More than a pretty face!

Bombshell: The Story of Hedy Lamarr (2017, Documentary)

“Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.” Hedy Lamarr. 

I bet you did not know that the image of Snow White that we have in our minds, thanks to Disney's classic cartoons, is based on the features of the then dubbed as the most beautiful woman of the world, Hedy Lamarr. Even Catwoman's representation is of hers. There was a time when every actress wanted to spot her similar hairstyle, centre-parted dark hair. Beneath the beauty that she possessed, there remained an inventive scientific mind waiting to create something new.

This Viennese daughter of a Jewish banker, Hedy Kiesler, was a free-spirited lass when at the spur of the moment acted in a dirty German film, 'Ektase' which bewildered her the rest of her adult and professional life. She married an arms merchant (to the Nazis and Mousillini) soon after her fame at Austrian movie set later. Things took a turn after Hitler and his Jewish-hating propaganda took centre stage. Her father, her idol, succumbed to a heart ailment. She staged an escape plan for herself. Swapping clothes with her maid and stitching her money and jewellery in her tunic, she made a dash out of Vienna on a bicycle.

Hedy Lamaar ©Pinterest

She landed in London where Louis B Meyer (of MGM) was scouting for talents. Contracted, she made her debut in a 1938 Hollywood film, Algiers. Struggling through the stereotype that the cinema world gave her as an exotic seductress and the ghost of Ektase, she had her ups and downs. Despite her gruelling schedule in Hollywood, in the nights, she worked in her small lab at home.

It was at this juncture that her full potential as an inventor came to fore. She is said to have given Howard Hughes, the eccentric billionaire inventor, the idea for a brand new design for the wings of his planes. During the heights of WW2, when most Hollywood actresses were content with making special appearances to entertain the US Army and to sell War Bonds, she and a composer-pianist, George Antheil, were busy inventing. When the Navy was paralysed by the German U-boats which could jam the Naval torpedoes, they came up with the idea of a 'frequency hopping' system which could bypass the German interference. They patented this invention, but the Navy was not keen to use this design for a non-military layperson.

Her beauty was also her gilded cage. Perhaps, the feminist she was and the intelligence that she possessed proved too overwhelming to many of her partners in her many (six) failed marriages. She is best remembered as Delilah in 1945 'Samson and Delilah'. Her mega production, The Loves of Three Queens, could not be distributed as no distributors wanted to take it.
Her later life was a sad one riddled with court cases, depression, drugs, plastic surgeries and more surgeries. She spent her last few years as a recluse.

Her 'frequency hopping system' is the basis of GPS, Blue Tooth, Wi-Fi and military satellite technologies. In the later years, she was given due recognition for her discovery.

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Between a rock and a hard place!

The Householder (English, Made in India; 1963)

Ivory-Merchant Collaboration

This must be the greatest nightmare that many a goody two shoe Indian new husband must feel early in their matrimonial life. Two women demanding more attention than the other from the husband who is trying his best to be in everybody's good books.

Prem Sagar is a lowly paid lecturer in a private college. He is newly married to a girl whom he cannot stand. He is unhappy with his students whom he cannot control and his principal who refuses to give him a raise, or rather he cannot raise the courage to ask for one! He has a landlord who is not too busy or drunk to listen to his pleas to reduce the rent. And he does not like his new wife's cooking. In midst of all these uncertainties, his wife, Indu becomes pregnant.

A desperate Prem thought getting his mother to stay with him would reduce his burden. On the contrary, his mother becomes a domineering attention seeking female who likes to run down the inefficiencies of Indu and glorifies her role as a mother, wife and daughter in law in her younger days. Indu, after some time, packs her stuff and leaves for her parent's home.

A distraught Prem tries to understand the aim of life by discussing his plight with his colleague, his childhood friend and a new American friend. This American friend left his home in USA, and together with his other friends are mesmerised with India and what it has to offer. They are into yoga and to immerse themselves in Indian culture.

Prem find them not giving him the answer he is seeking for. 

By then, another friend introduces him to a swami (holy man) who knocked some sense into him when Prem wanted to renounce everything and go into religion full time. He was told that he had certain duties as a husband and a father before head on into religion.

By then, Indu had returned. Prem arranged with his sister to take his mother away in the pretext of using the mother's services for some ceremony. Prem's mother goes off happily thinking that she is so indispensable. 

Sanity prevails. Prem and Indu are happy together.

Through this movie, I came to know of an actress, Leela Naidu, who was Miss India in 1954 and was voted as the 10 most beautiful women for that year. She is of Indo-Franco-Swiss parentage and is the daughter of an Indian nuclear physicist who worked with Marie Curie. She is her mother's only surviving child of her mother's 7 pregnancies.