's like the
first thing you notice. But it was actually an actress
who's probably lesser known today, Hetty Lamar, who was billed
(00:44):
as the most beautiful girl in the world during the
nineteen thirties. In the introduction to Stephen Michael Shear's recent
biography Beautiful, The Life of Hetty Lamar, there's a description
of the author's mother's experience seeing Lamar's first American film,
which was Algiers came out in night and she saw
in a theater in Illinois, and she described the experience
(01:07):
of the first moment in the movie when Lamar kind
of steps out of the shadows and you see her
face for the first time. And the author's mother says
that the whole audience just gasped her beauty. It was
an audible experience. And I don't know if many of
us have had an experience like that in a movie theater.
No a uniform gasp like that. But even though Lamar's
(01:29):
star may have faded a bit since then, many people
realized in the late nineteen nineties, just a few years
before her death, that she was probably a lot more
than just a pretty face. Yeah, definitely, it came to
light at that time that many years ago she actually
invented something called spread spectrum technology, which was used by
(01:50):
the military and has become a component of modern mobile
phone technology. So definitely relevant to what we do every day.
But what we want to look at in this episode
it is how did a Hollywood starlett pull off a
contribution of this caliber in the first place and why?
And of course take a look at her glamorous, sort
of bizarre life. She led a very fascinating life and
(02:12):
we can't even begin to touch on all of the
details of it here. Again, the Sheer biography that I
mentioned it actually came out last year along with another biography,
and I would definitely recommend picking that up if you
find her life of interest at all, because it is fascinating. Yeah,
but we'll give you the basics. Well, we'll take you
(02:32):
back to the beginning like we usually do, and kind of,
I guess, show you how the seeds of this innovation began.
So Hetty Lamar was born head vig Eva Maria Keisler
on November nine, nineteen fourteen, in Vienna, Austria. And she
couldn't say head VIGs that she called herself Hetty, which
was actually pronounced Haiti. Over there, we're going to go
(02:55):
with the more angle size, Yeah, the angl size, better
known version of her name, Hetty. Um. But that little
nickname stuck, and I say she's kind of lucky for that. Um.
She had a nice, a nice enough childhood, definitely. Her
family was pretty well to do. They weren't extremely super wealthy,
but they were well off. Her dad, Emil, was a
(03:16):
prominent Jewish banker, and her mother, Gertrude, was a talented pianist.
Gertrude had given up her dreams of having a career
in music when she got married, and she got pregnant
very quickly after that, but she still helped to instill
a love of the arts and Hetty, who learned to
dance and play the piano from a very young age.
And because she was an only child too, Hetty grows
(03:37):
up basically like this little princess and her parents were
out socializing quite a bit, but her dad really doated
on her when he was around and played make believe
with her, told her stories, and according to Shearer, he
would also spend hours explaining how things worked to her,
everything from quick printing presses to street ours. Um. That's
(04:02):
that's the first thing that sort of stands out in
this early biography, this careful attention to detail. Yep, her
curiosity is sparked at this point. But her first love,
even from a young age, is acting. Her parents, however,
were dead set against it. They did not want her
to be an actress, so she had to actually trick
her mom into signing a slip and cut school to
(04:25):
get her first movie job as a script runner for
Sasha Film Studio in Vienna, and it was through this
connection that she picked up her first bit part as
an extra in the film Gueld after Strassa, which translates
to money in the street. And it was I think
originally a silent film, but they added sound into it later,
so she was just a I think a person sitting
on a stool or something like that in that movie,
(04:45):
but a start nonetheless, and at that point she realized
that she she was going to be a serious actor,
she needed to learn a little bit more about her craft,
so she enrolled at the legendary theatrical producer Max Reinhardt's
press Stags, Berlin based drama school in about nineteen thirty
and initially she got some bit parts in Renhart shows
(05:08):
and followed him to Vienna and started to take on
larger roles. And it was he who told the press quote,
Hetty Keithler is the most beautiful girl in the world,
so sort of making that reputation for her early on.
