Our discussion of "Hedy's Folly".

It wasn't all about Hedy. It was about George Antheil, the self-proclaimed "Bad boy of music", his struggles and triumphs, a little bit about the war and torpedoes, and not enough about Hedy Lamarr and her life. We were introduced to a beautiful young girl, who played piano and lived a good life in Vienna. She left school early to pursue a film career, and in the end was a shining Hollywood star. Many people may know that much about the beautiful actress, but the book teases the reader with its subtitle" The life and breakthrough inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the most beautiful woman in the world. We are given small glimpses of inventions Hedy was working on, but the focus on the book is her work with Antheil on a new torpedo propulsion system. According to the author, "Hedy invented as a hobby. Since she made two or three movies a year...she took up inventing". But we're never clued in on what exactly she was working on. This was a big disappointment for the group, who had wanted more personal information, and maybe some "juicy gossip". We all came away not knowing much about the actress, and feeling the book title was a come-on.

Some group members felt that George took over the patent process, mainly because he may have felt that it wouldn't have been taken seriously with Hedy's name attached to it. In fact, she signed that patent with (one of) her married names; Markey. Even she may have felt the Lamarr name would not have helped the cause. Much later in her life, Hedy was honored with the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer award, and also received the Austrian Association of Patent Holders and Inventors Viktor Kaplan medal. After Hollywood, she lived quietly, passing away in 2000. We all felt the book should have given much more detail of Hedy's inventions, as well as where her ideas came from. It was just a disappointing book all around, one we felt could have been much better as an article.