There's the presence of George Antheil, the Trenton-born avant-garde composer famous for Ballet Mécanique. He stayed late into many nights with Lamarr, working out the kinks in their pioneering frequency-hopping radio device, which they dreamed up for use in U.S. Navy torpedoes to thwart interception by enemy ships.
The Navy failed to put the spread-spectrum technology to work in World War II, but if you have Bluetooth, or a cordless phone, or WiFi, or a GPS, or scan an item through a bar-code reader, well, you have Lamarr and Antheil to thank.
Indeed, the Austrian actress who scandalized the Continent with her nude scenes in 1933's Ecstasy (she was all of 17 when she made the film), and who became one of Hollywood's highest-paid stars thanks to hits like Algiers, White Cargo, and Samson and Delilah, was a stay-at-home amateur inventor when not busy on the back lot.
As for her heart-stopping allure, Lamarr was quick to criticize those who couldn't see the brains behind the beauty. "Any girl can be glamorous," she once famously opined. "All you have to do is stand still and look stupid."
Antheil was a restless eccentric who, for a time, taught at Philadelphia's Settlement Music School. Then he lit out for Paris to commune with the likes of Igor Stravinsky and Ezra Pound. He became Lamarr's friend and collaborator once they found each other in L.A. - applying his ideas about sonic patterns and digital control (gleaned from his work on old-fashioned player-piano scrolls) to the development of their device.