But it wasn't until ninety two that she got her
really big break in a check film called Ecstasy, and
this is something that she's still famous for because it
(05:31):
was very controversial at the time for the fact that
she appeared nude in it. Um this was very scandalous,
especially it would have been very scandalous to say an
American because Hollywood was comparatively very conservative at the time.
So the fact that she is naked in it, and
there's also a very racy sex scene. Kind of put
(05:51):
her on the map in a lot of ways, sometimes
not necessarily good ways, but there it was. So at
this point her star is definitely on the rise. But
the next step she takes in her personal life, which
is marriage, kind of puts her acting career on the
back burner for a little while. Yeah, she had a
reputation for maybe not picking the best of guys, and
(06:11):
she ended up getting married six times, but her first
marriage is the one we're going to focus on. It's
very significant because it probably planted the seed for her
eventual invention. So she married this millionaire arms stealer named
Fritz Mondel in nineteen thirty three, and at first the
two were, as you put it earlier, they're just kind
(06:33):
of playing house with each other. Yeah, they're wealthy. As
we mentioned, she he's just buying jewels for her, and
she's traveling on his arm, on his work trips and
everywhere that he goes. And she's sort of happy because
of this, but that doesn't last. Mondel was really controlling.
He kept her from acting and even tried to buy
(06:53):
up all the copies of Ecstasy in existence because he
was so jealous about it after he saw it. He
paid figures like up to sixty dollars per copy to
get all of these, and rumor has it that even
Mussolini had a copy of Ecstasy, but he refused to
sell it to Mondel for any price that he would pay. Yeah,
(07:14):
don't marry Starlet's if you don't like their movies. Yeah, dealers,
you tell them, Sarah. But Hetty really lost all her
respect for Mondel when she found out that he was
making arms agreements with the Nazis, and this seemed especially
wronged her. It's it's not just she that's of Jewish heritage,
(07:36):
but Mondel was himself of Jewish heritage, and according to Shearer,
he had become an honorary Arian, which was special status
created for Jewish people who served Hitler. Personally, it seemed
like the ultimate betrayal to Hettie absolutely, and towards the
end of their marriage she was very displeased with him
(07:57):
and was practically a prisoner in her own um. Mandel
was afraid that she would flee, so he made the
servants watcher and she couldn't leave, but actually him forcing
her to attend these meetings with technicians and his munitions
business partners while they were married is part of how
she got the idea and the knowledge to help create
spread spectrum technology. Yeah, but to do anything with all
(08:21):
this knowledge she had, she had to get away from
her husband. But what she really wanted to do was
get back into acting at that time. So she got
a maid to help her escape from Londel's house, and
she was able to meet up with Hollywood producer Louis B. Meyer,
who she had met previously through Reinhart, and she got
signed to MGM Studios. It wasn't a great deal, but
she was signed at least in back on track with
(08:43):
her career, and so in seven she was on her
way to the States where she became known as Hetty
Lamar for the first time. Yeah, and she did a
few Hollywood movies that did reasonably well at the box office.
Al Jeers eight, which you mentioned earlier, H M. Pullman
Esquire nineteen forty one, Tortilla Flat in nineteen forty two,
(09:04):
White Cargo also in nineteen forty two, the most commercially
successful film she was in there with Sampson and Delilah
in nineteen forty nine, Um but even though you know
this is a certain amount of success, she probably never
reached her full potential as a Hollywood glamorous actress, right.
I think most people think that she probably doesn't get
(09:25):
the credit that she deserves. And she had a tough
time coming in And there were three possible reasons for that.
One was that when she initially came to the US language,
the language barrier and the accent, they were both problems
for her when it came to certain roles. It's been
said that she often didn't know what she was saying
and she recited her lines phonetically, so in her earliest
(09:48):
that would be really tough. And her beauty was one
of her greatest assets. But Meyer and MGM really didn't
know what to do with her. By most accounts, they
saw her as a casting challenge, which seems so strange
considering that she was so beautiful and so marketable, But
they had to end up putting her mostly in I
Candy type of roles rather than really substantive ones because
(10:09):
they thought that she was basically too beautiful to be
playing someone who was normal. She couldn't be a real person. Yeah,
she couldn't be a department store clerk or someone who
was serving you coffee because she was just so gorgeous.
