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George Hurrell

Hedy Lamarr – beauty, brains and bad judgment

Hedy Lamarr arrives in Hollywood
4 October 1937. Hedy Lamarr arrives in Hollywood. Read more.

Hedy Lamarr had it all: beauty, brains, fame and fortune. For a few years she had the world, or at least Tinseltown, at her feet. And she blew it. So what went wrong? Was Hedy the victim of forces beyond her control or of her own character flaws. Or was she just plain unlucky?

Hedy Lamarr arrives in Hollywood in October 1937. She has just fled Vienna, her husband Fritz Mandl, and the looming threat of a Nazi invasion. Taking the train to Paris and then crossing the Channel to England, she has discovered that Louis B Mayer, MGM’s head honcho, is in London and looking for talent. Somehow, she manages to arrange a meeting with him. He’s worried about the scandal surrounding her appearance in Ecstasy but not blind to her charms (how could he be?). So he offers Hedy a bulk-standard, six-month contract with MGM at $125 a week. Which she flatly rejects. She’s has her own idea of what she’s worth and she’s not going to be pushed around.

Still, Hedy is in a pretty desperate situation and, after a meeting with Robert Ritchie, one of Mayer’s talent scouts, she changes her mind. But then it turns out that the mogul is leaving the next day for France in order to catch the superliner Normandie back to the US. Getting a berth requires the sale of most of her jewels as well as some subterfuge (the voyage is already fully booked). On board, Hedy, in a gown by Alix, dazzles her fellow passengers, and the effect is not lost on Mayer, who ups his offer to a seven-year contract beginning at $550 a week.

So by the time Hedy Lamarr arrives in Hollywood (her name changed by MGM from Hedwig Kiesler to Hedy Lamarr), she has proved that she is daring, ambitious, determined and resourceful. Those are qualities she is going to need in spades. But that’s far from the whole story. Ever since she was a little girl, she’s wanted to be an actress in spite of being, by all accounts, a very private person. Is that because acting can be a form of escapism for her and, if so, what demons is she struggling with? Well, for one thing she believes that her mother wanted a boy and didn’t really like her. Then, married at age 19 and dominated by her husband Fritz Mandl, she likely feels she needs to take back control of her life.

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Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for White Cargo

Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for White Cargo

1942. It's possible that this photo is from the same sitting as the

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Hedy Lamarr, glamour shot

Hedy Lamarr, glamour shot

Around 1943. A classic glamour shot of Hedy Lamarr, the background thrown out of...

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Hedy Lamarr as Irene in The Conspirators

Hedy Lamarr, power dresser

1944. Hedy Lamarr wears this costume in The Conspirators. With its exaggerated shoulder pads...

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Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for White Cargo

Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for White Cargo

1942. This photo of Hedy Lamarr is one of a series of three on...

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Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for White Cargo

Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for White Cargo

1942. In White Cargo, for which this photo is advance publicity, Hedy Lamarr is...

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Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for White Cargo

Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for White Cargo

1942. The caption on the back of this photo refers to three Hedy Lamarr...

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Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for The Heavenly Body

Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for The Heavenly Body

1943. The Heavenly Body is little more than a bit of froth, with one...

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Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for The Heavenly Body

Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for The Heavenly Body

1943. Pencilled on the back of this photo are the words “BY CARPENTER.” That...

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Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for The Heavenly Body

Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for The Heavenly Body

1943. According to IMDb, Joan Crawford was offered the lead role...

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Now, put yourself in her shoes for a minute. She’s 23 years old. She’s in a strange city with a culture very different from that in which she’s grown up. She can speak only a few phrases of English so she struggles to communicate with those around her. And she knows no-one. Columnist Sheilah Graham, out on the town at the Beverly Hills Brown Derby one Saturday evening that winter, spots Hedy at a table all by herself. Her partner, F Scott Fitzgerald, wryly observes: “How typical of Hollywood, the most beautiful girl in the world alone on a Saturday night.”

Hedy Lamarr with a bust by Nina Saemundsson
1939. Hedy Lamarr poses beside a bust of her by Nina Saemundsson. Read more.

Hedy Lamarr – beauty

And beauty is a recurring theme, the dominant theme, when it comes to Hedy Lamarr. Jet-black tresses, cherry-red lips, porcelain complexion… Hedy’s looks are classic and exotic, innocent and alluring, making her the perfect model for two very different movie legends: Disney’s Snow White on the one hand and, on the other, Catwoman in the original Batman comics.

What immediately strikes you when you look at Hedy in her movies or her stills is just how staggeringly beautiful she is – drop-dead gorgeous. And a different kind of beauty from the blondes who have been fashionable through the thirties, a fact that’s not lost on her audiences or the other Hollywood actresses.

In Those Glorious Glamour Years: Classic Hollywood Costume Design of the 1930s, Margaret J. Bailey, a historian of film costume, observes:

After her first appearance on the screen in Algiers, drugstores experienced a run on hair dyes, and soon everybody, including starlets and established luminaries like Crawford and Joan Bennett, had changed their locks from blonde or brown to jet black. The Lamarr hairdo with the part in the middle and the tall Lamarr look became the new standard of glamour. Shock waves were felt not only in personal beauty, but also in the realm of fashion, in particularly, the hat. Somehow that three letter word seems inadequate when describing what Lamarr wore in her first films. Lamarr veils, snoods, turbans, and such swept the fashion world and millinery companies would overnight fill the hunger for the new cinema image. Not everyone could affect the Lamarr styles, but just about everyone tried. Turbans and snoods became the fashion for Forties headgear.

Suddenly, Hedy’s image is everywhere. Overnight she becomes a star. In December 1938 she is named Glamour Girl of 1938 by the popular press. Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper describes Hedy as “orchidaceous.”

