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Great Lives – Hedy Lamarr

Lecture Date: March 18, 2025

The Roxanne M. Kaufman Lecture

As a teenage actress in 1920s Austria, performing on the stage and in film in light comedies and musicals, Hedy Kiesler, with her exotic beauty, was heralded across Europe by her mentor, Max Reinhardt. However, it was her nude scene, and surprising dramatic ability, in Ecstasy that made her a star. She married one of Austria’s most successful and wealthy munitions barons, giving up her career for what seemed at first a fairy-tale existence. Instead, as war clouds loomed in the mid-1930s, Hedy discovered that she was trapped in a loveless marriage to a controlling, ruthless man who befriended Mussolini and sold armaments to Hitler, yet hid his own Jewish heritage to become an “honorary Aryan.”

She fled her husband and escaped to Hollywood, where M-G-M changed her name to Hedy Lamarr and she became one of film’s most glamorous stars. But as her career waned, her personal problems and legal wranglings cast lingering shadows over her former image. It wasn’t until decades later that the world was stunned to learn of her unexpected role as the inventor of a technology that has become an essential part of everything from military weaponry to cell phones—proof that Hedy Lamarr demonstrated a creativity and an intelligence she had always possessed.

Beautiful: The Life of Hedy Lamarr, Stephen Michael Shearer’s in-depth and meticulously researched biography, written with the cooperation of Hedy’s children, intimate friends, and colleagues, separates the truths from the rumors, the facts from the fables, to reveal the life and character of one of classic Hollywood’s most beautiful and remarkable women.

Speaker: Stephen Michael Shearer

Stephen Michael Shearer (born Stephen R. Sypult) grew up in Illinois, Michigan and Arkansas. At age 11 he wrote his first play, Hellen and Ellen in the Wilderness. He directed his first film, Sylvia and Sally of the Sand Dunes, while in college where he earned a B.S.E. in music and a minor in psychology. He hosted the CBS-affiliate afternoon TV show, “The Movies” and wrote film and book reviews for such national publications as Film Collector’s Registry. Shearer is a former model and actor in television, films, and off-Broadway productions. His critically acclaimed 2006 best-seller Patricia Neal: An Unquiet Life, is considered the definitive biography of the beloved actress, his long-time friend and muse. In 2013 he authored Gloria Swanson: The Ultimate Star. Shearer lives in the Twin Cities in Minnesota and in New York and is now writing two new comprehensive film histories.

great lives - biographical approaches to history and culture
Event Details
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
7:30pm
Dodd Auditorium, Fredericksburg, VA, USA