If you know much about the world of entertainment, you’ve probably at least heard of the name Hedy Lamarr. As one of the biggest stars in Hollywood in the 1940s, she was in a number of high profile movies, but there was a lot more going on with Hedy behind-the-scenes and in her quiet hours at home than the majority of people know. That’s the story explored in Alexandra Dean’s fantastic movie Bombshell, and exactly what we discuss here in a new and exclusive interview…
Hedy Lamarr was much more than a pretty face
Bombshell really opens up a whole other part of Hedy’s life that not many know about; can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Well Bombshell is really there to shine a light on Hedy’s life as she really lived it and, to explain to people that there was this extraordinary person in their midst, that was never really recognised as such. She was known for her beauty, she was known for her scandals; she was never known for the things she did best, in my opinion, which was invent, and she invented this frequency hopping system, this secret communication system, which you find in our Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and our cell phones today. So, her achievements are relative to every single one of us, and that’s why I thought she must be resurrected and remembered.
Hollywood can be quite the challenge for female stars; what do you know about Hedy’s challenges being a part of that world?
Hollywood was extremely challenging for Hedy, I don’t think that makes her unique, but I think that makes us understand her in a way. I think we’ve been going through a reckoning in Hollywood with the #TimesUp movement. I think now we see Hedy’s struggle through Hollywood in a new light. She fought for parts that were not typecasting her as a Madonna. She fought for roles that made her stretch herself, that challenged her. She had this brilliant mind that she wanted to always be engaged and she was often treated like a bit of a bimbo, and the amazing thing about Hedy is, she reacted to all of this by leaving the set after a gruelling day at work, maybe 13, 14 hours on set, and she’d go home and invent, and she’d be inventing something that basically changed the world! Can you imagine?
Ironically, would you say that her beauty then was her main challenge?
I would say her main challenge was people’s conception of beautiful women. I will add to that; the beauty is a double-edged sword. I never feel too bad for Hedy about the beauty, because I know it flung open as many doors as it closed for her. Look at the escape from Austria; she couldn’t have done it if she wasn’t staggeringly beautiful. But, that preconception people had about beautiful women not having much between the ears, that really did thwart her…
If Hedy was a new star of the modern day, how do you think the world would respond to her?
To be honest I think Hedy would be celebrated. I think she was a creature designed for our moment actually. She was brilliant with understanding how to market herself. She would have probably been someone with an immense social media following; she knew how to put together a look, she invented several looks in fact, she invented hats, she invented designs of hats that had never been designed before, she had an endlessly inventive mind and so she would have got that in our social media world and had a big following. I’m worried she would have struggled in a very similar way as she did with the Navy when she presented her secret communications system initially and they rejected it.
I worry she would struggle in the same way today in Silicon Valley, because I do think that what I’ve seen, in reporting on Silicon Valley, is that the men, and it is mainly men, who finance inventors today, mainly just finance people who look like them, and I can imagine them taking Hedy out to many fancy dinners, but I can’t imagine them taking her that seriously.
What do you think we can learn from Hedy’s story?
I think there’s a tonne to learn from Hedy’s story, whether it’s about the context, the #TimesUp and #MeToo movements, what women have been going through all this time. Whether it’s about examining our own lives, for the unsaid, unspoken obstacles that all of us climb over, because of the preconceived notions that people might have about us. But I think the most important thing to take away is what Hedy says at the end of the film, when she quotes this poem that became tremendously important to her at the end of her life. She was really saying in this poem, she was quoting it to tell us that even though she was kicked in the teeth and not recognised for her greatest achievements, even so, it was all worth it, so just do it any way, whatever your great passion is because it’s the doing, it’s the trying to make a mark on the world that will matter when you face the end of your life; that’s what will be what made a difference.
It’s a great message for young people today. Don’t wait for the applause - we’re in a bit of an applause-obsessed culture, we put things on Instagram to get the likes and clicks – she’s saying forget about the likes and clicks, you work on you, work on your passions, work on what you care about, because that’s how you’re gonna change the world.
The film has seen an incredible response from critics; how did it feel to see those reviews coming in?
Oh my God, I’m still pinching myself about the reviews. I keep expecting something catastrophic to come in (laughs), and blow it all up! It doesn’t seem quite real quite yet. I’m just extremely grateful, to the point of tears sometimes.
So in a similar fashion, how have you found the response to the film from the wider general public?
I would say the wider general public have been far more passionate about Hedy’s story than I expected. At almost every single screening I go to I end up going out with people afterwards and having a drink, and having these incredible discussions into the night, because the great thing about her story is touching a nerve right now, and people need to talk about it, and need to talk about it in regards to their own lives, so that resonating with the general public, that strong resonance is extremely rewarding for a filmmaker like me, because you sit in your little edit suite in a hole in the ground basically, for two years, not knowing if what you’re doing makes any difference at all, so to have a conversation like that afterwards is the most rewarding thing you can imagine.
Can you give us a little bit of insight into life making a film like this, as director and writer?
It really was an adventure making a film like this. For me, I left the comfort of a really secure, well-paid corporate job, where I was one of the lucky few actually making creative documentaries for pay, so it felt like an insane thing to do, to leave that, and to jump out of a window basically, that’s what it felt like. I felt compelled to do it because I really wanted to start, to respond to a conversation that I felt happening around me with other filmmakers and creatives, about our experience right now, and when you have to respond, I think sometimes you just have to. So, Bombshell was really my attempt to jump into that creative conversation with my own work, and not someone else’s, and it was such a scary adventure. It was sort of a freefall. I would recommend it to anyone else who can withstand that kind of terrifying lack of structure, and lack of support, because then you do, maybe, learn to fly.
Do you have your mind set on your project just yet, or is there a cooling off period…
I actually have a few going, a few pots on the burner! I’ve been really reluctant to jump too quickly into one of them completely because, I’d love to do something else that again touches the nerve of where we are culturally and continues the conversation we began with Bombshell, so I’m hanging back and trying to see if one of these will really be resonating, as Bombshell was. That’s the challenge.
Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story is available now on digital download, DVD and Blu-ray.