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Hedy Lamarr modelling a Grecian gown

Hedy Lamarr modelling a Grecian gown

1939. After her success in Algiers, Louis B Mayer (head honcho at MGM) envisages...

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Hedy Lamarr's golden

Hedy Lamarr’s golden “bib”

1939. The ornamental "bib" that adorns Hedy Lamarr's black crepe evening gown is in...

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Hedy Lamarr kneeling on a couch

Hedy Lamarr kneeling on a couch

1939. The photographer is not one of Hedy's fans and it does look a...

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Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for Lady of the Tropics

Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for Lady of the Tropics

1939. The bamboo screen and prop give it away – this is a publicity...

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Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for I Take This Woman

Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for I Take This Woman

1940. Another photo that showcases Hedy Lamarr's luxurious tresses and porcelain complexion. A caption...

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Hedy Lamarr in a dress decorated with spangles

Hedy Lamarr’s spangles

1940. Is that a palm frond in the upper left corner? And if so,...

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Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for The Heavenly Body

Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for The Heavenly Body

1943. A dramatic vision of Hedy Lamarr, with strong overhead lighting and a faux...

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Hedy Lamarr wrapped in ostrich feathers

Hedy Lamarr wrapped in ostrich feathers

1943. Most of the other images of Hedy Lamarr on aenigma are studio issues....

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Hedy Lamarr with a pearl necklace and earrings

Hedy Lamarr wears pearls

1943. This photo of Hedy Lamarr may have been taken on the set of...

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There’s no doubt that she looks gorgeous in stills. In fact, David O Selznick, producer of Gone with the Wind, refers in a memo to Hedy as having “actually been established [as a Hollywood star] purely by photography.” And yet, the photographers themselves are less than enthusiastic. Hungarian lensman Laszlo Willinger, who has photographed Hedy in Vienna as well as in Hollywood, complains to John Kobal:

How do you make Hedy Lamarr sexy? She has nothing to give. It wasn’t as simple as showing legs or cleavage. She was not very adept at posing. She was just… She felt if she sat there, that was enough. You try to bring it to some life by changing the lighting, moving in closer to the head, whatever, because nothing changed her face. It never occurred to me that one could wake her up… and nobody ever did.

Then there’s Virgil Apger, another MGM snapper who remembers:

She thought she knew it all and was forever telling you what to do. She was beautiful – she had great skin texture – but I don’t recall anybody saying they enjoyed shooting her. She never came alive, except to keep making damned uncouth remarks to the people I had around me.

Legendary photographer George Hurrell feels much the same way, having first photographed Hedy soon after her arrival in Hollywood. He tells John Kobal:

I didn’t get too much out of Hedy because she was so static. Stunning. But it was the nature of her, she was so phlegmatic, she didn’t project anything. It was just a mood thing. And she had just one style. It didn’t vary particularly. She had a pretty good body. But she wouldn’t dress for it. She was always dressing in black. She liked suits. You can’t do anything – a woman in a suit is a dead duck.

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Hedy Lamarr, still a Hollywood wannabe

Hedy Lamarr, still a Hollywood wannabe

1938. Hedy Lamarr's first movie after arriving in Hollywood is Algiers, for which MGM...

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Hedy Lamarr wears a black sequin dress and pearls

Hedy Lamarr, sequin chic

1938. Clarence Sinclair Bull, head of MGM's stills studio, gets to work glamming up...

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Hedy Lamarr wears pearls

Hedy Lamarr, sequin chic

1938. This photo looks like it comes from the same sitting as another in...

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Hedy Lamarr ramps up the sensuality

The loveliness of Lamarr

1939. There's something cat-like about Hedy Lamarr's pose, and her bare shoulders intensify the...

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Hedy Lamarr relaxes in an armchair

Hedy Lamarr relaxes

1940. Hedy Lamarr relaxes in an armchair while a back light casts a soft...

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Hedy Lamarr in profile

Hedy Lamarr in profile

1941. An arresting shot of Hedy Lamarr that, unusually, showcases her profile. A caption...

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Hedy Lamarr, glamour goddess

Hedy Lamarr, glamour goddess

1941. With its dramatic use of highlights and shadows, this image pulls out all...

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Hedy Lamarr with her hair pulled back

Hedy Lamarr, her hair pulled back

1941. Hedy's long tresses, centrally parted and cascading over her shoulders, are such a...

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Hedy Lamarr, publicity portrait for The Heavenly Body

Hedy Lamarr, lady of the pearls

1943. Hedy looks dreamy in this publicity portrait for The Heavenly Body. Perhaps she's...

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Some clues there to what Hedy is like and why her career will crash and burn. But on a more positive note, when Clarence Sinclair Bull, head of MGM’s stills studio, visits Hedy to take some shots of her at home, she prepares lunch for him herself. “This is the first time a star’s ever done this for me,” he remarks. “Oh, I always fix my lunch by the kitchen sink when I’m alone. It’s easier,” says Hedy (Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood, Los Angeles Times, October 13, 1941). 

Hedy is a looker and knows how to turn it to her advantage. According to June Allyson, “No doubt about it, she was stunning and she knew how to look at a man with an intimate little smile that turned him on.” Men are drawn to her like bees to honey, and people are so blinded by her beauty that they struggle to see beyond it. The default response seems to be that she’s just decorative, should stick to being an ornament, should not get involved in “real” acting. Bosley Crowther, notorious critic of The New York Times, is typical in his review of Lady of the Tropics, admittedly a lousy movie:

Now that she has inadvisedly been given an opportunity to act, it is necessary to report that she is essentially one of those museum pieces, like the Mona Lisa, who were more beautiful in repose.

But Hedy Lamarr can act. She may not have the dramatic prowess of a Bette Davis or a Barbara Stanwyck, but watch her in The Strange Woman and you’ll see a subtle and nuanced performance that brings to life Jenny’s (her character’s) ambiguity. What’s more, it seems there is more to Hedy Lamarr than just a perfect face.

Hedy Lamarr with her stand-in, Sylvia Hollis, on the set of The Heavenly Body
1943. Hedy Lamarr with her stand-in, Sylvia Hollis, on the set of The Heavenly Body

Hedy Lamarr – brains

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about Hedy Lamarr, and it would certainly have baffled Bosley Crowther, is that her name is on the patent for a technology which would pave the way for both cellular networks and Bluetooth. Hedy, it turns out, is a smart cookie.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about Hedy Lamarr, and it would certainly have baffled Bosley Crowther, is that her name (as Hedy Kiesler Markey) appears on the patent for a technology which will pave the way for both cellular networks and Bluetooth. So what’s going on here?

