Tag Archives: mgm

Hidden History: The Movie Star Who Invented Frequency Hopping Radio Transmission

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Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story

Directed by Alexandra Dead (2018)

Film Review

This documentary is about the life of Hedy Lamarr, the glamorous movie star who invented frequency hopping radio transmission. This technology is currently used used for GPS, wifi, bluetooth, military satellites, cellphones and nuclear launch technology. Most of the film is based on an interview she gave Fleming Meeks in May 1990 for Forbes magazine. She was 76 at the time.

Born in 1941 in Austria as Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, Hedy starred in her first movie in Austria at age 17. She married a Nazi munitions manufacturer at 19. Fearful of persecution for her Jewish background, she secretly fled to London four years later.

She landed a studio contract with MGM, starring with Charles Boyer in her first major film (Algiers) in 1938. During the war, she briefly dated Howard Hughes, who built her her a chemistry lab in her home after she improved the aerodynamic design of his aircraft. Together with composer George Anthell, she developed a radio guidance system fir Allied torpedoes using frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology.

A strong advocate for women’s equality, she hated the way the major studios type cast her as a pretty face, and produced three films herself.

Lamarr was married and divorced six times and had three children she raised as a single mother. During her stint at MGM, she, like many other stars came under the care of “Dr Feelgood” (Dr Max Jacobson). Jacobson, who worked for MGM for roughly 20 years (until he lost his license in 1974), gave many stars all “vitamin” shots to help them work the 70-80 hour weeks demanded of them. The shot’s main ingredient turned out to be methamphetamine.

Her ongoing amphetamine addiction was responsible for major work and family difficulties. When interviewed in 1990, she had a total income of $300 a month from Social Security.

The US government never paid her for her invention, and she died in 2000.

Full film can be seen through your library on Beamafilm.

https://beamafilm-com.eznewplymouth.kotui.org.nz/watch/bombshell-the-hedy-lamarr-story

Hidden History: How FDR Blocked Upton Sinclair’s Election as California Governor

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The Great Depression – Part 4 We have a Plan

PBS (1993)

Film Review

Part 4 is largely about famous author Upton Sinclair’s campaign for California governor. This is something they definitely don’t teach in school. Because he nearly won.

The parallels with Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign are uncanny. Sinclair, also a socialist, registered as a Democrat for the 1934 campaign. He received the same massive popular response from Californian workers that Sanders and UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn have received. Thousands of young people flocked to join the California Democratic Party, which hadn’t won a gubernatorial race in  35 years.

Sinclair easily won the Democratic primary and polled ahead of his Republican opponent until he was betrayed by the Roosevelt administration. After trying to pressure him to quit the race in favor of the third party candidate, they made a deal for California Democrats to support Sinclair’s Republican opponent – in return for the latter’s support of Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation.

In the last weeks of the campaign, Sinclair was also hurt by the massive media smear campaign launched by MGM studio boss Louis B Meyer.

Although Sinclair lost the election, 27 members of Sinclair’s EPIC (End Poverty in California) organization team won seats in the California legislature.

This episode also covers San Francisco’s 1934 general strike and FDR’s unsuccessful attempt to create a national health service as New Zealand did in 1938.