Screenland (May-Oct 1938)

High-powered giamor! Hedy Lamarr, right, and Sigrid Gurie turn on the charm in their contest for the attentions of Charles Boyer, in a scene for "Algiers." Hollywood's One Real Clamor Girl Continued from page 23 ambitious and possessed of a burning desire to realize the one dream that carried her through rigid days of strait-laced conventions, Hedy tried to make her Austrian nobleman see light. She knew what she wanted from life. She was tired of the stifling luxury and the meaningless pattern that made up her days and nights. Her young man pleaded. Hedy reasoned with him. She tried to show him he was fifty years behind the times, that he was living in the twentieth century and not in the dark ages. She showed him there was room enough in her life for both love and a career. She pledged him her love but she wanted to share whatever talent she had with the entire world. But he could not see Hedy's argument. He threatened he would not go on if she did not abandon her career. Hedy, familiar with the situation as so often repeated on the stage, thought her young handsome officer was merely repeating lines he had heard. In vain, she remonstrated with him. Then realizing the futility of her passionate pleadings, she sent him home and told him to return the following morning to discuss the situation further. The next morning he was found dead — a bullet in his brain ! From that day on a tragic pall that few people can understand has seemed to veil her life. If Hedy Lamarr's eyes have a deep cast of sorrow in them, it has been put there by the great disappointment she suffered so young in life. If her voice carries a shaded nuance of tragedy, it is because a handsome young man used to love to sit at her feet and listen to it for hours at a time. If her laughter seems a bit overcast by unreality and she seems to be' feigning gayety, remember that she still carries too deep a scar in her heart to laugh sincerely. Wherever she goes and whatever she does, she cannot escape the constant haunting image of her dashingyoung sweetheart. No matter what she does, Hedy Lamarr will never be able to forget him. She is sure that if only he had returned the following morning and listened to her, everything would have turned out happily. As it is, she feels the weighted burden of her cross more strongly every time she sees happy couples walking down the street together or holding hands in the moonlight. She looks at them wistfully — even enviously — realizing all this might have been hers too. To keep herself from constantly thinking of the great tragedy that darkened her life and left her floundering about hopelessly, she threw herself furiously into the one means of forgetting — work. She arose early every morning and worked until she was no longer able to stand on her feet. She studied dramatics, music, diction and all other related studies that would aid her in becoming a proficient actress. And the more she was inclined to think of her erstwhile handsome suitor, the greater would be her concentration on the only thing in life she now wanted. When stage and screen offers came her way, she didn't hesitate about accepting them. Anything that kept her mind occupied was welcomed as a palliative. Meanwhile, her beauty was attracting the attention of European society and she was much sought after at social functions and gatherings where the cream of the upper strata congregated. Her vital charm and suave poise especially fascinated the impregnable Fritz Mandel, the mystery man of Central Europe. Though she refused to see him for many months and she shunned his attentions in deference to her deceased lover, Mandel became too insistent for Hedy to hold out against his impassioned wishes. When she completed her assignment on a picture called "Symphony of Love" and returned to Vienna to rest and relax, Fritz Mandel immediately resumed his whirlwind courtship and succeeded in breakingdown the last shred of resistance. Though she knew she would never be able to love anyone else with the same depth and sincerity as her first love, she accepted marriage as a safeguard against her vast loneliness. The honeymoon of Hedy and her millionaire husband was marred by one thing. The obscure film which she had made in Czecho-Slovakia before her marriage was released. Her husband heard about the generally undraped manner in which she was required to disport herself for the realistic interpretation of the story. Everybody else heard of it too ! Then a storm, of which Hedy was the innocent but none-the-less dynamic center, swept across international boundaries. Reports from widely separated world capitals told how Fritz Mandel, desiring a demure, conventional housefrau in the accepted Austrian tradition, tried to suppress the film ; how he dispatched his agents throughout Europe to buy up all the prints and photographs of his wife ; how he spent over two hundred and eighty thousand dollars. But a few of the prints eluded the hands of his agents, apparently, and under the title, "Ecstasy/' the picture created a sensation wherever it was shown. Germany barred the film. Mandel and his powerful friends expected similar action in Italy. But the expected "sympathetic" echo from the opposite pole of the RomeBerlin Axis struck, instead, a jarring and unlooked-for discordant note. In Italy, Mussolini had decided to stage a gigantic exposition of motion picture art. He invited all the countries of the world to submit their best product. Czechoslovakia submitted "Ecstasy." This was to be a purely artistic display in which bluelipped censorship and limitations must bow to the sovereignty of art. And the grand prize was awarded to the Hedy Lamarr film ! All this time agents were still busily buying up the prints of the picture. A copy managed to trickle through and find its way to New York. But it got no further than the harbor. The Federal men seized it in the name of decency and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Law. The print was destroyed by the unaesthetic customs men who put it in the same class as those garish calendars once found in every barber shop. Another print was sent over. The case went to the courts. There were many decisions-— pro and con. Mrs. Morgenthau, wife of the Secretary of the Treasury> reportedly saw the film and didn't find it obnoxious — ■ merely a trifle too bold for our carefully guarded American morals. But when Judge Learned S. Hand decided that with a few minor changes the film would be safe for the American people, we were at long last permitted a view of Europe's glamor girl. In the meantime, Hedy Lamarr conceded to her husband's wishes — just as a good wife should — and retired from the screen. But it was rumored that as she sat in her palatial mansion, entertaining the elegant throngs of distinguished visitors, her thoughts were continually drifting back to the world of motion pictures. Within her was strongly rooted the nostalgia for grease paint and cameras, for the excitement and lure of the world of make-believe. Now, she had neither an interest in life or the happiness she was trying so hard to capture. The great void she was striving to fill again threatened to completely engulf her. Finally she sought a divorce so she might continue the career which meant more to her than all the money in the world. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lost no time in signing her up when they discovered her intentions to resume her motion picture work. They planned an elaborate debut for her in America, but to Walter Wanger goes the honor of presenting her to the public in her first American made film, "Algiers." A smartly dressed girl, once a lover of glittering jewelry, of seasonal pleasure trips to the Alps, to North Africa, the Riviera and to the gay distant cities, the alluring Hedy Lamarr now admits she finds more of a thrill in living in America. "I have heard that in America money is a god and an actress must live like a goldfish in a glass bowl with curious eyes spying on her all the time," says the girl who could have sat back and enjoyed the wealth of kings. "But I have found this to be untrue. In Europe, a successful actress is expected to live elaborately, have many servants and 'promenade' all dressed up in her Paris originals if she is to impress people with her position. In America, the center of all glamor, I find many of the most famous 82