Stephen Shearer - Beautiful - The Life of Hedy Lamarr

In Vienna Hedy told a reporter that she had been offered a contract by Paramount Pictures. “My mother and I will be traveling to Hollywood in the middle of May,” she proudly announced. “The free time till then I will spend with sports. I am proud of my awards in tennis, skiing, and swimming.” 12A contract from Paramount indeed had been offered Hedy, but she did not sign it immediately.

In Austria, small yet dramatic social changes were taking place, and a current of unrest permeated the status-quo tranquility of peace. Throughout Europe the long-standing existing governments were threatened by totalitarian dictatorships—already established by the Fascist Benito Mussolini in Italy, the Bolshevik Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union, and the sudden rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany. Vienna, relentlessly content with holding on to its past, was beginning to feel political agitation emanating from its neighbors.

By the spring of 1932, in Germany the Weimar Republic was falling apart. “From midsummer that year,” wrote the reporting correspondent for the Chicago Tribune at the time, William L. Shirer, “the Reichstag was shorn of its constitutional powers, as the elected body representing the people, to govern the country.” 13By New Year’s Day 1933, there was ever-present alarm in Austria that if Hitler took over the chaotic government in Germany, the first thing he would do would be to annex Austria to the German Third Reich, a plan he had clearly spelled out in the first paragraph of his ominous manifesto, Mein Kampf. Despite the conflict brewing in Germany, Vienna had just experienced a peaceful and tranquil year in 1932. Then, on January 30, 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany.

Ten days before, on January 20, Extaze had made its world premiere in Prague. It was immediately hailed a masterpiece, with much praise for its cinematography and orchestral musical score. “By now my parents were proud of me,” Hedy would write. “Their little princess was a real movie star.” 14They had not, however, seen the picture yet. Hedy prepared her parents for the Vienna premiere, scheduled for the following month, by telling them that Extaze was an “artistic” film.

On February 14, 1933, Extaze opened in Vienna. Emil and Trude were excited at the prospect of seeing their daughter starring in a major motion picture. After the stage show, Hedy remembered sitting in the dark with them, eagerly anticipating her first scene in the picture. “The film began, and ‘the’ scenes approached,” Hedy wrote later. “‘It’s artistic,’ I whispered to my parents nervously…. The next moment I was running nude through the trees…. The swimming scene was quick, but not quick enough…. I wanted to run and hide. My father solved the predicament. He simply rose, and said grimly, ‘We will go.’ I gathered my belongings in one grab. My mother seemed angry, but somehow reluctant to walk out. Nevertheless, walk out we did.” 15

Emil was shocked that his daughter would indecently expose herself and disgrace the family in such a manner. “I had a very strict upbringing,” Hedy said. 16Hedy wrote that she was so embarrassed and humiliated by her parents’ reaction that she stayed in her room for a week. She promised them that she would never work in films again.

The rest of the European general public, however, took little offense at the two controversial sequences. On March 12, Extaze opened at the Tivoli Theatre in London. The reviewer in The Times focused on the elements of the film: “ Ekstase …sets out to make the most of musical accompaniment and cut down the use of speech to a minimum…. Some of the photography, however, is beautiful in its feeling for air and sunlight, and Haidee Tiesler [sic] gives a sensitive and imaginative performance as a wife who is denied life by her husband and seeks it at the hands of a young man who is everything her husband is not.” 17

There was no mention of the two “scandalous” scenes in the review. When the picture in its most complete form opened in France, critics and audiences alike hailed it a classic. Extaze would only become notorious later in the year, when Germany censored it primarily because many of the film’s participants were Jewish. The film was, however, publicly condemned in the L’osservatore romano by Pope Pius XI, who called it indecent, and it was denied presentation in the United States. Not surprisingly, Extaze was considered a masterpiece in Czechoslovakia upon its release there. It would win the Prague State Prize for Excellence in 1934, as well as attract the largest crowd and second prize (losing the prized Mussolini Cup to Man of Aran, a documentary) on August 2, 1934, at the Venice Film Festival, where Gustav Machatý was nominated best director.

Viewed today, Extaze is a beautifully produced motion picture. Prominent among its many cinematic virtues is its key element—the almost total lack of dialogue. A sweeping musical score by Giuseppe Becca, set designs by Bohumil Hes and Stepan Kopecky, framed by the magnificent photography of Jan Stallich and Hans Androschin—all contribute in making Extaze an impressively important film.

In the picture, Hedy is mesmerizing to watch. Her scenes with Aribert Mog are kinetic and sensual. Fraught with symbolism throughout, Extaze does not deserve the crude attention or the lingering notoriety it later generated when finally released in the United States. Publicity bordering on slander could not prevent the critics even then from recognizing the minor gem Extaze truly is or the respectable performance given by its feminine star. But conservative tastes, including those of Hedy’s parents, condemned the picture from the start.

Now dutifully living at home with her parents in 1933, Hedy was asked to replace the German actress Paula Wessely in the successful run of Fritz Kreisler’s musical-comedy operetta, Sissy , the Rose of Bavaria Land , playing at the ornate Theater an der Wien. 18The musical was based on a comic play, Sissy Brautfahrt (roughly translated Sissy’s Engagement ).

Renowned for her breathtaking beauty, Empress Elisabeth of Austria’s story took on heroically romantic overtones shortly after her death at age sixty in September 1898 at the hands of an assassin. Revered and loved by Austrians, Elisabeth’s fairy-tale life was popular fodder for the imaginations of young Austro-German girls for many generations. Her life was filmed in Germany in 1931 as Elisabeth von Österreich ( Elisabeth of Austria ), a popular early sound film starring Lil Dagover. The theatrical production Sissy , directed by Otto Langer, opened on December 23, 1932.

Sissy tells of the courtship of the young Austrian emperor, Franz Josef (Hans Jaray), and Elisabeth (Hedy), the sixteen-year-old daughter of the Duke of Bavaria (Hubert Marischka). The operetta begins at the Possenhofen Castle on Lake Starnberg, with three other scenes occurring at the emperor’s villa and at the Golden Ox Inn. There was an intermission between the second and third acts, at which time was projected a short ten-minute film by the thirty-three-year-old Berlin silhouette artist Lotte Reiniger. 19Fritz Kreisler himself conducted the music for this, his second, operetta (the first being Apple Blossoms , which had been a hit musical on Broadway in 1919 starring Fred and Adele Astaire). 20

Hedy was approached to join the cast of Sissy sometime in mid-February 1933, no doubt because she was visible again in Vienna, enjoying the social rounds of the theatrical set. With her new svelte, almost frail figure, Hedy was stunningly beautiful, as production pictures from her period in Sissy attest. Starring on the stage in Sissy was a redemption of sorts for Hedy. She would be delightfully directed and presented in the best professional light.