Your favorite national security pop culture talk is back with Eric Pecinovsky, vice president of marketing at ClearanceJobs and resident documentary expert. He discusses the 2017 documentary Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, now streaming on Netflix. While best known as a Hollywood starlet, she should be most remembered for her significant technical and scientific achievements. Lamarr coinvented a radio guidance system called frequency hopping, considered the forerunner to Bluetooth technology.
Lindy Kyzer
Back by popular demand, Eric Pecinovsky, VP of marketing at ClearanceJobs.com. He is the resident pop culture expert at ClearanceJobs.com, I would say. I always turn to him to give me insights on the best documentaries and film series out there related to the ClearanceJobs.com genre. Just tell me a little bit about this latest one that you found, Eric. I’m going to make you intro it actually.
So it is a documentary called Bombshell, the Hedy Lamarr story, and I knew the name Heddy Lamarr. She was the famous actress, especially in the forties and fifties, and I think originally this documentary came out of PBS in their American Masters series, which if anybody is a documentary nerd, they are very well known about American Masters series. And then recently, I think in the past, I don’t know, three or four months, it then showed up on Netflix and I can’t remember honestly where I saw it first, whether it was on PBS or whether it’s on Netflix. But either way, that’s where it originated from. Obviously I did not know the main point of this documentary in terms of how Hedy contributed to some really interesting scientific ideas. It was very, very interesting to also not only to know that, but the bigger, larger story. The end result is basically at a point in her career or a point in her life, she came up with the idea of frequency hopping.
She was always an inventor in her life, even as a child. She also, in her spare time, she did a lot of different inventions. I mean, they never came to any real kind of commercial success, but she did actually create a lot of different inventions, especially they later discovered in her journals that she had lots and lots of ideas written down. But this particular one, she worked with a composer, I can’t remember his name off the top of my mind. They looked at a old piano where you would see kind of the notes going from the one line to the next line to the next line. She kind of got the idea of why couldn’t that work in terms of radio frequencies of hopping from one to the other continuously and knowing how and where it’ll hop and use that in. I think she initially applied it or wanted to apply it to torpedoes, and that was obviously the of the documentary bombshell, but also kind of the big contribution that she made. And it was eventually she did get the first patent on that idea. She was the very first one that had that. And it just is very interesting that she had done it because she was very much the very glamorous Hollywood star that you wouldn’t know that she kind of had this secret life of being an inventor.
Lindy Kyzer
I learned a ton. I had heard her name come across. I knew her again primarily as an actress. I’ve never read in depth about her, but in some aside or as a mention in, again, I think something even related to the Sisterhood of Spies or how women were involved in World War II, but whatever I read, I felt like totally undersold her actual contributions and her broader story, both what she accomplished as an inventor, but also just how interesting her life was, which most people’s lives are more interesting when we peel back. But I loved all the different layers, even in terms of bombshell. So obviously bombshell pertained to her career as a Hollywood star, but then they had this whole, again, I know you love conspiracy theories and rabbit trail, so I don’t want to tease to that too much, but I think I had read even about her as a potential spy in terms of, because she had this first marriage to someone who had potential ties to the Nazis, and she got her munitions background actually through her first marriage there, and then came to the U.S. and then created this technology.
But there are a lot of just different kind of theories around her as a person. But again, everything I read about her totally undersold her accomplishments, and it sounds like pretty much in her life she was really, I think, probably underappreciated, underrepresented, and really the government really tapped into her as a celebrity during World War II rather than her as a scientist. I wanted to talk about the shift, the documentary talks about that she built this technology and rather than, I don’t know, getting her to work on the Manhattan Project or something, it was like, Hey, why don’t you go sell war bonds? I was like, come on.
Eric Pecinovsky
Yeah. So I want to go back to what you said of her first marriage. I mean, early in the documentary, I think it’s important to see, and I think this is maybe why they do it, but they start off with her being, she’s Austrian, I believe. She really has a tremendous drive and she really pushes to get into the Austrian film industry. Then she ends up being, as you noted, noticed by the biggest or second biggest arms dealer in Austria who obviously dines with Mussolini. People suspect that that’s where she kind of got at least a foundational knowledge of how torpedoes and other weapons systems kind of worked, because I’m sure she had to attend a lot of dinners that talked about that at length. But even then when she pushed on and was not happy, being kind of the pretty wife, she left that marriage and went over to England and started as well as film and theater, and then was noticed by a Hollywood studio leader, kind of made her way then to America and became a star there again.