One day in 1940, dress designer, Adrian, one of Hedy’s closest friends, asks her along for dinner. Also there is the multi-talented George Antheil, not just the self-styled Bad Boy of American music (and partner in crime of Orson Welles for The Lady from Shanghai) but also something of an expert on endocrinology – he’s published three books about glands. Hedy’s interest is in finding out about the possibility of breast enlargement – something that Louis B Mayer has suggested to her. Antheil assures her that that would not be a problem. According to his autobiography, at the end of the evening, Hedy leaves before him and uses her lipstick to scrawl her phone number on his car window.

That’s not an invitation to be taken lightly. So he invites her round to his place for dinner and discussion. Fascinating as Hedy’s breasts undoubtedly are, the conversation does eventually move on to the prospect of the US entering the war in Europe. Hedy feels she should be doing something to help the Allies. She is also convinced she has something to offer in that regard because she used to eavesdrop on Fritz Mandl’s (her munitions manufacturer ex-husband) discussions about weapons technology.

She said she knew a good deal about new munitions and various secret weapons, some of which she had invented herself, and that she was thinking seriously of quitting M.G.M. and going to Washington, D.C., to offer her services to the newly established Inventors’ Council.

The challenge they set themselves is to find a way to stop the Germans from jamming the signals controlling the radio-guided torpedoes fired at their U-boats, which are playing havoc with the British shipping trying to cross the Atlantic. The solution the pair come up with is a radio-directed torpedo based on a transmitter and receiver, programmed to shift continually and at random through 88 different frequencies. The programming is done by paper tape inspired by the paper-rolls Antheil has used to synchronise player pianos. This is the invention they submit to the government for a US patent under the title of Secret Communication System.

The invention is covered in the October 1 1941 edition of The New York Times:

HEDY LAMARR – Actress Devises ‘Red-Hot’ Apparatus for Use in Defense

So vital is her discovery to national defense that government officials will not allow publication of its details. Colonel L. B. Lent, chief engineer of the National Inventors Council, classed Miss Lamarr’s invention as in the ‘red-hot’ category. The only inkling of what it might be was the announcement that it was related to remote control of apparatus employed in warfare.

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Hedy Lamarr in her garden

Hedy Lamarr in her garden

Around 1942. According to the person from whom this photo was acquired, it was...

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Hedy Lamarr with cinematographer Ray June on the set of Ziegfeld Girl

Hedy Lamarr with cinematographer Ray June

1941. Based on Internet searches, this shot appears to have been taken on the...

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Hedy Lamarr boosts war-bond sales

Hedy Lamarr boosts war-bond sales

1942. Asked on radio about her attitude to war-bond sales, Hedy Lamarr doesn't mince...

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Hedy Lamarr at home

Hedy Lamarr at home

24 January 1942. A glimpse of Hedy Lamarr in her kitchen before going to...

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Hedy Lamarr with cinematographer Bud Lawton on the set of I Take This Woman.

Hedy Lamarr with cinematographer Bud Lawton

1940. The other side of the lens. On the set of I Take This...

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Hedy Lamarr – Uncle Sam's saleslady

Hedy Lamarr – Uncle Sam’s saleslady

1942. Hedy Lamarr is delighted to accept the challenge when the Treasury Department asks...

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When their patent application is approved in August 1942, Hedy and Antheil offer it to the US government. But the powers-that-be just sit on it, regarding the device as too unwieldy. They are more interested in having Hedy do some tours to sell war bonds. She accepts the invitation and throws herself wholeheartedly behind the initiative.

All the ships dispatched to defend the US during the Cuban Missile Crisis will be equipped with frequency-hopping technology (the paper rolls replaced by electronic circuitry) to secure their communications. But the technology itself will remain a secret until it is declassified in 1981. By the time its commercial potential is realized, the patent will have expired and others will profit hugely from it. It will not be until 1997 that Hedy and Antheil (by this time deceased) will be officially recognized for their invention and receive the sixth annual Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Award. Hedy will be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame posthumously in 2014.

Is the idea behind spread spectrum a one-off for Hedy? It’s difficult to know. There’s a story about her at age five taking apart and reassembling a music box. Antheil is certainly impressed by her inquisitiveness and ingenuity. And in interviews towards the end of her life she talks about how, while she was dating Howard Hughes, she designed a new wing shape to make his planes more aerodynamic. That’s about the size of it. Whatever her credentials as an inventor, though, Hedy Lamarr is no airhead. When she leaves MGM in 1945, she partners with Jack Chertok, producer of The Conspirators (one of her 1942 movies) to set up Mars Productions, a production company. She goes on to produce The Strange Woman (1946 – arguably the showcase for her finest performance) and Dishonored Lady (1947) as well as attempting to make further movies in Italy. She amasses a considerable art collection that includes works by the likes of Modigliani, Chagall, Rodin, Dufy, Vlaminck, Rouault, Utrillo and Renoir. And late in life she proves herself to be quite an astute investor so that when she dies in 2000, she leaves behind an estate worth $3.3 million – mainly shares.

Hedy Lamarr – bad judgment

Unfortunately, intelligence doesn’t necessarily translate into good judgment, let alone wisdom. Hedy is not afraid to make decisions and in too many cases she opts for the wrong course of action. This is the case with regard to both her professional and her private life. With the benefit of hindsight, Hedy will admit that she had poor taste both in scripts and in husbands. It’s difficult to argue with that.

Let’s start with her career. The movies in which an actor or actress appears can make or break their career. When she arrives in Hollywood, Hedy realizes that the place is full of wannabees looking for roles, that her contract makes no guarantees and that if she’s to be successful she has to engineer an opening.

She’s fortunate to run into Charles Boyer at a party; it is thanks to him that she gets a starring role in Algiers, her first and breakthrough Hollywood movie. She’s unfortunate that even after she makes headlines, her employers, Louis B Mayer and MGM, have pretty much no idea how to use her. They do a great job of building her image through a stream of glamorous stills. But the films in which they cast her range from second-rate to downright bad.

