Discovered by Max Reinhardt, Hedy Kiesler appeared in Austro-German films beginning in 1930 before creating a worldwide sensation with a 10-minute sequence in Gustav Machaty's 1933 Czech film "Extase/Ecstasy" that featured the alluring actress completely nude. Shortly after, she married Austrian munitions magnate Fritz Mandl who attempted to buy up all existing prints of the film, but their divorce put an end to his mission, enabling the film to be released again and again the world over. She moved to the USA in 1938 and signed with Louis B. Mayer who changed her name to Hedy Lamarr in honor of the deceased actress Barbara LaMarr. Her American debut was on loan to Walter Wanger (United Artists) in John Cromwell's "Algiers" (1938), and MGM tried to capitalize on the success of that film with Jack Conway's inferior "Lady of the Tropics" (1939).
Billed as the world's most beautiful woman, Lamarr offered little beyond her exotic looks to a host of productions, mostly at MGM. Frequently typecast as a woman of mystery, the dark and lovely actress did not create a stir at the box office and was also difficult to please, rejecting the star-making parts in "Casablanca" and "Gaslight" that would make Ingrid Bergman a household name. When her contract lapsed at MGM, she worked at other studios, but her career was in serious decline when Cecil B. DeMille cast her as the Biblical temptress in "Samson and Delilah" (1949), her most commercially successful film and the only real evidence that she could convey the promise of sex on the screen. It did not revive her career, however, and after starring opposite Bob Hope in "My Favorite Spy" (1951), she left Hollywood for Europe and did not act again in America until "The Story of Mankind" (1957), followed by her last feature for nearly twenty years, "The Female Animal" (1958).
Lamarr would make only one more movie, playing the role of a Movie Goddess in "Instant Karma" (1990), a parody of life in the TV production grind. She made headlines after being arrested on a shoplifting charge in 1965 and again for the same offense in 1991. Her autobiography, "Ecstasy and Me" (1966), was a deliberate attempt to revive her notoriety, but in such bad taste that she later sued her ghostwriters for misrepresentation. Married six times, her second husband was writer Gene Markey (1939-40) and her third actor John Loder (1943-47), with whom she had two children. Lamarr's inability to register emotion on camera doomed her film career, but her undeniable good looks allowed her to be a reasonably convincing femme fatale. She never appeared more beautiful than in the woodland idyll of "Extase/Ecstasy" and that image sustained her for quite awhile and remains her screen legacy.