Hedy Lamarr's Real Name: Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler

Quick answer: Hedy Lamarr's documented birth name is Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler. Encyclopaedia Britannica records that form and gives her birth date as November 9, 1913 or 1914, in Vienna, Austria. The National Inventors Hall of Fame gives November 9, 1914, and notes that a 1942 patent listed her as Hedy Kiesler Markey (Encyclopaedia Britannica; National Inventors Hall of Fame).

Real name and early life

Britannica lists Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler and flags the 1913/14 uncertainty in her birth year; the Inventors Hall of Fame uses 1914 only. She was the daughter of a prosperous Viennese banker, Britannica says, and was privately tutored from age 4, becoming a proficient pianist and dancer who could speak four languages by age 10. At 16 she enrolled in Max Reinhardt's dramatic school in Berlin and soon began appearing in films. The Czech film Extase (1932; Ecstasy) brought both stardom and notoriety. Her 1933 marriage to Austrian munitions manufacturer Fritz Mandl interrupted her career; after leaving him she went to Hollywood in 1937.

Career highlights

Her first English-language film was the romantic drama Algiers (1938). Under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1938 to 1945, she appeared in H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941) and Tortilla Flat (1942), though she was often confined to decorative roles, Britannica says. Her most commercially successful film was Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah (1949), which the Inventors Hall of Fame also lists among her credits, along with Ziegfeld Girl. She became a U.S. citizen in 1953 and retired from movies in 1958, aside from a later cameo.

During World War II she and composer George Antheil invented a frequency-hopping method intended to make radio-controlled signals harder to jam. The Inventors Hall of Fame says U.S. Patent No. 2,292,387 was issued in 1942 under the name Hedy Kiesler Markey, and that the pair did not profit from the invention during their lifetimes. Britannica says the wartime device was not used then but later became a component of satellite and cellular phone technology.

Death

She died on January 19, 2000, near Orlando, Florida, Britannica records, a date the Inventors Hall of Fame also gives.

Name notes for searchers

Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler is the documented birth name; she was known professionally as Hedy Lamarr, and a 1942 patent lists Hedy Kiesler Markey. Searchers looking for the star of Algiers or Samson and Delilah, or for the co-inventor of a frequency-hopping communications method, are usually aiming at the same person.