Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (2017)

The life and career of the hailed Hollywood movie star and underappreciated genius inventor, Hedy Lamarr.

Director:

Alexandra Dean

Writer:

Alexandra Dean

Stars:

Hedy Lamarr, Mel Brooks, Jennifer Hom

8 wins & 6 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Hedy Lamarr	...	Self (archive footage)
Mel Brooks	...	Self
Jennifer Hom	...	Self
Anthony Loder	...	Self
Wendy Colton	...	Self
Fleming Meeks	...	Self
Richard Rhodes	...	Self
Jan-Christopher Horak	...	Self
Jeanine Basinger	...	Self
Peter Bogdanovich	...	Self
Anne Helen Petersen	...	Self
Diane Kruger	...	Self
Stephen Michael Shearer	...	Self
Robert Osborne	...	Self
Denise Loder-DeLuca	...	Self

Storyline

Hedy Lamarr was a Hollywood movie star who was hailed as the most beautiful and glamorous in the world. However, that was only the surface that tragically obscured her astounding true talents. Foremost of them was her inventive genius that a world blinded by her beauty could not recognize as far back as her youth in Austria with her homemade gadgets. This film explores Lamarr's life which included escaping a loveless marriage on the eve of Nazi Germany's conquest of her nation to a new career in Hollywood. However, her intellectual contributions were denied their due even when she offered them in the service of her new home during World War II. Only after years of career and personal decline in her troubled life would Lamarr learn that her staggering aptitude created brilliant engineering concepts that revolutionized telecommunications, which forced the world to realize the hidden abilities of a woman it had so unfairly underestimated.

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Plot Keywords:

movie star | inventor | electrical engineering | telecommunications | sex symbol | 

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Taglines:

Icon. Immigrant. Inventor. In her own words.

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Genres:

Documentary | Biography | History | War

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Did You Know?

Trivia

During the segment on "Samson and Delilah," one of the interviewees says (in voice-over), "Samson and Delilah was the second-highest-grossing film of the decade. Only Gone with the Wind surpassed it." However, Gone with the Wind was a 1939 release, and therefore didn't share a decade with Samson and Delilah (it was a 1930s movie, while Samson and Delilah was a 1940s movie).

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Connections

Features Loves of Three Queens (1954)

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Soundtracks

Blue Danube
Arr. Julian Gallant/David Tobin/Jeff Meegan
Performed by the English Session Orchestra with Julian Gallant conducting

User Reviews

Well done documentary about a person that deserves more then being seen just as a diva

If we are all honest nobody really knew about the story of Hedy Lamarr, and that's not even because she's not from our generation. Of course, I knew her as an actress, but what she accomplished besides her acting career is far more interesting, and it's good to have a nice documentary about it. The documentary is well done, with interviews from all kind of people, going from family members, actors, journalists and scientists and so on. There is also alot of interesting footage of her childhood, movies, her public appearances and her at an older age. She's been called the best looking woman in the world at that time, I wouldn't go that far, but she wasn't ugly that's a fact. The start isn't great, her as a Jew married to a weapon supplier of the Nazi's but at the end she did her best helping to fight the Germans, and that through her creative inventing mind. She should deserve much more then just a plaque for her invention. At least this documentary will give her the respect she deserves for the things she did. She was probably not an easy person to live with, but that's because she was a victim of Hollywood and drugs. In the end, I think she would be much better off if she didn't start her acting career and just concentrated her efforts in the promising inventions she had in her creative mind. Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story is certainly worth a watch, just to have another and better view of the woman she was, way more then just a glamorous Hollywood diva.

Details

Official Sites:

Webpage

Country:

USA

Language:

English German

Release Date:

8 March 2018 (Ireland)

Also Known As:

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story

Filming Locations:

Vienna, Austria

Box Office

Budget:

$1,500,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$8,000, 3 December 2017

Gross USA:

$820,300

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$1,092,277

Company Credits

Production Co:

Reframed Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

88 min

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1