Harvey Brownstone conducts an in-depth interview with Anthony Loder, Son of Legendary Actress and Inventor, Hedy Lamarr (Remastered)

About Harvey's guest:

Anthony Loder is the son of one of the most glamorous and fascinating screen goddesses in cinematic history. At one time, she was considered the world’s most beautiful woman: Hedy Lamarr. She lit up the screen in films like “Algiers”, “Boom Town”, “Ziegfeld Girl” and “Samson and Delilah”. But what very few people knew, until her son made a point of bringing worldwide awareness to it, is that Hedy Lamarr was not just an actress. She was a mathematical and scientific genius. At the beginning of World War II, she and composer George Anthyle developed a radio guidance system using frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology for Allied torpedoes, intended to defeat the threat of jamming by the Axis powers. The technology that she invented is largely responsible for the creation of wireless communications, including cell phones, GPS, Wifi and Bluetooth. She was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014. Our guest produced a fascinating documentary in 2004 called “Calling Hedy Lamarr”, and he also appeared in the 2017 documentary entitled “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story”.

Hedy Lamarr, born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler was an Austrian-born American film actress and inventor. Her father was born to a Galician Jewish family in Lemberg (now Lviv in Ukraine) and was a successful bank director. Trude, her mother, a pianist and Budapest native, had come from an upper-class Hungarian Jewish family. She had converted to Catholicism and was described as a "practicing Christian" who raised her daughter as a Christian.
Lamarr helped get her mother out of Austria after it had been absorbed by the Third Reich and to the United States, where Gertrude later became an American citizen. She put "Hebrew" as her race on her petition for naturalization, which was a term often used in Europe.

As a child, Lamarr showed an interest in acting and was fascinated by theatre and film. At the age of 12, she won a beauty contest in Vienna.

After a brief early film career in Czechoslovakia, including the controversial Ecstasy (1933), to avoid the Nazi persecution of Jews following the Anschluss, she fled from her husband, a wealthy Austrian ammunition manufacturer, and secretly moved to Paris. Traveling to London, she met Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio head Louis B. Mayer, who offered her a movie contract in Hollywood. She became a film star with her performance in Algiers (1938). Her MGM films include Lady of the Tropics (1939), Boom Town (1940), H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941), and White Cargo (1942). Her greatest success was as Delilah in Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah (1949). She also acted on television before the release of her final film, The Female Animal (1958). She was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.

Among the few who knew of Lamarr's inventiveness was aviation tycoon Howard Hughes. She suggested he change the rather square design of his aeroplanes (which she thought looked too slow) to a more streamlined shape, based on pictures of the fastest birds and fish she could find.

During World War II, Lamarr learned that radio-controlled torpedoes, an emerging technology in naval war, could easily be jammed and set off course. She thought of creating a frequency-hopping signal that could not be tracked or jammed. She contacted her friend, composer and pianist George Antheil, to help her develop a device for doing that, and he succeeded by synchronizing a miniaturized player-piano mechanism with radio signals. They drafted designs for the frequency-hopping system, which they patented.

Their invention was granted a patent under US Patent 2,292,387 on August 11, 1942 (filed using her married name Hedy Kiesler Markey). However, it was technologically difficult to implement, and at that time the U.S. Navy was not receptive to considering inventions coming from outside the military. In 1962 (at the time of the Cuban missile crisis), an updated version of their design at last appeared on Navy ships.

In 1997, Lamarr and Antheil received the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award and the Bulbie Gnass Spirit of Achievement Bronze Award, given to individuals whose creative lifetime achievements in the arts, sciences, business, or invention fields have significantly contributed to society. Lamarr was featured on the Science Channel and the Discovery Channel.

The principles of their work are incorporated into Bluetooth and GPS technology and are similar to methods used in legacy versions of CDMA and Wi-Fi. This work led to their induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.

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