The Christmas season always inspires countless features about festive party gowns. While most of us probably end up favouring reasonable and functional clothes that allow us to move around, play, dance or just relax, dreaming about impossibly grand gowns doesn't hurt.
The best inspirations obviously come from films: one of the most extraordinary gowns for the festive season would definitely be the star studded ensemble donned by Hedy Lamarr in Ziegfeld Girls, directed by Robert Z. Leonard.
The costumes for this 1941 film – starring Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr and Lana Turner as Susan Gallagher, Sandra Kolter and Sheila Reganas, three aspiring showgirls – were created by one of the most famous costume designers in Hollywood, Adrian.
Hedy Lamarr, born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Austria, was known for her beauty and glamour (and her controversial first film Ecstasy, 1933, that made her notorious for including nude scenes and Lamarr simulating an orgasm). Yet, though promoted by Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM, as the "world's most beautiful woman", Lamarr, who also inspired the looks of Disney's Snow White and of the original Catwoman, was much more than just a striking beauty, so there's more behind the starry gown.
Lamarr had an inventor's mind and in her spare time she would try and relieve her boredom from the lack of challenging acting roles by coming up with cutting edge inventions. Aviation tycoon Howard Hughes knew about this passion and Lamarr explained in interviews that she suggested him to change the square design of his aeroplanes to a more streamlined shape, based on pictures of the fastest birds and fish she had seen in books.
In the '40s Lamarr wanted to join the National Inventors Council, but was told by NIC member Charles F. Kettering to help the war effort by using her celebrity status and beauty to sell war bonds. She did so, but during the Second World War she also patented with composer and pianist George Antheil a "Secret Communication System" (Download US2292387_Lamarr).
It consisted in a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes that used spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to defeat the threat of getting communications tracked and jammed by the enemies. The invention was granted a patent under US Patent 2,292,387 on August 11, 1942 (it was filed using her married name Hedy Kiesler Markey), but, considering it had come from outside the military, the U.S. Navy ended up using it only in 1962 (at the time of the Cuban missile crisis).
Lamarr wasn't able to receive compensation because, for her to receive any compensation, the Navy should have used her patent before it expired (besides, according to US Patent Law, when a patent expires an inventor has six years to sue for payment and Lamarr didn't know about it; you can discover more about this story in the documentary Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, written and directed by Alexandra Dean).
In 1997, Lamarr and Antheil received the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award and the Invention Convention's Bulbie Gnass Spirit of Achievement Bronze Award, given to individuals whose creative lifetime achievements in the arts, sciences, business or invention fields had contributed to society (Lamarr was the first woman to receive it).
As the years passed, the principles of Lamarr and Antheil's frequency-hopping spectrum technology became the basis for a series of modern applications including bluetooth, wi-fi, cell phones and military technology. Some say that Lamarr's career as a scientist was probably derailed by her beauty, so, when you dream about festive gowns, try and ponder a bit about the story of Hedy Lamarr, who may have been a glamorous scientist rather than just a beautiful actress with a passion for inventions.