In terms of looking at somebody’s personality, she had just a huge drive. I got to say, even though all of those things that I mentioned had nothing to do with her scientific achievements, but she just had that ultimate drive throughout life to basically keep doing something different, pushing the boundaries, trying to get what she wanted basically. And she was very successful. And this kind of arise to the point of what you said with the kind of war bonds issue. I do think that probably, I mean, I don’t think anyone will really know whether how much her background marrying the quasi Nazis and arms dealer had to do with the government keeping it or arms length, but obviously it wasn’t that far because they definitely incorporated her into selling war bonds. So I think it was just obviously that time of history. I do think probably at the time her kind of Hollywood appearance or Hollywood personality probably did go against her because I’m sure the army would not love to have it leaked to the press that Hedy Lamarr was at the Pentagon in the scientific department. I’m sure they would be like, oh, we don’t want that to get out.
Lindy Kyzer
Mean her entire life was fascinating, and I love a documentary like this. I just love the nugget from her first husband, Fritz Mandel or whatever, how he was super controlling, did not want her to leave, and then I guess she hired a maid who looked like her, and that was how she got out is she hired the maid and then she put on the maid’s uniform and biked out of the house. He was not just going to let her leave. He was not the kind of person you could marry and actually leave. So she just escaped literally by putting on the maid’s uniform and then hopped on a cruise ship and tried to impress somebody headed to America and just a lot of inventiveness across her life and using all of the skills she had and her brilliance to kind of move on to the next thing and to the next thing.
Eric Pecinovsky
And something else that she did that I found was interesting, and again, went along the line of her independent streak and her drive. She was one of the very first Hollywood stars to produce and to fund her own movies. She did several of them now, unfortunately, they were not financial successes and it kind of put her in a bind financially. But that idea of doing that, especially probably a woman at that time was extremely unheard of and definitely against the kind of tides of the industry. And that might be partially why the films were not successful in terms of distributors and studios kind of playing along with the movies, probably didn’t really welcome that at all. But again, that’s just another example of her having that drive and doing something completely different and unheard of and kind of going against the tide.
Lindy Kyzer
No, and I think she was willing to use her femininity, not fight against it. She was clearly had constraints on her from being a woman. I think we are doing this slightly in honor of Women’s History month. I think there were definitely aspects of her life that might’ve been different if she had had more opportunity from being a different gender. I think one of her most famous quotes is, any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid. So the fact that someone so brilliant would say that I find highly ironic, but I think she used being probably underestimated to her advantage. And that’s the kind of a theme we just finished reading with ClearanceJobs, Sisterhood of Spies, which is a history of women in the CIA, and they talk a ton about how women were often really successful in espionage, not because of the femme fatal thing. I’ve heard Hedy Lamarr described as a kind of a modern day Mata Hari or whatever that play is, but the reality was she was doing things that you would absolutely not expect her to do and accomplishing things that you would not expect her to do pretty much at every stage of her career. So the example of, like you said, of making your own films to developing this technology with a composer, just kind of very interesting.
Eric Pecinovsky
Yeah, and I think to your point, what you said, she acknowledged her beauty and she acknowledged how people likely viewed her, but as you said, she tried to figure out how to take that as an advantage to accomplish what she really wanted to do.
Lindy Kyzer
We have to talk a little bit about how, I mean, again, the mom in me, it made me really sad. Hedy Lamarr, she did not get a good ending, Eric.
Eric Pecinovsky
No, she didn’t. It was kind depressing.
Lindy Kyzer
It was a little depressing. She just seemed kind of deeply unhappy. There was kind of a current of which that could be tied to a lot of things. It not like she had help, from age 16 on, she was kind of on her own. She was always having to work for her next advantage. I think that was probably incredibly stressful. She built this technology even in this patent and never even got clarity from the government. It took till the very end of her life for her to really see any form of recognition for what she had accomplished. And so you can never speculate what causes someone to have a good life and a bad life, but certainly she, again, it’s not a feel good story in terms of things did not go great for Hedy Lamarr, and I don’t think Hollywood comes out looking so great on this. They’re drugging people up and taking advantage of celebrities that are in their wheelhouse. Yeah, I thought, and Hollywood definitely came across as one of the villains for me. I did not feel good about Hollywood having watched the Hedy Lamarr story.
Eric Pecinovsky
Yeah, no, we talked about all the accomplishments professionally and like I said, scientifically, but her personal life definitely suffered. I don’t know because of that or I don’t know it was going to happen anyway, but from her marriages to her children just didn’t seem to have great, healthy relationships. And I don’t know exactly what caused that. And like you said, at the end as she kind of wound down, she didn’t really want to be out, talk to people, engage with people necessarily, at least personally. And like you said, Hollywood was part of that. I think there’s just a lot, and a lot of people, I don’t want to blanket the statement here, but a lot of very kind of successful people who have that kind of drive end up not having the best personal life. And sometimes, I don’t want to say it is always the case not, but you do sometimes see that where her drive potentially could have caused some of the issues, but the ending was not a high note.