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Hedy Lamarr in Algiers

Hedy Lamarr in Algiers

1938. In February, Hedy gets her first break. She meets Charles Boyer at a...

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Hedy Lamarr alongside Judy Garland and Lana Turner in Ziegfeld Girl

Hedy Lamarr in Ziegfeld Girl

1940. Here's Hedy Lamarr alongside her co-stars, Judy Garland and Lana Turner. Looking back...

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Hedy Lamarr in Tortilla Flat

Hedy Lamarr in Tortilla Flat

1942. Tortilla Flat, based on an early novel by John Steinbeck, gives Hedy Lamarr...

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Hedy Lamarr in The Heavenly Body

Hedy Lamarr in The Heavenly Body

1943. The title says it all – Hedy Lamarr is cast in an essentially...

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Hedy Lamarr as Tondelayo in White Cargo

Hedy Lamarr as Tondelayo in White Cargo

1942. Hedy Lamarr covered in brown make-up as Tondelayo in White Cargo. She appears...

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Hedy Lamarr in the Conspirators

Hedy Lamarr in the Conspirators

1944. The Conspirators is a tale of romance, intrigue and adventure set in Lisbon...

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Hedy Lamarr on the set of Experiment Perilous

Hedy Lamarr on the set of Experiment Perilous

1944. For Experiment Perilous, a psychological mystery set in the early years of the...

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Hedy Lamarr in The Strange Woman

Hedy Lamarr in The Strange Woman

1946. In late summer 1945, Hedy partners with Jack Chertok, producer of The Conspirators...

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Hedy Lamarr in Dishonored Lady

Hedy Lamarr in Dishonored Lady

1947. Dishonored Lady was always going to struggle to be a success given its...

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Worst of all, in 1942 Mayer turns down Warner Bros when they come calling, refusing to loan Hedy out to star opposite Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. Instead, she ends up in the toe-curling White Cargo. Two years later, Hedy has opportunities to star in Laura and Gaslight. She rejects both of them (Gene Tierney and Ingrid Bergman say hi!). Had she appeared in just one of that trio of films, how different might her career trajectory have been and how differently might she be remembered?  As it is, how many Hedy Lamarr movies can you remember off the top of your head? None, right?

Relatively early in her career, a certain litigiousness starts to characterize Hedy’s affairs. In 1943, she sues Loew’s and MGM for failing to pay her the $2,000 a week stipulated in her contract. They claim that the reason for this is a wartime executive order, issued by President Roosevelt, limiting salaries to $25,000 a year. The case is settled out of court. But as time goes by, it does seem as if Hedy is rather too keen on litigation, and this tendency will dog her for pretty much the rest of her life because all too often courts will fail to find in her favour.

More often than not, Hedy’s litigation has to do with money. Hedy’s attitude to it is ambiguous. On the one hand, money matters to her and she worries about not having enough of it. On the other, she spends lavishly, which for a time she can afford to do. She gets into the habit of living in the best homes with the finest furnishings, amassing an amazing art collection, and travelling whenever and wherever she wants.

Hedy Lamarr with Charlie Chaplin at the LA Tennis Club
1942. Hedy Lamarr with Charlie Chaplin

After she leaves MGM in late summer 1945, she sets up her own production company, Mars Productions, in partnership with Jack Chertok, producer of her 1944 film, The Conspirators. They manage to find financial backing from producer, Howard Stromberg and their first film, The Strange Woman, is a bit of a triumph even though Hedy doesn’t get on with chosen director Edgar Ulmer. But their second movie, Dishonored Lady, is a turkey.

Hedy’s career is brought back from the brink by her appearance in Cecil B DeMille’s outrageous biblical epic Samson and Delilah (1949), the highest grossing movie of the decade. But she falls out with Paramount by refusing to help promote the film unless paid top dollar to do so.

Soon she is sinking her fortune into her own productions, taking advantage of the facilities offered by Rome. She’s well out of her depth, her projects end in failure and she runs out of road. She’s over-reached herself – spent too much money, fallen out with too many people (she’s acquired a reputation for being difficult to work with), burnt too many bridges.

In her autobiography she summarizes her attitude to money:

I figured out that I had made—and spent—some $30 million. … I advise everybody not to save; spend your money. Most people save all their lives and give it to somebody else. Money is to be enjoyed.

Hedy Lamarr’s private life is messy and sad. She is married and divorced six times: to munitions magnate Fritz Mandl: screenwriter Gene Markey; actor John Loder; nightclub owner Ernest Stauffer; oil millionaire W Howard Lee; and lawyer Lewis W Boies Jr. None of her marriages last more than six years and she doesn’t always maximize what she could get from her divorce settlements. Meanwhile, she has many affairs. Sadly, such turmoil is not unusual for attractive women trying to make careers in Hollywood.

By the mid-1960s, Hedy struggles to pay her utility bills and doesn’t always know where her next meal is coming from. Her ghost-written, sexed-up autobiography, Ecstasy and Me, published in 1966, is a pretty desperate attempt to raise some much-needed money. But she’s horrified when she reads it and (surprise, surprise!) contests its accuracy in court. Much of the content is indeed dubious and sensational.

She reaches her nadir when she is arrested for shoplifting in 1966 and again in 1991. She is fortunate to get away with it on both occasions.

Hedy Lamarr – what to make of her?

Let’s be clear from the outset. Hedy Lamarr is no angel. She has quite a temper and can be difficult to live with – John Loder, her third husband, should know. And as she establishes herself as a star, she gains a reputation (dubious at first but increasingly credible) as a real prima donna.

Hedy Lamarr looks sultry
Around 1940. Hedy Lamarr looks sultry

But it would be unfair to see her as just a spoiled diva who gets what’s coming to her. There are certainly some extenuating factors. Let’s start with her looks. Reflecting on her life, Hedy would suggest that:

My face has been my misfortune. It has attracted six unsuccessful marriage partners. It has attracted all the wrong people into my boudoir My face is a mask I can’t remove. I must live with it. I curse it.

She embodies the fate of so many beautiful women drawn to Hollywood, preyed upon and spat out. And it’s worth adding that, as Richard Avedon observed, beauty can be isolating. Hedy is undoubtedly lonely in the US and it’s easy to imagine that her looks and her shyness being a fatal combination for her. In 1952, actor Farley Granger attended a private party at which he recalled seeing Hedy:

She was very shy, very quiet, and very retiring. She just kind of receded almost into the woodwork. She kept very much to herself, you know.

