Hedwig Kiesler: More than Just a Pretty Face

By Linda Harris Sittig

Do you use Wifi or GPS, or a cell phone?

Then you should know the story of one strong woman whose research and inventions were the precursor to much of our day-to-day technology. But I bet the name Hedwig Kiesler is not familiar to you.

She did go by another name, one you might recognize, and she did become famous, but not for her brilliant mind.

Hedwig Kiesler was born in Vienna, Austria, in November 1914. She was an only child, adored by her father and criticized often by her mother. Much of her later interest in tinkering came from long walks with her father, who often pointed out objects in Vienna and explained to young Hedwig the technology behind them.

Hedwig might have grown up to become a serious scientist, but she was endowed with incredible beauty and a desire to act on stage. Because of her stunning looks, wavy dark hair, sultry green eyes, porcelain skin, and hourglass figure, by age 16, she had procured a part in a play in Vienna.  Within a few years, her beauty and acting set her on her life’s course.

But Europe was on the brink of turmoil in 1933 when Friedrich Mandl saw Hedwig performing in a play. He was smitten by her beauty and launched a one-person ploy to win her heart. Although he was older, he was also one of the wealthiest men in Austria. Her parents encouraged Hedwig to accept Mandl because of his power and wealth. Hedwig’s father hoped that Mandl would be able to take care of Hedwig as politics were becoming unstable due to the rise of both Adolf Hitler and Mussolini.

The marriage became a disaster due to Mandl’s obsessive desire for control and his mandate that Hedwig gives up the theater and devotes her entire time to being his wife.  Because he owned a lucrative munitions company, the Mandls often entertained the most powerful men in Austria, Germany, and Italy. Although miserable in her marriage, Hedwig decided to act as a dutiful wife while listening intently to the men complain about the failures in weaponry, especially the technical problems with submarines.

After the death of her father and her mother’s insistence that Hedwig learn to be a ‘proper wife,’ Hedwig takes a bold leap and escapes from her husband, fleeing first to Paris and then to London. While in London in 1937, she met the famous Hollywood movie producer Louis B. Mayer – head of MGM studios. He was on a talent-searching trip, and Hedwig was on a search of her own – a way to get to Hollywood.

Mr. Mayer, impressed with her outstanding beauty, offered her a job at $125.00 a week. She turned him down because she believed she was worth more. This is in the day when a loaf of bread only costs 9 cents. Hedwig then sold some of the jewelry from her marriage and booked a one-way ticket on the same ocean liner that Mr. Mayer was traveling back to the United States. By the end of that trip, Hedwig convinced him to offer her a more lucrative contract. He offered $500.00 a week, and this time she accepted.

Hedwig’s move to Hollywood was the escape and artistic opportunity she craved. And while Germany was beginning to succumb to the charisma of Adolf Hitler and Jews were facing the beginning of what would eventually become the Holocaust, Hedwig’s mother refused to leave her lifestyle in Austria.

Hedwig shot to fame after Mr. Mayer changed her name to Hedy Lamarr and cast her in films with famous co-stars like Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, James Stewart, and William Powell, among others. Her ability to lose herself in her character made her performances outstanding and her beauty unforgettable. But Hedwig, now Hedy, needed more. She needed to make a difference in helping her fellow Europeans back home.

In 1940 German torpedoes sank a civilian transport ship, the SS City of Benares, carrying 90 children fleeing worn torn Britain for safety in Canada. Horrified and outraged, Hedy turned her inexhaustive energy to inventing a device that would enable radio communications from ship to torpedo to ‘hop’ and thereby eliminate the jamming of signals by the enemy. She drew upon her memory of tinkering with her father and the conversations of the Mandl’s dinner parties. Working tirelessly with musician George Antheil, Hedy and George did invent a radio frequency hopping system and were issued a U.S. patent number 2, 292, 387 on August 11, 1942.

Although they were unsuccessful in selling the technology to the United States Navy (who turned them down with the reputed comment that an invention by a woman would not be reliable), their invention led the way later for other scientists to develop Bluetooth and GPS technology.  

Hedy Lamarr went on to act in Hollywood in many famous films and was eventually voted into the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame in 2014 and earned a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. She would go on to marry six more times. Once her eyesight began to fail in the 1980s, she moved to Florida almost as a recluse and died in 2000 at age 85. Her estate at death was $3.3 million.

Austria issued a stamp in Hedy’s honor, and the face looks similar to the face of Wonder Woman. Perhaps because Hedy was a true wonder woman.

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Wishing you and yours a lovely holiday season and peace in the new year.

~ Linda