October 18, 2012

Hedy Lamarr - Beauty And Brains in Abundance



                                         
                                                                 

Sometimes we are encouraged to think that beautiful women and brains don’t go together. 
Of course this is sexist and totally untrue.
This piece surely proves it, although no doubt this is quite a unique and extraordinary example. 
The story of Hedy Lamarr is quite fascinating, considering all the angles: World War 11, the Nazis, Hollywood glamour, and the further inventions her pioneering work would lead to.

                                                        
How a brilliant starlet created a worldwide technology boom
It all started with a skin flick...

In 1933, a beautiful, young Austrian woman took off her clothes for a movie director. She ran through the woods... naked. She swam in a lake... naked. Pushing well beyond the social norms of the period, the movie also featured a simulated orgasm. To make the scene "vivid," the director reportedly stabbed the actress with a sharp pin just offscreen.

The most popular movie in 1933 was King Kong. But everyone in Hollywood was talking about that scandalous movie with the gorgeous, young Austrian woman.

Louis B. Mayer, of the giant studio MGM, said she was the most beautiful woman in the world. The film was banned practically everywhere... which of course made it even more popular and valuable. Mussolini reportedly refused to sell his copy at any price.


The star of the film, called Ecstasy, was Hedwig Kiesler. 
She said the secret of her beauty was "to stand there and look stupid." 
In reality, Kiesler was anything but stupid. She was a genius. 

She'd grown up as the only child of a prominent Jewish banker. She was a math prodigy. She excelled at science. As she grew older, she became ruthless, using all the power her body and mind gave her.

Between the sexual roles she played, her tremendous beauty, and the power of her intellect, Kiesler would confound the men in her life... including her six husbands, two of the most ruthless dictators of the 20th century, and one of the greatest movie producers in history.

Her beauty made her rich for a time. She is said to have made - and spent - $30 million in her life. But her greatest accomplishment resulted from her intellect... And her invention continues to shape the world we live in today.

You see, this young Austrian starlet would take one of the most valuable technologies ever developed right from under Hitler's nose.
After fleeing to America, she not only became a major Hollywood star... her name sits on one of the most important patents ever granted by the U.S. Patent Office.

Today, when you use your cell phone or, over the next few years, as you experience super-fast wireless Internet access (via something called "long-term evolution" or "LTE" technology), you'll be using an extension of
the technology a 20- year-old actress first conceived while sitting at dinner with Hitler.

At the time she made Ecstasy, Kiesler was married to one of the richest men in Austria. Friedrich Mandl was Austria's leading arms maker. His firm would become a key supplier to the Nazis.

Mandl used his beautiful young wife as a showpiece at important business dinners with representatives of the Austrian, Italian, and German fascist forces. One of Mandl's favorite topics at these gatherings - which included meals with Hitler and Mussolini - was the technology surrounding radio-controlled missiles and torpedoes. Wireless weapons offered far greater ranges than the wire-controlled alternatives that prevailed at the time. Kiesler sat through these dinners "looking stupid," while absorbing everything she heard...

As a Jew, Kiesler hated the Nazis. 

She abhorred her husband's business ambitions. Mandl responded to his wilful wife by imprisoning her in his castle, Schloss Schwarzenau. In 1937, she managed to escape. She drugged her maid, snuck out of the castle wearing the maid's clothes, and sold her jewelry to finance a trip to London.

(She got out just in time. In 1938, Germany annexed Austria. The Nazis seized Mandl's factory. He was half Jewish. Mandl fled to Brazil. Later, he became an advisor to Argentina's iconic populist president, Juan Peron.)

In London, Kiesler arranged a meeting with Louis B. Mayer. She signed a long-term contract with him, becoming one of MGM's biggest stars. She appeared in more than 20 films. She was a co-star to Clark Gable, Judy Garland, and even Bob Hope. Each of her first seven MGM movies was a blockbuster.

But Kiesler cared far more about fighting the Nazis than about making movies. At the height of her fame, in 1942, she developed a new kind of communications system, optimized for sending coded messages that couldn't be "jammed." She was building a system that would allow torpedoes and guided bombs to always reach their targets. She was building a system to kill Nazis.

By the 1940s, both the Nazis and the Allied forces were using the kind of single- frequency radio-controlled technology Kiesler's ex-husband had been peddling. The drawback of this technology was that the enemy could find the appropriate frequency and "jam" or intercept the signal, thereby interfering with the missile's intended path.

Kiesler's key innovation was to "change the channel." It was a way of encoding a message across a broad area of the wireless spectrum. If one part of the spectrum was jammed, the message would still get through on one of the other frequencies being used. The problem was, she could not figure out how to synchronize the frequency changes on both the receiver and the transmitter. To solve the problem, she turned to perhaps the world's first techno-musician, George Anthiel.

Anthiel was an acquaintance of Kiesler who achieved some notoriety for creating intricate musical compositions. He synchronized his melodies across twelve player pianos, producing stereophonic sounds no one had ever heard before. Kiesler incorporated Anthiel's technology for synchronizing his player pianos. Then, she was able to synchronize the frequency changes between a weapon's receiver and its transmitter.

