Falter

German original: https://www.falter.at/zeitung/20191218/filmreifes-leben--lady-bluetooth-lamarr/_232080b7c1

Beauty can turn into an imposition. Particularly for someone who made her career as the “world’s most beautiful woman.” How much this questionable honorary title, which is sometimes credited to the theater impressario Max Reinhard and at other times to the Hollywood studio boss Louis B. Mayer, turned into an unbearable burden can be surmised from a text that the actress is believed to have penned for the magazine Look: “My face is a mask that I cannot remove,” it reads. “I have to live with it permanently. I curse it.”

But maybe the diva struggling with herself was just one of many roles that Hedy Lamarr – born in Vienna in 1914, died in Florida in 2000 – played. Others include the high-ranking daughter, the young actress, the sex goddess, the six-time wife and three-time mother, the screen icon, etc. They all, and her role as inventor in particular, are lovingly fanned out by curator Andrea Winkelbauer in the Jewish Museum’s exhibition “Lady Bluetooth.”

On display are movie posters and many photographs in addition to film clips and some original pieces of correspondence. They are joined by personal items, which were part of her estate, managed by her son, Anthony Loder: for example, a funny music box from Hedy’s childhood in Vienna’s Döbling district, or a traditional hat from a domestic manufacture.

Particularly impressive is the design of the ceiling, which is modeled after the punch cards that Lamarr and composer George Antheil used to synchronize changing radio frequencies. In 1942, they filed a patent application for their invention, intended for torpedos in the fight against the Nazis. Today, the transmission of mobile phones, WLAN and Bluetooth signals work based on the same principle.

Museum Judenplatz until May 5. Film program at Metro Kinokulturhaus until January 7.