They thought that no one would believe it. Yeah, and
it wasn't just the bosses who saw her beauty as
a hindrance. She herself viewed her beauty as a weakness.
She's quoted as saying, my faith has been my misfortune,
(10:31):
A mask I cannot remove. I must live with it.
I curse it. Yeah. I never thought I'd feel sorry
for someone who's so gorgeous, but that sounds awful. And
she really thought that a girl should have brains as
well as a body, and she wanted people to know
her for that. Um. One of her role models I
read somewhere was Mota Harri. One of she really admired
(10:52):
Mata Hary, who was a World War One spy. Admired
her because she was made Harry was both a military
expert and a sad dress so she used the mind
body connection. Yeah. And Hettie Lamar also had just some
playing bad luck or maybe bad choices with her film roles.
She had an opportunity for some to start in some
(11:13):
really memorable films. The main one is the lead in Casablanca. Um.
Either she turns it down or MGM wouldn't loan her out,
but she doesn't take the role. I mean, that's you
almost think her career could have been entirely different if
she had taken that role. But I guess, I guess
you never know. Maybe Casablanca just would have been entirely
(11:33):
different and not as memorable. But still that that looks
like a one to regret. Well, Lamar did finally get
the chance to put her brains to work a little
bit more when she met aunt Guarde pianist and composer
George aunt hyle at a Hollywood dinner party. Now, aunt
Hyla was known for his hit Ballet Mecanique, a music
(11:54):
piece that was intended to be performed by several synchronized
player pianos. He also shared Lamar's hatred of the Nazis,
and they started chatting about World War Two, which had
just begun at that time in Europe, and Lamar shared
with him her idea for a problem with torpedo control
that she'd seen Mondel struggle with. She proposed creating a
(12:15):
system in which the torpedo and the controller were constantly
switching frequencies so that the enemy couldn't intercept or jam
the signal. Yeah, which is a pretty intense conversation to
be having at this Hollywood dinner party. Definitely, um, heavy
dinner conversation. But Aunta was intrigued with this concept and
(12:36):
they met many times after that to refine this frequency
hopping technique that she had proposed and apply the concepts
of from his work, from his player piano work and
sound synchronization to to what she had suggested. And so
before we go any further, because this all gets pretty
technical and um, if you're like me, you need a
(12:57):
little simplification of it. So just a little explanation of
frequency hopping. And this is from a Georgia tech engineering professor,
Ian Killed is quoted in the Atlantic and sorry Ian
if we have mispronounced your name, because it's a tough one.
He says, suppose you're sending something on channel five. When
an intruder finds out that you're sending the entire information
(13:19):
on channel five, then he or she can take everything
you're sending off channel five and reconstruct it. But when
you hop around, the intruder cannot capture this hopping and
he cannot reconstruct the information. So from a security perspective,
it's perfect. Yeah. And the way that Lamar and Auntill
figured out this system, the way they conceptualized it involved
(13:40):
paper rolls that were perforated with a random pattern to
delineate the frequency path, So roles with the same pattern
would be installed in the transmitter and in the receiver,
and then just like a conventional player piano, there would
be eight roles of preparations for keys, and the system
(14:01):
allowed for the use of eighty eight different frequencies that
could be changed at different intervals so they couldn't be intercepted.
So everything was on the move constantly and it was
all radio controlled. So they filed for and they received
a patent for the system, which they called Secret Communications System.
But the Navy, basically they weren't into this idea at all,
(14:24):
so the patent lay dormant basically after that for several
years until the nineteen fifties, and that was after the
invention of the transistor and others began to experiment with
the concepts that basically Lamar had laid out in the patent,
but they replaced the paper rolls with transistor based digital system.
