# Just saw Hedy Lamarr is getting her own American Masters episode on PBS. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 12, 2018, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-saw-hedy-lamarr-is-getting-her-own-american-masters-episode-on-pbs/814068 "2018-05-12T22:07:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![River\_Hippie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/river_hippie/32/26_2.png) [@River\_Hippie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/River_Hippie)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2018, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-saw-hedy-lamarr-is-getting-her-own-american-masters-episode-on-pbs/814068/1 "2018-05-12T22:07:39Z")
[Hedy Lamarr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr) was a world class beauty with a big ass brain. Interesting story and the American Masters series does a good job. Looking forward to it. ---
**Author:** ![River\_Hippie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/river_hippie/32/26_2.png) [@River\_Hippie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/River_Hippie)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2018, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-saw-hedy-lamarr-is-getting-her-own-american-masters-episode-on-pbs/814068/2 "2018-05-12T22:14:39Z")
[Trailer](http://www.pbs.org/video/bombshell-hedy-lamarr-story-trailer-alebky/) ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2018, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-saw-hedy-lamarr-is-getting-her-own-american-masters-episode-on-pbs/814068/3 "2018-05-12T22:59:38Z")
This has already been shown in movie theaters, not many of them, but it did show in movie theaters. ---
**Author:** ![Reeses\_Monkey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reeses_monkey/32/2885_2.png) [@Reeses\_Monkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeses_Monkey)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2018, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-saw-hedy-lamarr-is-getting-her-own-american-masters-episode-on-pbs/814068/4 "2018-05-12T23:11:28Z")
Hedley! ---
**Author:** ![Jim\_s\_Son](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19adc/32.png) [@Jim\_s\_Son](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_s_Son)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2018, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-saw-hedy-lamarr-is-getting-her-own-american-masters-episode-on-pbs/814068/5 "2018-05-13T10:44:09Z")
Groucho Marx predicted, “Samson and Delilah” would flop because Victor Mature has bigger knockers than Hedy Lamarr. Actually it was very successful at the box office and with critics of the time. But when Groucho was saying these things (“Evening with Groucho” in 1972) facts didn’t interfere with a punch line. ---
**Author:** ![SpoilerVirgin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2018, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-saw-hedy-lamarr-is-getting-her-own-american-masters-episode-on-pbs/814068/6 "2018-05-13T13:42:37Z")
I saw the film, _Bombshell_, in the theater last month. It is very, very sad. It focuses mostly on Hedy’s personal life, which was not happy. It’s based primarily on some recently discovered tapes of an interview with her toward the end of her life. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2018, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-saw-hedy-lamarr-is-getting-her-own-american-masters-episode-on-pbs/814068/7 "2018-05-13T14:39:22Z")
I didn’t find it to be very, very sad. Hedy Lamarr could have had a much sadder life. She might not have made it out of Austria/Germany/Czechoslovakia where she made her early films. Because she was of Jewish ancestry, she might have died in a Nazi concentration camp. What happened instead was that she made it to the U.S. where she had a moderately successful film career. The fact that she came up with frequency hopping was well known among the people who cared about such matters before she died in 2000. I remember discussing it in about 1986. The movie seems to be saying that the reason that the American military didn’t use it in their radios just after she and George Antheil patented it in 1942 was because she was a woman or an actress or beautiful or not part of the military scientific establishment. The main reason that neither they nor anyone else used it for twenty years was that the technology to support it wasn’t there yet. The first use of it was in about 1962. Without the proper electronics, it was too complicated. They weren’t able to make it part of a radio system with just mechanical or vacuum tube technology. ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2018, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-saw-hedy-lamarr-is-getting-her-own-american-masters-episode-on-pbs/814068/8 "2018-05-13T14:49:14Z")
> [@River\_Hippie](#): > > [Trailer](http://www.pbs.org/video/bombshell-hedy-lamarr-story-trailer-alebky/) Rights restrictions on the trailer make it unwatchable in Canada :mad: ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim_r.mortiss/32/142_2.png) [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_R.Mortiss)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2018, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-saw-hedy-lamarr-is-getting-her-own-american-masters-episode-on-pbs/814068/9 "2018-05-13T15:02:57Z")
> [@Reeses\_Monkey](#): > > Hedley! That was quick. Before I opened this thread, I figured it wouldn’t happen until at least the fifth reply. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2018, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-saw-hedy-lamarr-is-getting-her-own-american-masters-episode-on-pbs/814068/10 "2018-05-13T15:56:17Z")
I tried watching it, but I couldn’t change channels fast enough.