Indeed, what comes through as you read Hedy Lamarr’s biographies and interviews with those who knew her is that she is a very private person. So, while acting may provide a channel for the more extrovert side of her personality, perhaps it turns out not to be the ideal career for her. In Hedy Lamarr Reveals She’ll Retire from Films in the January 24 1951 edition of the Los Angeles Examiner, gossip columnist Louella Parsons quotes a letter:

Dear Louella,

To straighten out all various statements about my retiring from the screen I want you to know it is true for the simple reason that I would like the privilege of a private life. As for marriage it is the normal desire of any woman, when I find the man I love enough to be my husband and father of my children.

Fond love to you,

Hedy Lamarr

By the late-1940s if not before, perhaps because of the mounting pressure and expectations, Hedy’s mind seems to be in a fragile state. Again, her public confidante is Louella Parsons, who reveals in The Strange Case of Hedy Lamarr (Photoplay, September, 1947) that, “with all the things in her past, and all she still holds of the material things of life, Hedy has been dangerously close to a nervous breakdown for the past year and she is still far from well.”

Her former co-star, John Fraser, paints a harrowing picture of Hedy’s mental decline in an email to Stephen Shearer:

In 1952 Hedy was neurotic and completely unable to communicate socially. In company, she was unaware of anyone but herself. Her need to be the centre of attention meant that whenever she appeared in public, she launched into a meaningless monologue. She was accompanied by her PA, Frankie Dawson and sometimes by her psychiatrist, who wasn’t doing her much good.

From around the mid-1950s to the early-1970s, Hedy is treated by New York physician Max Jacobson, nicknamed “Miracle Max” and “Dr Feelgood.” He has arrived in New York from Berlin in 1936 and his practice attracts the rich and famous including an impressive roster of Hollywood movie celebrities – Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart, Yul Brynner, Montgomery Clift, Cecil B DeMille, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, Marilyn Monroe, David O Selznick, Elizabeth Taylor and Billy Wilder. According to Wikipedia, Jacobson is known for his “miracle tissue regenerator” shots, which consist of amphetamines, animal hormones, bone marrow, enzymes, human placenta, painkillers, steroids, and multivitamins.

Add to such a lethal cocktail of drugs the shock Hedy suffers when, in December 1958, her 11-year-old son, Anthony, out riding his bike, is hit by a car and seriously injured, and her erratic behaviour is hardly surprising. To compound matters, as her looks fade in the 1960s she undergoes some pretty disastrous cosmetic surgery that leaves her reluctant to show her face in public.

The last word on Hedy Lamarr goes to John Fraser:

She had been fawned upon, indulged and exploited ever since she had reached the age of puberty. Her extraordinary intelligence did not encompass wisdom. How could she have learnt about the values that matter, about kindness and acceptance and laughter, in the Dream Factory that is Hollywood? She had been thrust into the limelight at a pitilessly early age, been devoured by rapacious lovers and producers who saw her ravishing beauty as a ticket to success, and who looked elsewhere when she began to grow older. Beauty and money in moderation are undoubtedly a blessing. In excess, they are surely a curse.

Want to know more about Hedy Lamarr?

The two main sources for this piece are Hedy’s autobiography Ecstasy and Me (to be read with a large pinch of salt) and Stephen Michael Shearer’s Beautiful: The Life of Hedy Lamarr. Other titles are available at Amazon and elsewehere. Alexandra Dean’s documentary film, Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, provides an overview of her life, shining a spotlight on her prowess as an inventor.

Other topics you may be interested in…

Ava Gardner – the journey to Hollywood
Gene Tierney – a sick rose
Hedy Lamarr in Vienna
Hedy Lamarr before she came to Hollywood

Filed Under: Films, Photographers, Stars Tagged With: Algiers, Charles Boyer, Clarence Sinclair Bull, Dishonored Lady, Ecstasy, Experiment Perilous, Fritz Mandl, Gene Tierney, George Antheil, George Hurrell, Hedy Lamarr, Lady of the Tropics, Laszlo Willinger, Louis B Mayer, The Conspirators, The Heavenly Body, The Strange Woman, Tortilla Flat, Virgil Apger, Ziegfeld Girl

Cover Girl – fashion goes to the movies

Cover Girl is a 1944 movie in which Hollywood embraces the business of fashion. It offers an opportunity to take a look at the modeling businesps, then burgeoning but still in its infancy. And it provides a showcase for the fashions of the day and the talents of Rita Hayworth and a bevy of models.

It’s a bright spectacle with songs by Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin, costumes by Travis Banton, Muriel King and Gwen Wakeling, choreography by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, and that special early-Technicolor lushness. Donen would go on to direct Funny Face, another musical about the world of fashion, with Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn as its stars. Funny Face would help to cement the reputation of Paris after World War II as the world capital of fashion.

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Anita Colby

Anita Colby

1943. Anita Colby – "the most beautiful face this side of heaven and the sharpest tongue this side of hell," according to Valdemar Vetlugen, editor...

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Cecilia Meagher

Cecilia Meagher

1943. Cecilia Meagher began modeling in 1936 when she was barely 17 years old. In the early 1940s she signed with Conover models. In 1942,...

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Leslie Brooks

Leslie Brooks

1943. Leslie Brooks started her career around 1940 as a model. In 1941 she signed with Columbia and had a makeover: she changed her name...

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Peggy Lloyd

Peggy Lloyd

1943. Peggy was adopted age five by Harold Lloyd, a famous comedian, a shrewd investor and the richest man in Hollywood. Despite the family’s wealth,...

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Eileen McClory

Eileen McClory

1943. Eileen McClory is a vivacious, cute, girl-next-door type, so has just the kind of looks and personality that Harry Conover likes. So when she...

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Betty Jane Hess

Betty Jane Hess

1943. Betty Jane Hess began modeling in 1938, when she was barely 17 years old. Like many aspiring models, she competed in various pageants and...

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Dusty Anderson

Dusty Anderson

1943. Dusty started out as Ruth Anderson from Toledo, Ohio. Harry Conover spotted her in New York “doing some designing”, decided that the name Ruth...