So there were all these subsequent patents on frequency hopping,
(14:47):
but they did refer to the Lamar ontil one as
the generic patent, even though unfortunately it had since expired,
and we see the applications of their research all over
the place after that. By nineteen sixty two, the military
was using the same principles that Lamar and aunt hyle
had used for secure communications. For example, I think they
(15:10):
used it during the Cuban Missile crisis that was mentioned.
And now frequency hopping is known as spread spectrum technology
as we mentioned before, and it's used in everything from
cell phones to wireless networking systems. For example, c d
M A cell phone networks like Sprint and Verizon use them.
So we're gonna have to go back through the tech
stuff archives to see if we can find anything more
(15:32):
on spread spectrum. Yeah, the current uses of this Glamorous
Starlets technology definitely. As Sarah mentioned, Lamar and aunt Hyle's
original patent expired and they never made a dime off
of this, which is kind of sad. Yeah, no money,
no recognition until later, much later, recognition, much later, not
too long after creating her invention, which didn't go anywhere
(15:54):
at the time that they actually created it. Lamar's Hollywood
career took kind of a downward charm and she sort
of flamed out at that point. Soon after that, she
left MGM of her own folition in nineteen forty six.
Her last big hit with Samson and Delilah in ninety nine.
She does movies after that, but that was kind of
her big role that she's remembered for. She retires from
(16:17):
acting entirely in nineteen fifty eight, and after retiring, she
moved to Florida and lived out the rest of her
days there. But she keeps a lot of drama in
her life even though she's retired from the movies. As
we mentioned, six husbands, divorced six times, three kids to biological,
(16:37):
one adopted who she later disowns up. She's arrested twice
for shoplifting, once in nineteen sixty six once in nineteen nine.
Both times the charges don't stick. Yeah, she was cleared,
and she gets into it with a lot of people.
She has a strange love for litigation in her later life.
(16:58):
Collaborators on her nineteen sixty six autobiography Ecstasy in Me,
she sues them from misrepresentation. UM director mel Brooks. Many
people I'm sure have seen the film Blazing Saddles. It's
a Western spoof and there's a character in that movie
called Headley Lamar, and they sort of turned that name
(17:19):
into a prank throughout the film, and it's it's a
very funny film. But apparently Lamar did not find it
to be very funny, so she sued him for that
and they settled out of court. But despite all this drama,
she's finally recognized for her invention in n when she
receives a Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and
she also gets some other recognition from other professional engineering
(17:42):
groups as well. But she wasn't too impressed by this attention.
I don't think her only comment on being honored was
it's about time. So sassy to the end, head Lamar. So.
Henry Lamar died in two thousand and people close to
her say that she continued to make little inventions throughout
(18:03):
her life, including a pocket for tissue or Kleenex boxes
where you could put your used tissues. Um, none of
these little inventions really took off, and certainly not to
the extent of her most famous invention. She can still
kind of be an inspiration to future inventors. The Boeing
Corporation actually launched a series of ads in two thousand
(18:26):
three that featured Lamar's image as a woman of science,
and the title for the ad campaign was don't let
history happen without you, And we can only assume they
waited until after her death for fear of law. So true.
So that's all we have for today. But as I
mentioned earlier, there's plenty to say about Hetty Lamar and
(18:48):
plenty of things that we didn't get to cover today,
both from her later life and from the earlier So
if you have anything that you want to add, or
anything you want to ask, please feel free to email us.
Our email us History podcast at how stuffworks dot com,
or you can look us up on Twitter at Miston
History or on Facebook. And if you want to learn
any more about cell phone technology, where this invention eventually
(19:09):
wound up, we have lots of articles on the subject.
You can go to our homepage and search cellphone technology.
That's at www dot how stuff works dot com. For
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(19:30):
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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm fair Dowdy and I'm debling a chalk re Bardy.
