Hedy Lamarr (/ˈhɛdi/; born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler; November 9, 1914[a] – January 19, 2000) was an Austrian-born American actress and inventor.

After a brief early film career in Czechoslovakia, including the controversial erotic romantic drama Ecstasy (1933), she fled from her first husband, Friedrich Mandl, and secretly moved to Paris.

[11][12] Lamarr was taking acting classes in Vienna when one day, she forged a note from her mother and went to Sascha-Film and was able to have herself hired as a script girl.

[14] Granowsky soon moved to Paris, but Lamarr stayed in Berlin and was given the lead role in No Money Needed (1932), a comedy directed by Carl Boese.

[19] Her parents, both of Jewish descent, did not approve due to Mandl's ties to Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini and, later, German Führer Adolf Hitler, but they could not stop the headstrong Lamarr.

In her autobiography, she wrote that she disguised herself as her maid and fled to Paris, but by other accounts she persuaded Mandl to let her wear all of her jewelry for a dinner party and then disappeared afterward.

[27] Mayer loaned Lamarr to producer Walter Wanger, who was making Algiers (1938), an American version of the French film, Pépé le Moko (1937).

Her second American film was to be I Take This Woman, co-starring with Spencer Tracy under the direction of regular Dietrich collaborator Josef von Sternberg.

Stewart was also in Ziegfeld Girl (1941), where Lamarr, Judy Garland and Lana Turner played aspiring showgirls – a big success.

Lamarr played the exotic Arab seductress[29] Tondelayo in White Cargo (1942), top billed over Walter Pidgeon.

Back at MGM Lamarr was teamed with Robert Walker in the romantic comedy Her Highness and the Bellboy (1945), playing a princess who falls in love with a New Yorker.

[36] After leaving MGM in 1945, Lamarr formed a production company with Jack Chertok and made the thriller The Strange Woman (1946).

However she lacked the experience necessary to make a success of such an epic production, and lost millions of dollars when she was unable to secure distribution of the picture.

She played Joan of Arc in Irwin Allen's critically panned epic, The Story of Mankind (1957) and did episodes of Zane Grey Theatre ("Proud Woman") and Shower of Stars ("Cloak and Dagger").

[50][51] Lamarr, in turn, was sued by Gene Ringgold, who asserted that the book plagiarized material from an article he had written in 1965 for Screen Facts magazine.

[55][56] She pleaded no contest to avoid a court appearance, and the charges were dropped in return for her promise to refrain from breaking any laws for a year.

In 1974, she filed a $10 million lawsuit against Warner Bros., claiming that the running parody of her name ("Hedley Lamarr") in the Mel Brooks comedy Blazing Saddles infringed her right to privacy.

[72] On January 26, 1939, Lamar was chosen the "ideal type" of woman in a poll of both male and female students conducted by the Pomona College newspaper.

[75] In December 1943, makeup expert Max Factor, Jr. included Lamarr among the ten glamorous Hollywood actresses with the most appealing voices.

[83] The following year, Lamarr's native Austria awarded her the Viktor Kaplan Medal of the Austrian Association of Patent Holders and Inventors.

[86] The same year, Anthony Loder's request that the remaining ashes of his mother should be buried in an honorary grave of the city of Vienna was realized.

[88][89] On August 6, 2023 Star Trek: Prodigy showrunners Dan and Kevin Hageman debuted the first five minutes of footage from season two, showing the new Lamarr-class USS Voyager-A, in tribute to her.

[c] – [104] The Mel Brooks 1974 western parody Blazing Saddles features a villain, played by Harvey Korman, named "Hedley Lamarr".

[8][107] In the 2009 mockumentary The Chronoscope,[108] written and directed by Andrew Legge, the fictional Irish scientist Charlotte Keppel is likely modeled after Hedy Lamarr.

The film satirizes the extreme politics of the 1930s and tells the story of a fictionalized fascist group that steals a device invented by Keppel.

[115][116] Also in 2016, the off-Broadway, one-actor show Stand Still and Look Stupid: The Life Story of Hedy Lamarr, starring Emily Ebertz and written by Mike Broemmel, went into production.

[119] In 2017, actress Celia Massingham portrayed Lamarr on The CW television series Legends of Tomorrow in the sixth episode of the third season, titled "Helen Hunt".

The documentary was written and directed by Alexandra Dean and produced by Susan Sarandon;[121][32] it was released in theaters on November 24, 2017, and aired on PBS American Masters in May 2018.

In 2018, actress Alyssa Sutherland portrayed Lamarr on the NBC television series Timeless in the third episode of the second season, titled "Hollywoodland".

She was accompanied by her daughter, Azalea McRae, with whom she performed it, alongside her students at her dancing school, Downtown Dance Conservatory in Gadsden, AL.[127] In July 2024, the principal setting of the second season of the Netflix/Nickelodeon/Paramount television series Star Trek Prodigy is the science vessel USS Voyager, NCC-74656-A, a Starship of the Lamarr class, classified in honor of Lamarr's scientific contributions.