NR | 1h 30m | Documentary, Biography, History | 2017
If someone made a documentary that concentrated solely on the accomplishments of Hedy Lamarr the actress, very few people would be interested in seeing it. Between 1930 and 1958, Lamarr appeared in 33 features and two TV shows. Most of these are so obscure or subpar, only four of them have critical scores on the Rotten Tomatoes website. On the same site, audiences gave only seven titles positive average reviews.
Luckily, director-writer-producer-editor Alexandra Dean’s debut feature documentary, “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story” (“Bombshell”), covers Lamarr’s entire life. It paints a portrait of a person whose outward beauty was so jaw-dropping that most people discounted or outright ignored her towering intellect.
Enter Louis B. Mayer
In 1937, not long after her father’s death, Lamarr left Austria for London where she quickly caught the attention of MGM co-founder Louis B. Mayer, who was in Europe looking for talent from among the refugees fleeing the Nazis. Mayer immediately wanted Lamarr for his roster, but when he tried to lowball her, she passed. On a ship returning to the United States, their paths crossed again. Mayer, seeing the effect that Lamarr had on fellow gazing passengers, offered her five times his initial offer, which she accepted.
Instead of promoting his newest protégée, Mayer uncharacteristically kept her “in the bullpen,” as it were, with bit parts and leads in projects that received little to no fanfare. It was only when Lamarr pressed Mayer to audition for the lead opposite Clark Gable in “Boom Town” did her star begin to rise.
“Boom Town” turned out to be a huge hit, and Lamarr caught the attention of producer and aviator pioneer Howard Hughes. Hughes collected starlets like so many shells on a beach; he attempted to do the same with Lamarr but quickly found that her intellect, and will, far surpassed her beauty.
Espionage Thriller
At this point, “Bombshell” morphs into a quasi-espionage thriller eschewing most cut-and-dry documentary tropes. If you came up with an idea for a fictional movie about a sex symbol movie star turned real-world gladiator and inventor, every studio hack would laugh you out of their office. Yet this actually happened. Lamarr changed the course of human history and never received her proper due, at least during her lifetime.A quick internet dive will explain in fine detail the nuts and bolts of Lamarr’s innovative technology, but I strongly advise watching this film first. I had an inkling of her invention before seeing “Bombshell,” and watching the story unfold was one of the greatest experiences I’ve ever had while viewing a documentary.
Without inching into spoiler territory, I can reveal how Lamarr first developed the concept for her invention.
Shortly after the United States entered World War II in 1941, Lamarr met George Antheil, an avant-garde composer best known for “Ballet Mécanique,” a piece performed by multiple player pianos. The pair devised a way to apply the relatively elementary technology of a player piano roll into something they dubbed “frequency hopping.”
Boiled down, frequency hopping breaks up single-band radio signals in a random fashion that, even if intercepted by enemy combatants, makes the transmissions impossible to be understood or deciphered.
The Kruger Project
At several points during the movie, actress Diane Kruger reads aloud letters penned by Lamarr, and appears onscreen offering commentary. Underneath Ms. Kruger’s name during these passages is the text “Hedy Project.” At the time “Bombshell” was being filmed, Ms. Kruger was planning to produce and star in a live-action Lamarr biographical project which, as of July 2024, is still stuck in development limbo. In my humble opinion, Ms. Kruger would be an ideal choice for the title lead in a Lamarr biopic.
“Bombshell” is a towering achievement on every level, and Ms. Dean deserves the highest praise and credit for putting the spotlight on one of our country’s greatest (and misunderstood) unsung heroes.
