Stephen Shearer - Beautiful - The Life of Hedy Lamarr

“The headmistress had a sour face and pulled her hair up so,” Hedy once demonstrated to a writer in 1938. “She liked rhubarb and so we had it every night for supper. I didn’t like the stuff and refused it. They told me I would get nothing else to eat unless I did. So I ran away.” Hedy had a friend in Vienna wire the school in her parents’ names to claim that she was needed home. Because the headmistress had guardianship of her money, Hedy booked third-class passage on a train to Vienna and departed with no money for food. There was a fire onboard on the night passage to Vienna, and Hedy claimed later that her legs were slightly burned. 35

Back in the security of her beloved Vienna home and attended to by her parents, Hedy proceeded to successfully convince them to end her schooling in Switzerland. “By now I was dreaming of being an actress,” she would write. “All my life I had loved to play-act and pretend.” 36Hedy would spend hours in local cinemas and all her pocket money on movie magazines.

And Hedy loved not only Hollywood but everything American. “There was a little music shop in Austria,” she would later tell a film-magazine writer. “Every day I used to go in there and ask, ‘Have you any new importations from America? Did any new stuff arrive today?’ I knew so much American music, the shop keeper called me the ‘Hot Austrian.’” 37

Like most teenage girls Hedy was self-conscious about her appearance. At age fourteen, Hedy felt she was overweight. Given this perception, and because she longed to crash the movie-studio gate at Sascha-Film and become a film actress, she took matters into her own hands. A girlfriend of hers at school gave Hedy a thyroid compound, which she enthusiastically took. In an accidental overdose of the stimulant, she suffered a serious seizure that weakened her heart.

In early 1929, Hedy’s grandmother Rosa died, and Trude, in deep mourning for her mother, was not as watchful of Hedy as she would have been. Unattended, Hedy entered a beauty contest and won. “After that,” Trude later told a reporter,

there could have been no stopping her. From that time on she made her own money, bought her first fur coat…. She always knew what she wanted. What she wanted was not, always, what we wanted for her. The stage for example. Her father did not want that for her, and later, I did not either. But she did not ask advice or, I must admit, permission. She did not need to, I suppose, because she always knew where she was going. And where she was going, from the beginning, was the stage. 38

Her parents were against her becoming an actress, and so Hedy was enrolled in yet another school, the Doebling Academy in Vienna. At the academy she would study art and design, “to occupy my ‘waiting time’ before acting,” Hedy told Picturegoer magazine in 1941. 39Trude recalled: “At school in Vienna, I told the professor, ‘You have to be stern with her, show her no special favors.’ And he said, ‘When she walks towards me, and looks at me, I can do nothing.’” 40

On her way to school once, Hedy saw something she would never forget. “I had a long walk,” she told a journalist, “and I passed a beautiful villa. On this day, they were shooting moving pictures at the villa and I stood there watching. The people had on lovely white wigs and old-fashioned costumes. I could not take my eyes away.” 41

In Vienna parents were required to sign absentee slips for every hour their child missed at school. One day in early 1930, Hedy asked her mother to write her an excuse from school for one hour so that she could run an errand. “She did and I put a ‘0’ after the ‘1’ and gave it to my teacher,” Hedy later recalled. “‘This is for ten hours—two full days,’ she said. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know.’ That was no lie. I did know. So, that afternoon after school I went to the Sascha Studios.” 42

Hedy would pass the Sascha-Film Studio, located in the 19th District, called Sievering, every day on her way to classes. Built in 1916, Sascha-Film was Vienna’s first film studio. Here was where such classic silent pictures as Sodom und Gomorrha (1922) and Die Sklavenkönigin (1924) were filmed. On August 23, 1930, G’schichten aus der Steiermark , Austria’s first sound film, was released by another film company. Later that same year, in order to also make sound films, Sascha joined with Tobis Studio, to create Sascha-Tobis-Film.

Approaching the studio’s entrance that afternoon, Hedy gathered her courage, took a deep breath, and snuck onto the lot. Telling the employment manager of the studio she wanted a job as a script girl, the man asked her, “Have you had any experience?” As she wrote later, she confidently replied, “Yes. I have often watched script clerks at work.” Surprised by her remark, he laughed and said he’d give her a try. She was told to return the following day. “I had only ten hours in which to make good. Just two small days,” she continued. “But, you this always confident and I thought it was possible. People say that success requires a great deal of luck, and I agree. I was lucky that day…” 43

She reported for work at Sascha-Film Studio the following morning. “Once inside I kept my ears open,” she wrote. “As luck would have it, I overheard [the studio film] director Alexis Granowsky discuss the casting of a bit…. I applied for a reading—and was terrible. Only, Granowsky felt that I had just enough potential to be coached into this part in the silent film, for the sake of ‘development.’” 44She was rewarded that very day—with a bit as an extra donned in a couture black evening gown that featured her sitting at a table in a nightclub scene.

At day’s end, Hedy returned home and explained to her parents that she was going to continue working at the film studio. “It meant persuading my parents,” Hedy would later write. “They were much more difficult to persuade…because it meant dropping school. But at last they agreed. My father…reasoned that I would soon enough quit on my own accord and go back to school.” 45The picture’s director, Georg Jacoby, who had noticed Hedy’s enthusiasm during the shooting of her one scene, kept her on as a script girl during the rest of the filming of Geld auf der Strasse ( Money on the Street ).

The picture Geld auf der Strasse was filmed as a silent. On the merger of Sascha and Tobis studios, limited dialogue and a couple of songs, including “Lach mich nicht, weil ich Dir so true bin!” were added. The story told of a runaway bride, Dodo (Lydia Pollmann). She meets the amiable ne’er-do-well Peter Paul Lutz (Georg Alexander), who tells her that luck and wealth can be found lying in the street. The lovers eventually marry and become rich.

A simple trifle of a film, its theme of optimism was common among many Austrian films of the day. But, nevertheless, Geld auf der Strasse is an important picture. 46It was Sascha-Tobis-Film’s first sound film. Its director, Jacoby, would later specialize in light, fluffy musicals throughout the Third Reich, most starring his wife, the popular Marika Rökk.

The eighty-five-minute Geld auf der Strasse premiered on November 11, 1930, and was released in Germany on December 5, 1930. It became a minor success. Soon after its completion, Hedy was offered an actual role, that of a secretary, in the film Sturm im Wasserglas ( Storm in a Water Glass ), also known as Die Blumenfrau von Lindenau ( The Flower Woman of Lindenau ). Based on a play by Bruno Frank, it starred Hansi Niese and also featured Harald Paulsen and Renate Müller. 47Production began in late 1930 at the studio of Sascha-Tobis-Film.

The picture’s plot dealt with the trials of a flower seller, Frau Vogel (Niese), who cannot make ends meet and is faced with losing her only companion, her dog. At the home of her alderman, Dr. Thoss (Paul Otto), who is running for mayor, she is sympathetically offered tea by his wife, Victoria (Müller), and a visiting newspaperman named Burdach (Paulsen). Dr. Thoss arrives home and tells Frau Vogel that the law will take its course, and he abruptly dismisses her. Burdach writes a story in the newspaper on Frau Vogel along with an interview with Dr. Thoss. The public is swayed by Frau Vogel’s plight and votes against Dr. Thoss’s bid for mayor. Victoria divorces Dr. Thoss after he has an affair with Lisa (Grete Maren). Burdach loses his job with the paper but marries Victoria. Frau Vogel’s dog is returned to her; she is awarded 1,600 deutsche marks; and subsequently she marries the local dogcatcher.