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Jinx Falkenburg

Jinx Falkenburg

1943. With her hazel eyes and lithe figure, Jinx Falkenburg is one of America’s highest-paid cover-girl models during World War II and, with her...

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The plot of Cover Girl is both pure fantasy and pretty banal. A Brooklyn nightclub owner loves his principal dancing girl. The dancing girl loves the nightclub owner. But the dancing girl has a driving ambition to become a famous cover girl… Bear in mind that while the world of Cover Girl might feel like it has nothing to do with reality, former Vogue editor Rosamond Bernier would recall:

Vogue was something in those days. I came in my first morning and saw all the editors at the typewriters wearing hats with veils and big rhinestone chokers and earrings. I looked with absolute wonder!

To give you a flavour, here are three extracts from the movie

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put me to the test

1. Put Me To The Test

Set to Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin’s Put Me To The Test, this number is one of the movie’s highlights: two phenomenally athletic and graceful dancers, a treacherous set (different levels, stairs, a ramp) and no quick cutting to mask mistakes. The supporting girls and the costumes are the icing on the cake.

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the shoot

2. The shoot

So they’ve hammed it up for the movie, but this scene offers a light-hearted insight into the art behind the stills photography that is such a focus for aenigma. We see the make-up artist (remember Perc Westmore – the makeup king of Hollywood?), the hairdresser, the dapper photographer and his assistant, and the final product – the magazine itself.

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the cover girls

3. The cover girls and round the mountain

We’re in the Wheaton Theatre. The curtain goes up and an enormous lens is lowered onto a podium in the middle of the stage. Through the lens we see each cover girl in turn enter from the left and watch her pose full-length and close-up. Her session ends with a glimpse of the magazine cover on which she appears. The whole thing has a nice pace and wit.

It's followed by the wonderful "round the mountain" scene in which Rita Hayworth dances down and back up a cloud-shrouded Art Deco mountain peak. In this version, the original soundtrack has been replaced by a Madonna mash-up with Victor Cheng.

Cover Girl – the business of modeling

In 1944, the modeling business in the US is dominated by two agencies.

Andrea Johnson, John Robert Powers model.
Mid-1940s. Andrea Johnson, John Robert Powers model. Read more.

John Robert Powers has blazed the trail. In the 1920s as an out-of-work actor he finds himself using his network to help photographers find models. He spots a business opportunity and sets up shop. As he later recalls, he:

…had their pictures taken, made up a catalogue containing their descriptions and measurements, and sent it to anyone in New York who might be a prospective client – commercial photographers, advertisers, department stores, artists.

The depression that follows the 1929 stock market crash enables him to broaden his talent pool by attracting debutantes whose families are on their uppers. At the same time he works hard to make the business respectable. His success changes the social status of models. Society hostess extaordinaire Elsa Maxwell says that she might give a party without debutantes but she wouldn’t dream of doing so without inviting a few Powers Girls.

The 1940s see Powers basking in the light of success and publicity and expanding his business portfolio. He has a radio show and writes a regular syndicated newspaper column, Secrets of Charm. Warner Bros release The Powers Girl (1943), a movie about two sisters living in New York and aspiring to become high-profile models. And Powers Girls are hired by the Hollywood studios and go out with and marry the rich and famous.

In 1941 Powers publishes the first of many books, The Powers Girls. Promising “The story of models and modeling and the natural steps by which attractive girls are created,” it’s partly a behind-the-scenes look at the agency, partly a beauty and grooming guide, and partly a marketing piece. In 1943 he launches a correspondence course, including “practical hints about what men really do and don’t like.” Meanwhile, his wife begins teaching charm courses covering grooming, diction and coiffure, the first step along the road to a nationwide chain of John Robert Powers Schools. But Powers has taken his eye off his core modeling business and this provides an opening for a new competitor.

Anita Colby
Mid-1940s. Anita Colby, model, agent and businesswoman extraordinaire. Read more.

Harry Conover begins his career in the modeling business as a model and works for John Robert Powers before deciding to set up in competition. He’s handsome, suave and unscrupulous, taking with him models Anita Colby, Phyllis Brown and her boyfriend, who agrees to invest in the start-up. The boyfriend is Gerald Ford and in 1974 he will become President of the US.

Harry differentiates his agency from that of his erstwhile employer by promoting a different kind of model. He mocks the Powers Girls as “Adenoid Annies, rattling bundles of skin and bones.” Focusing on preppies and campus queens, he pioneers a new type of model – “the windblown outdoor girl”, in the words of Bob Fertig his head of promotion. Conover calls these recruits Conover Coeds, then Cover Girls – and that’s where Columbia’s Cover Girl gets it inspiration and title. While, taking his cue from Hollywood, Conover develops a habit of rechristening his models – including his future wife.

In 1941, the winner of a Miss Atlantic City contest turns up at the agency. She introduces herself to Conover: “I’m Jessica Wilcox.” “You’re Candy Johnson,” he replies. “And your rate is $5 an hour.” He later shortens her name from Johnson to Jones because she has trouble remembering the longer version. By 1943, thanks to her looks and his promotion – including candy-striped outfits and calling cards – she is a top model. And in 1946 Conover marries her.

But the marriage is fated from the start. Conover is always chasing skirt – seemingly out with a different model night after night. He is also less concerned than Powers about respectability – he has a much more laissez-faire attitude when playboys approach him for dates with his models. “Right in my own office we have the very thing that every man looks for, works for, fights for and dies for,” Conover says, just before being excommunicated by the Catholic Church.

In 1952, having dropped out of the agency business and franchised his schools, Powers will move to Beverly Hills, where he will settle until he dies, age 84. Conover, by contrast, will die age 53, having succumbed to a classic combo of booze, lechery and profligacy. The modeling business, like the movie business, is unforgiving. It has a habit of chewing up its practitioners and spitting them out.

Cover Girl – behind the scenes

Rita Hayworth and co-stars on the set of Cover Girl
1943. Filming a scene for Cover Girl. Photo by Ned Scott. Read more.

Cover Girl has more in common with Gilda than their very different plots and styles might lead you to expect. Both are Columbia productions commissioned by Harry Cohn. Both are directed by Charles Vidor with cinematography by Rudolph Maté. And both have scripts by Virginia Van Upp.