And when you think about old Hollywood and the most
beautiful actresses of all time, there are probably a lot
(00:22):
of well known names that immediately come to mind. For example,
maybe Ava Gardner, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace, Kelly, Audrey Hefburne is
my personal favorite. And I just saw Roman Holiday, a
great one and so pretty in that it's like the
first thing you notice. But it was actually an actress
who's probably lesser known today, Hetty Lamar, who was billed
(00:44):
as the most beautiful girl in the world during the
nineteen thirties. In the introduction to Stephen Michael Shear's recent
biography Beautiful, The Life of Hetty Lamar, there's a description
of the author's mother's experience seeing Lamar's first American film,
which was Algiers came out in night and she saw
in a theater in Illinois, and she described the experience
(01:07):
of the first moment in the movie when Lamar kind
of steps out of the shadows and you see her
face for the first time. And the author's mother says
that the whole audience just gasped her beauty. It was
an audible experience. And I don't know if many of
us have had an experience like that in a movie theater.
No a uniform gasp like that. But even though Lamar's
(01:29):
star may have faded a bit since then, many people
realized in the late nineteen nineties, just a few years
before her death, that she was probably a lot more
than just a pretty face. Yeah, definitely, it came to
light at that time that many years ago she actually
invented something called spread spectrum technology, which was used by
(01:50):
the military and has become a component of modern mobile
phone technology. So definitely relevant to what we do every day.
But what we want to look at in this episode
it is how did a Hollywood starlett pull off a
contribution of this caliber in the first place and why?
And of course take a look at her glamorous, sort
of bizarre life. She led a very fascinating life and
(02:12):
we can't even begin to touch on all of the
details of it here. Again, the Sheer biography that I
mentioned it actually came out last year along with another biography,
and I would definitely recommend picking that up if you
find her life of interest at all, because it is fascinating. Yeah,
but we'll give you the basics. Well, we'll take you
(02:32):
back to the beginning like we usually do, and kind of,
I guess, show you how the seeds of this innovation began.
So Hetty Lamar was born head vig Eva Maria Keisler
on November nine, nineteen fourteen, in Vienna, Austria. And she
couldn't say head VIGs that she called herself Hetty, which
was actually pronounced Haiti. Over there, we're going to go
(02:55):
with the more angle size, Yeah, the angl size, better
known version of her name, Hetty. Um. But that little
nickname stuck, and I say she's kind of lucky for that. Um.
She had a nice, a nice enough childhood, definitely. Her
family was pretty well to do. They weren't extremely super wealthy,
but they were well off. Her dad, Emil, was a
(03:16):
prominent Jewish banker, and her mother, Gertrude, was a talented pianist.
Gertrude had given up her dreams of having a career
in music when she got married, and she got pregnant
very quickly after that, but she still helped to instill
a love of the arts and Hetty, who learned to
dance and play the piano from a very young age.
And because she was an only child too, Hetty grows
(03:37):
up basically like this little princess and her parents were
out socializing quite a bit, but her dad really doated
on her when he was around and played make believe
with her, told her stories, and according to Shearer, he
would also spend hours explaining how things worked to her,
everything from quick printing presses to street ours. Um. That's
(04:02):
that's the first thing that sort of stands out in
this early biography, this careful attention to detail. Yep, her
curiosity is sparked at this point. But her first love,
even from a young age, is acting. Her parents, however,
were dead set against it. They did not want her
to be an actress, so she had to actually trick
her mom into signing a slip and cut school to
(04:25):
get her first movie job as a script runner for
Sasha Film Studio in Vienna, and it was through this
connection that she picked up her first bit part as
an extra in the film Gueld after Strassa, which translates
to money in the street. And it was I think
originally a silent film, but they added sound into it later,
so she was just a I think a person sitting
on a stool or something like that in that movie,
(04:45):
but a start nonetheless, and at that point she realized
that she she was going to be a serious actor,
she needed to learn a little bit more about her craft,
so she enrolled at the legendary theatrical producer Max Reinhardt's
press Stags, Berlin based drama school in about nineteen thirty
and initially she got some bit parts in Renhart shows
(05:08):
and followed him to Vienna and started to take on
larger roles. And it was he who told the press quote,
Hetty Keithler is the most beautiful girl in the world,
so sort of making that reputation for her early on.