Lindy Kyzer
You can’t speculate and go back and say, but I just do wonder if she’d gotten credit for that invention because towards the end of her life, a lot of her issues came down to she had all of this plastic surgery and supposedly was afraid for people to see her and didn’t want people to see her. So it became very overly obsessed about her appearance without seeming to, I was like, man, I wish she’d been inventing things or I wish she’d been applying her brain to doing those things. And for me, it shows the missed opportunity when we don’t take advantage of people who bring a good idea to the table. And maybe that was her own self, so maybe she had this path of science versus Hollywood presented to her, and she would’ve chosen to pursue Hollywood and the glamor and that life. But I was like, man, as a scientist, as an inventor, it seemed like there would’ve been a lot more opportunities for her and ones that maybe didn’t capitalize on this insecurity that she had, where, I mean, people want to be recognized for what they do.
And I think even, I’m going to bring it to ClearenceJobs a little bit. We’re a career site. We help people find career opportunities. I find so much in the workplace is about giving people recognition, seeing them as people valuing their accomplishments makes you happier in any career that you’re in. And she just did not see those career accomplishments and kind of never really, I don’t know, maybe it wouldn’t have been, but it would’ve been nice to see her drawn in to say, Hey, look at this. I mean, the documentary does a great homage to this at the end, showing all of the technologies, Bluetooth, wifi, these things were all follow on inventions to what she originally created. Allowing her to see that instead of looking at herself in the mirror all the time could have changed things for Hedy. No, I don’t know.
Eric Pecinovsky
No, I agree. It is one of those where you don’t really know what happens, but when you end up watching this, you’re like, yes, could things have been different, could have turned out differently, and how and where, at what point in her life and all that, you re-examine all of that. Yeah, it’s interesting and we’ll never really know the answer.
Lindy Kyzer
Okay, so I’m known as the person on ClearanceJobs who does roundabout conversations around everything. You’re known as a person on ClearanceJobs in addition to being the Godfather, the Oracle, who can fix things when we all break them – also a resident rabbit trail expert. So I have to know you always, every time you watch something like this, you find something else to research or some other fun facts that your research dug into. So what is the Rabbit Trail from the Hedy Lamarr story?
Eric Pecinovsky
Oh, the Rabbit Trail. Okay. Well, so the rabbit trail for me was I was not aware that she was, well, there’s a lot of things I wasn’t aware of, but there was one thing that I wasn’t aware of, that she was a actual legitimate film actress in Austria and that she starred in a film that was banned by the Pope and Hitler. I thought, wow, and I didn’t know anything about that, and there’s a whole rabbit hole there in terms of that and her relationship with the arms dealer, her whole first, like you said, section of her life was just, I knew she was at a Hollywood actress, and then obviously from the narrative of the documentary and the patent, I knew that as well. Or I mean, once I read through that quickly, I knew that, but I did not know this whole kind of first half of her life. And like we talked about, you could just take a little section of her life and be like, wow, she really led a really interesting, fascinating, exciting life, and you could just talk about the first five or 10 years of her life.
Lindy Kyzer
I think with Heady Lamarr, you could literally probably do an entire movie out of any three year chunk of her life, and they would all come across as completely different people. I found that fascinating. I also, as a parent, I feel like remember back when people used to accomplish a lot before they turned 20,
They were like, okay, she did a lot before she turned 20. I’m like, now people are like, I don’t know if my kid can drive at 16 Hedy Lamarr’s like, hold my beer. Look at the things that I did at age 16. It is just like a different time, but this is the 1940s. It’s different. But I do wonder, again, the historian in me, are we better off today than we were 80 years ago, Eric, is this better today or was that the better way? I guess if you look at her life, you would say, no, it’s not better.
Eric Pecinovsky
Yeah, and that’s part of the reason why the documentary is really good is it does kind of, again, like we talked about pulling from different threads. There was a lot of trouble, but a lot of drive and a success, and it was kind of a yin yang kind of thing back and forth.
Lindy Kyzer
I think the best way we can honor Hedy Lamarr is just say thank you for her accomplishments. I think she’s an accomplished woman. I think sometimes we don’t always do well about recognizing what people do when they’re still alive. That’s true of a lot of different people. So this is maybe one of those stories. So you can honor her now by listening to Eric and I talk about her or by watching Bombshell on Netflix. And if you have hot tips for the next documentary movie show podcast, you want Eric and I to delve into next time, let us know. Otherwise, you can count on Eric. He will screen all of this content so you don’t have to. He can give you all the hot tips on the movies and shows and documentaries to watch around national security. Thank you, Eric for being on the show. I appreciate it.