On August 11, 1942, U.S. Patent No. 2,292,387 was granted to Antheil and "Hedy Kiesler Markey," which was Kiesler's married name at the time.

Most of you won't recognize the name Kiesler. And no one would remember the name Hedy Markey. But it's a fair bet than anyone reading this newsletter of a certain age will remember one of the great beauties of Hollywood's golden age - Hedy Lamarr. That's the name Louis B. Mayer gave to his prize actress. That's the name his movie company made famous.

Meanwhile, almost no one knows Hedwig Kiesler - aka Hedy Lamarr - was one of the great pioneers of wireless communications. Her technology was developed by the U.S. Navy, which has used it ever since.

You're probably using Lamarr's technology, too.
Her patent sits at the foundation of "spread spectrum technology," which you use every day when you log on to a wi- fi network or make calls with your Bluetooth-enabled phone.


It lies at the heart of the massive investments being made right now in so-called fourth-generation "LTE" wireless technology. 
This next generation of cell phones and cell towers will provide tremendous increases to wireless network speed and quality, by spreading wireless signals across the entire available spectrum. 
This kind of encoding is only possible using the kind of frequency switching that Hedwig Kiesler invented.

Received via email.

From Wiki and much more here.

With Victor Mature in "Samson and Delilah". Picture credit:Channel Awesome
                                                                       



                                                                    

                                   
                                                                   
                                                                        


                                                                


                                                                  


Above: picture with many thanks to Celluloid Heroes
See also:
Claude Shannon Jr: The Greatest Genius No One Has Heard Of
John von Neumann: This Hungarian-American Mathematician May Have Been Smarter Than Einstein
Great Minds: Filippo Brunelleschi
Great Minds: Leonardo da Vinci
The Genius of Nicola Tesla
Five Brilliant Mathematicians And Their Impact On The Modern World 
Top Things Women Invented
11 Female Inventors Who Helped Power The Information Age
Hedy Lamarr's 101st Birthday Celebrated by Google
Li-Fi Has Been Tested And It's 100 Times Faster Than Wi-Fi 
Mad Geniuses: 10 Odd Tales About Famous Scientists
Benjamin Franklin:11 Surprising Facts
Temple Grandin On The Autistic Brain
What Was the Enlightenment?
The Nobel Prizes In Numbers

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: The Philosopher Who Helped Create the Information Age




 








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Burt Bacharach Brings Back The Hits: From Marlene Dietrich to Glastonbury 

Daniel Day-Lewis Receives A Knighthood 







Tina Turner: What’s Age Got To Do With It? 

Sylvester Stallone: Not Feeling Old!
 
"Rush" - An Under-rated Ron Howard Movie

Alfred Hitchcock: Mysteries Of The Master Of Suspense
 
Anne Miller – My Favourite Dancing Queen

Charlie Chaplin: The Birth Of The Tramp

Carlos Gardel And The Tango In Movies 

The 100 Most Iconic Movie Lines of All Time

The Importance of Costume in Films: Some Iconic Images of our Culture

Hollywood Costume Exhibit In Los Angeles

Biopics Now Focus On Key Moments Rather Than A Whole Life 

Some Biopic Actors And Their Real-Life Counterparts

Edith Piaf: In search of La Vie en Rose 

Is "Gone with the Wind" America’s Strangest Film? 

A Look at a Legend: Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor Quotes

Top 10 Best Actress Oscar Winners Ever? 

10 Historically Inaccurate Movies

Robert Mitchum: Film Noir Legend 

Clint Eastwood - A True "Renaissance Man" - Updated

John Wayne 7th Most Popular Star - Still!

How Marlon Brando Almost Missed His Defining Role

A Look at a Legend: Elizabeth Taylor

Top 10 Best Actress Oscar Winners Ever?

The Book Every Movie Lover Should Own:David Thomson’s New Biographical Dictionary of Film

Hollywood's 100 Favorite Films

Paul Newman - Hollywood Legend 


Rita Hayworth - The Dancing Queen

Orry-Kelly:The untold story Of A Hollywood legend - "Women He's Undressed" Review

Top 10 Movie Sets Ever Built

A Look at a Legend: Rita Hayworth



Dolly Parton: A Biography Movie And A Time Capsule For Her 100th Birthday

Maggie Smith: Michael Coveney’s Biography 

The Best Movies of 2015

Sophia Loren Quotes 

Michael Douglas: The Hemsworth Brothers And Hugh Jackman Are Hollywood Gold 

After Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, The Hemsworths, Where Are The Men Of The Movies?
 
How Groucho Marx Invented Modern Comedy

Marilyn Monroe: Fashioning The Myth And The Reality

Loretta Lynn


A History Of Mick Jagger On Film

Gregory Peck: Hollywood Legend 

Florence Foster Jenkins: Meryl Streep's Latest Biopic

Citizen Kane: Orson Welles’s Masterpiece, As A 1941 NYT Critic Saw It

"The Man Who Knew Infinity" Review - Jeremy Irons And Dev Patel

Loving Vincent: The World's First Fully Painted Film

Dean Martin: 99 Years Of His Music and Movies



Marilyn Monroe: Her Secret Diary


The Rolling Stones: A New Movie About The Making of 'Exile on Main Street'


Happy Birthday, Julie Andrews! 