But it wasn't until ninety two that she got her
really big break in a check film called Ecstasy, and
this is something that she's still famous for because it
(05:31):
was very controversial at the time for the fact that
she appeared nude in it. Um this was very scandalous,
especially it would have been very scandalous to say an
American because Hollywood was comparatively very conservative at the time.
So the fact that she is naked in it, and
there's also a very racy sex scene. Kind of put
(05:51):
her on the map in a lot of ways, sometimes
not necessarily good ways, but there it was. So at
this point her star is definitely on the rise. But
the next step she takes in her personal life, which
is marriage, kind of puts her acting career on the
back burner for a little while. Yeah, she had a
reputation for maybe not picking the best of guys, and
(06:11):
she ended up getting married six times, but her first
marriage is the one we're going to focus on. It's
very significant because it probably planted the seed for her
eventual invention. So she married this millionaire arms stealer named
Fritz Mondel in nineteen thirty three, and at first the
two were, as you put it earlier, they're just kind
(06:33):
of playing house with each other. Yeah, they're wealthy. As
we mentioned, she he's just buying jewels for her, and
she's traveling on his arm, on his work trips and
everywhere that he goes. And she's sort of happy because
of this, but that doesn't last. Mondel was really controlling.
He kept her from acting and even tried to buy
(06:53):
up all the copies of Ecstasy in existence because he
was so jealous about it after he saw it. He
paid figures like up to sixty dollars per copy to
get all of these, and rumor has it that even
Mussolini had a copy of Ecstasy, but he refused to
sell it to Mondel for any price that he would pay. Yeah,
(07:14):
don't marry Starlet's if you don't like their movies. Yeah, dealers,
you tell them, Sarah. But Hetty really lost all her
respect for Mondel when she found out that he was
making arms agreements with the Nazis, and this seemed especially
wronged her. It's it's not just she that's of Jewish heritage,
(07:36):
but Mondel was himself of Jewish heritage, and according to Shearer,
he had become an honorary Arian, which was special status
created for Jewish people who served Hitler. Personally, it seemed
like the ultimate betrayal to Hettie absolutely, and towards the
end of their marriage she was very displeased with him
(07:57):
and was practically a prisoner in her own um. Mandel
was afraid that she would flee, so he made the
servants watcher and she couldn't leave, but actually him forcing
her to attend these meetings with technicians and his munitions
business partners while they were married is part of how
she got the idea and the knowledge to help create
spread spectrum technology. Yeah, but to do anything with all
(08:21):
this knowledge she had, she had to get away from
her husband. But what she really wanted to do was
get back into acting at that time. So she got
a maid to help her escape from Londel's house, and
she was able to meet up with Hollywood producer Louis B. Meyer,
who she had met previously through Reinhart, and she got
signed to MGM Studios. It wasn't a great deal, but
she was signed at least in back on track with
(08:43):
her career, and so in seven she was on her
way to the States where she became known as Hetty
Lamar for the first time. Yeah, and she did a
few Hollywood movies that did reasonably well at the box office.
Al Jeers eight, which you mentioned earlier, H M. Pullman
Esquire nineteen forty one, Tortilla Flat in nineteen forty two,
(09:04):
White Cargo also in nineteen forty two, the most commercially
successful film she was in there with Sampson and Delilah
in nineteen forty nine, Um but even though you know
this is a certain amount of success, she probably never
reached her full potential as a Hollywood glamorous actress, right.
I think most people think that she probably doesn't get
(09:25):
the credit that she deserves. And she had a tough
time coming in And there were three possible reasons for that.