Cohn is known to be tightfisted but he makes an exception for Cover Girl. He sets aside no less than a million dollars for the production and accepts it going US $600,000 over budget, with the lavish dance numbers devised by Kelly in no small part to blame for the overspend.

The movie is quite a coup for the Conover agency – a massive riposte to (and possibly inspired by) The Powers Girl, released the previous year. Harry Conover and Anita Colby are both employed by the studio as “technical consultants”. The latter is in charge of a troupe of Conover models who travel west from New York in a special railway carriage – a great publicity stunt that’s lapped up by the press.

The girls are all excited about what lies in store for them in Tinseltown but they’re in for a nasty surprise. Harry Cohn has made arrangements to ensure that they stay out of trouble. Francine Counihan, one of the models and also Anita Colby’s sister remembers:

Cover Girl was produced by Harry Cohn. Oh, he was a monster. He decided to put us all in one house together where he could see that nobody could get out. So we stayed in Marion Davies’ home in California. He only let us out to go shopping.

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Rita and the gang

Rita and the gang

1943. On a lawn, presumably outside the studio, Rita Hayworth poses with the cover girls. It looks like the photographer must be perched in a...

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Lucky man!

Lucky man!

1943. Some people have all the luck. Rita Hayworth gives Tech Sergeant Gordon L Smith a peck on the cheek. A caption on the back...

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Tea time

Tea time

1943. The stars relax in the hot California sunshine during a break in filming. The maid (as usual) is uncredited. A caption on the back...

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Susann Shaw and Jinx Falkenburg, cover girls

Susann Shaw and Jinx Falkenburg, cover girls

1944. Two of the era's supermodels pose on the set of Cover Girl. Susann Shaw is taken with the fashion sketch she's holding, while Jinx...

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And there they stay for months while Harry Cohn apparently searches for an actress to play the lead role. Surely he’s known all along that this is to be a vehicle for his studio’s leading star, Rita Hayworth? Perhaps he just likes the feeling of power over the girls.

Anyway, whatever the reason, there’s a great story about how all the girls sneak out one night to go to a party. They have to return at intervals, one by one, to get past the security guards. To the guards’ growing consternation, each in turn announces herself as Anita Colby, who is the only member of the troupe allowed out. Inevitably, the last one back is the real Anita Colby.

Meanwhile, Anita Colby, who also acts as the girls’ agent, makes the most of the stay by managing to book three magazine covers each for the girls. Her success with the press doesn’t go unnoticed and she’s appointed “Feminine Director” of the David O Selznick studio.

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Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photo probably by Ned Scott.

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Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photo by Robert Coburn.

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Rita Hayworth in a scene from Cover Girl

Rita Hayworth in a scene from Cover Girl

1943. Photo by Ned Scott.

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Rita Hayworth in a scene from Cover Girl

Rita Hayworth in a scene from Cover Girl

1943. Photo by Ned Scott.

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Rita Hayworth in a scene from Cover Girl

Rita Hayworth in a scene from Cover Girl

1943. Photo by Ned Scott.

One of those most closely involved with the way Rita looks in Cover Girl is Robert Coburn, head of Columbia’s Photo Gallery. In John Kobal’s biography of Rita Hayworth, Coburn talks about photographing Columbia’s biggest star:

1943. Martha Outlaw by Robert Coburn. Read more.

The contract I signed put me in complete charge of the studio’s stills department. Mind you, if I ever relaxed and let a bad picture of Hayworth or any other star out, Cohn would call me on the carpet immediately.

In those days we had the Johnson Office, and if we had any cleavage showing the pictures would be sent back. The Code was very strict. Any sign of breasts, even the shadow between, had to disappear. A woman wasn’t supposed to have any. We spent all our time touching photos up.

Hayworth didn’t need touching up. She didn’t treat herself badly, she wasn’t an all-night carouser, although naturally we had to watch for wrinkles under the eyes and around the neck. Of course, any skin marks, small pimples, we would take them out. I don’t remember Hayworth ever looking at a picture, I don’t think she ever cared how she looked in a picture. She’d come in once in a while and ask how they looked but she didn’t bother checking or approving them. That’s rare for women. Whereas Cohn was interested in her every minute of the day. He’d call whenever he knew from the call sheet that I was shooting her. They fought a lot. I told Cohn a million times that if he stopped picking on her I’d get what I wanted but he kept needling her and fitting in more hours.

I’d usually talk to her all the time when I was photographing her, getting her in the mood. Then, I’d catch her at her peak. She had the famous Hayworth look, looking over the shoulder, and after doing three of those she’d had it. She’d say, “What do you want that for? Get something else.” She didn’t realize that she didn’t have that come-and-get-me look except in that one pose.

Cover girl Rita Hayworth with magazines
1941. Rita Hayworth contemplates her cover girl status. Photo by George Hurrell. Read more.

Cover Girl – Rita learns new role

“Cover Girl” – Rita learns new role is the title of an article that appears in the 18 January 1943 issue of LIFE magazine.

Rita Hayworth is just a little bit bigger in the bust and in the hips than the average top-notch photographer’s model. The movie star is 35 in. around bust and hips whereas the average model is, at best. only 34.

These extra inches, which look fine on Rita Hayworth, did not worry Columbia Pictures at all when they cast her for the lead part in their forthcoming movie, The Cover Girl. The movie, which goes into production soon, will tell about photographers’ models who appear on the covers of national magazines. In it Miss Hayworth will combine her looks, figure and talents with Technicolor, some songs and a complicated story about two cover girls, one of 30 years ago and the other of today. The second cover girl will be the first one’s daughter. Miss Hayworth will play both of them.

When Miss Hayworth was in New York City recently, it occurred to Columbia Pictures that she ought to go through a model’s routine to see how a photographer’s model really worked. Miss Hayworth, who is a game girl, spent a full day working out of Harry Conover’s model agency, making believe she was a real cover girl. She learned that beauty is not enough.

For $3 an hour – $10 an hour if in great demand – models work exhausting hours in front of hot lights and fussy photographers, always trying to be charming and intelligent. To get work they have to be on time for appointments, be well-groomed and sweet-tempered. They spend days tramping around from client to client just to keep up their contacts. They are on their feet so much, in fact, that after being a model for a few months a girl’s feet invariably grow a whole shoe-size bigger.