Happy Birthday Dame Angela Lansbury!

Happy Birthday Grace Kelly!

Kirk Douglas Turns 100 After Seven Decades Of Film
 

Happy Birthday Christopher Plummer! 87 Years Young!
                   

October 16, 2012

Clint Eastwood - A True "Renaissance Man" - Updated


                                                                   

                                   
                                                                  
                                    Clint in "Rawhide" as "Rowdy Yates" - and singing.

                                                                
                                      The now legendary scene from "Dirty Harry".



According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary :
The definition of RENAISSANCE MAN is a person who has wide interests and is expert in  several areas

(I am not referring to the historical Renaissance period I wrote about here.)
 
Pretty good summary of Clint Eastwood!

He is one of my favourite actors, if not the favourite, and a great director. 

He is also a very accomplished musician and he sings too! 

He has won innumerable awards for his work - not surprising at all.

(Not the best quality clip from "Paint Your Wagon", but you get the picture. I have lost track of how many times I have watched this!)

                                                              
I have been a Clint Eastwood fan since my high school days when watching "Rawhide" was something one looked forward to every week - almost religiously - especially in my home. 

After all these years, too many to count, he is still making superb movies. 

Many of his movies  have "made my day"!

“Trouble With The Curve” is his latest movie and will be released here this year – 2012.

I couldn't even say which of his movies is my very favourite one.  



Clint’s body of work is listed here.
And here.
I have watched many of them, and many more than once or twice!

Some of the musical pieces Clint has written or sung in his movies are listed here. And here.

Clint considers himself a Libertarian, along with another favourite of mine, Dwight Yoakam.

Clint is on Twitter and has his own website.

                                                            
                                                              
Ok,,here it is – the legendary line from “Sudden Impact”!
Resistance on my part is futile!

Clint Eastwood is a legend! 

                                                        
                                                                      
Love this song,,and the movie - "Honky Tonk Man".


                                                                  


                                                                 

Here’s an interesting take on “Dirty Harry”, recently posted.

The odd conglomeration of names involved in the inception of what became Clint Eastwood's signature movie include John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, Irvin Kershner, Terence Malick and John Milius. The first two, along with Robert Mitchum and Steve McQueen and Paul Newman, turned down the role while the others were among the writers of numerous drafts, many set in New York rather than San Francisco. Bouncing from studio to studio, it almost ended up a tv movie for ABC!

When Eastwood was approached he insisted on returning to the first draft and hiring Don Siegel to direct, as they had enjoyed working together on the offbeat flop The Beguiled.

As always, you can find more great trailers and trailer commentaries at
http://www.trailersfromhell.com
ABOUT TRAILERS FROM HELL:

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Amazing resemblance between father and son! 
Clint and Scott Eastwood

See also:  

100 Greatest Movie Characters 

The African Queen Sails Again



Above: 170 Great Clint Eastwood Quotes

Below: 'Dirty Harry' and 'Josey Wales' - now iconic movie characters.

                                                            


                                                                          

Clint Eastwood’s singing career.
Another example.

                                                                                
As if all that wasn't enough Clint Eastwood makes a movie of "The Jersey Boys" Musical.

                                                                                 
In 2015 "American Sniper" will be released.

                                                                 
From director Clint Eastwood comes AMERICAN SNIPER, starring Bradley Cooper as Chris Kyle, the most lethal sniper in U.S. military history. But there was much more to him than his skill as a sharpshooter.

U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle is sent to Iraq with only one mission: to protect his brothers-in-arms. His pinpoint accuracy saves countless lives on the battlefield and, as stories of his courageous exploits spread, he earns the nickname “Legend.” However, his reputation is also growing behind enemy lines, putting a price on his head and making him a prime target of insurgents. He is also facing a different kind of battle on the home front: striving to be a good husband and father from halfway around the world.

Despite the danger, as well as the toll on his family at home, Chris serves through four harrowing tours of duty in Iraq, personifying the SEAL creed to “leave no man behind.” But upon returning to his wife, Taya Renae Kyle (Sienna Miller), and kids, Chris finds that it is the war he can’t leave behind.
The training a US SEAL undertakes is quite incredible! Check it out here.

Thanks to You Tube.

Updates: 
Weekend Box Office: ‘American Sniper’ Set To Be Clint Eastwood’s Record Opening.

Chris Kyle's Achievements.

And it is now also a major Oscar contender with 6 nominations.
                                                                   

  


                                                                      
                                                                      

                                                                       


                                                                     
                                                                   

May 31st 2016 - Clint's Birthday.

                                                                  

                                                                         

                  
                                                  





Biopics Now Focus On Key Moments Rather Than A Whole Life

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