One was that when she initially came to the US language,
the language barrier and the accent, they were both problems
for her when it came to certain roles. It's been
said that she often didn't know what she was saying
and she recited her lines phonetically, so in her earliest
(09:48):
that would be really tough. And her beauty was one
of her greatest assets. But Meyer and MGM really didn't
know what to do with her. By most accounts, they
saw her as a casting challenge, which seems so strange
considering that she was so beautiful and so marketable, But
they had to end up putting her mostly in I
Candy type of roles rather than really substantive ones because
(10:09):
they thought that she was basically too beautiful to be
playing someone who was normal. She couldn't be a real person. Yeah,
she couldn't be a department store clerk or someone who
was serving you coffee because she was just so gorgeous.
They thought that no one would believe it. Yeah, and
it wasn't just the bosses who saw her beauty as
a hindrance. She herself viewed her beauty as a weakness.
She's quoted as saying, my faith has been my misfortune,
(10:31):
A mask I cannot remove. I must live with it.
I curse it. Yeah. I never thought I'd feel sorry
for someone who's so gorgeous, but that sounds awful. And
she really thought that a girl should have brains as
well as a body, and she wanted people to know
her for that. Um. One of her role models I
read somewhere was Mota Harri. One of she really admired
(10:52):
Mata Hary, who was a World War One spy. Admired
her because she was made Harry was both a military
expert and a sad dress so she used the mind
body connection. Yeah. And Hettie Lamar also had just some
playing bad luck or maybe bad choices with her film roles.
She had an opportunity for some to start in some
(11:13):
really memorable films. The main one is the lead in Casablanca. Um.
Either she turns it down or MGM wouldn't loan her out,
but she doesn't take the role. I mean, that's you
almost think her career could have been entirely different if
she had taken that role. But I guess, I guess
you never know. Maybe Casablanca just would have been entirely
(11:33):
different and not as memorable. But still that that looks
like a one to regret. Well, Lamar did finally get
the chance to put her brains to work a little
bit more when she met aunt Guarde pianist and composer
George aunt hyle at a Hollywood dinner party. Now, aunt
Hyla was known for his hit Ballet Mecanique, a music
(11:54):
piece that was intended to be performed by several synchronized
player pianos. He also shared Lamar's hatred of the Nazis,
and they started chatting about World War Two, which had
just begun at that time in Europe, and Lamar shared
with him her idea for a problem with torpedo control
that she'd seen Mondel struggle with. She proposed creating a
(12:15):
system in which the torpedo and the controller were constantly
switching frequencies so that the enemy couldn't intercept or jam
the signal. Yeah, which is a pretty intense conversation to
be having at this Hollywood dinner party. Definitely, um, heavy
dinner conversation. But Aunta was intrigued with this concept and
(12:36):
they met many times after that to refine this frequency
hopping technique that she had proposed and apply the concepts
of from his work, from his player piano work and
sound synchronization to to what she had suggested. And so
before we go any further, because this all gets pretty
technical and um, if you're like me, you need a
(12:57):
little simplification of it. So just a little explanation of
frequency hopping. And this is from a Georgia tech engineering professor,
Ian Killed is quoted in the Atlantic and sorry Ian
if we have mispronounced your name, because it's a tough one.
He says, suppose you're sending something on channel five. When
an intruder finds out that you're sending the entire information
(13:19):
on channel five, then he or she can take everything
you're sending off channel five and reconstruct it. But when
you hop around, the intruder cannot capture this hopping and
he cannot reconstruct the information. So from a security perspective,
it's perfect. Yeah. And the way that Lamar and Auntill
figured out this system, the way they conceptualized it involved
(13:40):
paper rolls that were perforated with a random pattern to
delineate the frequency path, So roles with the same pattern
would be installed in the transmitter and in the receiver,
and then just like a conventional player piano, there would
be eight roles of preparations for keys, and the system
(14:01):
allowed for the use of eighty eight different frequencies that
could be changed at different intervals so they couldn't be intercepted.
So everything was on the move constantly and it was
all radio controlled. So they filed for and they received
a patent for the system, which they called Secret Communications System.