The girls with Rita are Conover models, each chosen by a national magazine to play its cover girl in The Cover Girl. Being the star, Miss Hayworth will not represent any single magazine. This week, however, she is LIFE’s own cover girl.

Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth get hitched
9 September 1943. Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth get hitched. Read more.

In fact during the shooting of Cover Girl it turns out that Rita has two new roles. The second is as the wife of Orson Welles. It’s no secret that the couple have been dating. Even so, when it happens on 7 September 1943 their marriage takes everyone by surprise. According to Lee Bowman, the day the teams are shooting the film’s wedding scene, Rita arrives on the set.

She looked very lovely sitting there in her wedding dress [for the movie] while the crew were setting up. Rita sat there with her hands in her lap, her eyes very big and a lovely big pussy smile on her face. When any of us asked, “What is it, Rita?” she’d just shake her head and say, “Mmm, I’ve got a secret.” Wouldn’t say anything else. The first we knew what it was came during the lunch break when somebody brought us the papers with the headlines.”

While Rita is on cloud nine, director Charles Vidor is anything but. According to the film’s producer, Arthur Schwartz:

And you know who was terribly jealous and unhappy? The director. He had fallen in love with her. He came and cried on my shoulder and didn’t want to go on. He had to continue shooting every day and she was now married and looking more radiant all the time. She had a tremendous empathy, tremendous sex appeal. All those fifteen or so Cover Girls together didn’t have what she had.

Cover Girl – just a piece of fluff?

Cover Girl wins the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ annual award for Scoring of a Musical Picture. It is also nominated for Color Cinematography, Color Art Direction, Sound Recording and Best Song.

Bosley Crowther, the influential film critic of The New York Times from 1940 to 1967, says in his review:

The script is so frankly familiar that it must have come from the public domain. And the characters are as sleekly mechanical as only musical comedy characters dare to be. But it rainbows the screen with dazzling décor. It has Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth to sing and dance. And virtually every nook and corner is draped with beautiful girls. Further, this gaudy obeisance to divine femininity has some rather nice music in it from the tune-shop of Jerome Kern.

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Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photographer unknown.

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Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photographer unknown.

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Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photographer unknown.

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At the office

At the office

1943. Rita Hayworth and models pose at the offices of Vanity magazine. This is just the epitome of mid-1940s chic in terms of both the...

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Heavenly sight

Heavenly sight

1943. In this ravishing fantasy sequence, Rita Hayworth appears at the top of a stylized Art Deco mountain down which she dances into the arms...

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Round the mountain

Round the mountain

1943. Having indulged her admirers, Rita Hayworth dances back up to the mountain peak in a rain of golden snowflakes. The caption on the back...

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Later on, Arthur Schwartz, whom Harry Cohn brought in to produce Cover Girl, recalls:

In spite of everything people have said about Harry Cohn, his vulgarity, his lack of education, neither of which was a unique characteristic among the men in his position – he had an instinct for quality. Cover Girl, as I made it, couldn’t have been made at WB: Jack Warner wouldn’t have had the taste somehow, while at Metro they would have overproduced it – too many girls and too many of everything.

Cover Girl magazines and models
The magazines and models: Cosmopolitan, Betty Jane Hess; McCall’s, Betty Jane Graham; Vogue, Susann Shaw; Harper’s Bazaar, Cornelia B Von Hessert; Woman’s Home Companion, Rose May Robson; The American Home, Francine Counihan (Anita Colby’s sister); Mademoiselle, Peggy Lloyd; Glamour, Eileen McClory; Coronet, Cecilia Meagher; Liberty, Karen Gaylord; Redbook, Martha Outlaw; The American, Jean Colleran; Farm Journal, Dusty Anderson; Look, Cheryl (Archibald) Archer; Collier’s, Helen Mueller; Rita Hayworth. Collage copyright and courtesy of Blonde at the Film.

In his programme notes for the BFI, director Karel Reisz observes:

In Cover Girl we can see the transition from the old to the new taking place. Though its story has the usual backstage background, many of its numbers are staged in the open air and characters dance in it for the joy of dancing and as an expression of mood, not simply as professional performers. The design of costumes and sets moreover, is notably above the usual standard of the routine product. Cover Girl also saw the emergence of Gene Kelly as a choreographer playing the role which he has since played many times: he dances pieces of the ‘plot’ instead of interpolating numbers, and his style is that of a ballet dancer, not a ‘hoofer’.

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Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

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Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

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Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

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Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

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Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

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Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

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Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

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Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Cover Girl – want to know more?

Apart from the LIFE article, key sources are Michael Gross’ book, Model – the ugly business of beautiful women, and John Kobal’s biography of Rita Hayworth. You can find my favourite online article at Blonde at the Film. Other articles worth reading are at The Vintage Cameo and moviediva. And there’s also Caren Roberts-Frenzel’s beautifully illustrated Rita Hayworth: A Photographic Retrospective. For biographies of some of the cover girls, take a look at Those obscure objects of desire.

Cecilia Meagher
1944. Cecilia Meagher by George Hurrell. Read more.

Other topics you may be interested in…

Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford in a passionate embrace
Gilda – the movie that made Rita Hayworth into a bombshell
Ludmilla Tchérina – a throbbing, pulsating dynamo
The Lady from Shanghai – the weirdest great movie ever made

Filed Under: Fashion, Films, Stars Tagged With: Andrea Johnson, Anita Colby, Arthur Schwartz, Betty Jane Hess, Bosley Crowther, Candy Jones, Cecilia Meagher, Charles Vidor, Columbia Pictures, Cover Girl, Dusty Anderson, Eileen McClory, Francine Counihan, Gene Kelly, George Hurrell, Gwen Wakeling, Harry Cohn, Harry Conover, Jinx Falkenburg, John Robert Powers, Karel Reisz, Leslie Brooks, Martha Outlaw, Muriel King, Orson Welles, Peggy Lloyd, Rita Hayworth, Robert Coburn, Rosamond Bernier, Rudolph Maté, Stanley Donen, The Powers Girl, Travis Banton

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