But the Navy, basically they weren't into this idea at all,
(14:24):
so the patent lay dormant basically after that for several
years until the nineteen fifties, and that was after the
invention of the transistor and others began to experiment with
the concepts that basically Lamar had laid out in the patent,
but they replaced the paper rolls with transistor based digital system.
So there were all these subsequent patents on frequency hopping,
(14:47):
but they did refer to the Lamar ontil one as
the generic patent, even though unfortunately it had since expired,
and we see the applications of their research all over
the place after that. By nineteen sixty two, the military
was using the same principles that Lamar and aunt hyle
had used for secure communications. For example, I think they
(15:10):
used it during the Cuban Missile crisis that was mentioned.
And now frequency hopping is known as spread spectrum technology
as we mentioned before, and it's used in everything from
cell phones to wireless networking systems. For example, c d
M A cell phone networks like Sprint and Verizon use them.
So we're gonna have to go back through the tech
stuff archives to see if we can find anything more
(15:32):
on spread spectrum. Yeah, the current uses of this Glamorous
Starlets technology definitely. As Sarah mentioned, Lamar and aunt Hyle's
original patent expired and they never made a dime off
of this, which is kind of sad. Yeah, no money,
no recognition until later, much later, recognition, much later, not
too long after creating her invention, which didn't go anywhere
(15:54):
at the time that they actually created it. Lamar's Hollywood
career took kind of a downward charm and she sort
of flamed out at that point. Soon after that, she
left MGM of her own folition in nineteen forty six.
Her last big hit with Samson and Delilah in ninety nine.
She does movies after that, but that was kind of
her big role that she's remembered for. She retires from
(16:17):
acting entirely in nineteen fifty eight, and after retiring, she
moved to Florida and lived out the rest of her
days there. But she keeps a lot of drama in
her life even though she's retired from the movies. As
we mentioned, six husbands, divorced six times, three kids to biological,
(16:37):
one adopted who she later disowns up. She's arrested twice
for shoplifting, once in nineteen sixty six once in nineteen nine.
Both times the charges don't stick. Yeah, she was cleared,
and she gets into it with a lot of people.
She has a strange love for litigation in her later life.
(16:58):
Collaborators on her nineteen sixty six autobiography Ecstasy in Me,
she sues them from misrepresentation. UM director mel Brooks. Many
people I'm sure have seen the film Blazing Saddles. It's
a Western spoof and there's a character in that movie
called Headley Lamar, and they sort of turned that name
(17:19):
into a prank throughout the film, and it's it's a
very funny film. But apparently Lamar did not find it
to be very funny, so she sued him for that
and they settled out of court. But despite all this drama,
she's finally recognized for her invention in n when she
receives a Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and
she also gets some other recognition from other professional engineering
(17:42):
groups as well. But she wasn't too impressed by this attention.
I don't think her only comment on being honored was
it's about time. So sassy to the end, head Lamar. So.
Henry Lamar died in two thousand and people close to
her say that she continued to make little inventions throughout
(18:03):
her life, including a pocket for tissue or Kleenex boxes
where you could put your used tissues. Um, none of
these little inventions really took off, and certainly not to
the extent of her most famous invention. She can still
kind of be an inspiration to future inventors. The Boeing
Corporation actually launched a series of ads in two thousand
(18:26):
three that featured Lamar's image as a woman of science,
and the title for the ad campaign was don't let
history happen without you, And we can only assume they
waited until after her death for fear of law. So true.
So that's all we have for today. But as I
mentioned earlier, there's plenty to say about Hetty Lamar and
(18:48):
plenty of things that we didn't get to cover today,
both from her later life and from the earlier So
if you have anything that you want to add, or
anything you want to ask, please feel free to email us.
Our email us History podcast at how stuffworks dot com,
or you can look us up on Twitter at Miston
History or on Facebook. And if you want to learn
any more about cell phone technology, where this invention eventually
(19:09):
wound up, we have lots of articles on the subject.
You can go to our homepage and search cellphone technology.
That's at www dot how stuff works dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics. Visit how
stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast,
(19:30):
click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner
of our homepage. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has
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