Talking to Hedy Lamarr's Daughter

hedy lamarr had it all once named the most beautiful woman in the world lamar starred in over 30 hollywood movies but her overwhelming beauty and film career were just two aspects of who she was this sexy screen goddess was also incredibly intelligent creative curious and fearless while most women of her day were homemakers hadi spent her time as an actress by day and a groundbreaking inventor by night she developed frequency hopping spread spectrum communication in the hopes of helping america prevail over germany and world war ii this communication system ultimately formed the basis for today's wi-fi gps and bluetooth systems she also designed a new airplane wing shape thus making planes more aerodynamic sadly the world was not ready for hedy lamarr people loved her face and watching her on the big screen but they simply could not acknowledge her intellect it was not until 1997 over 50 years from when hedy invented frequency hopping that her inventive abilities were finally recognized hedy lamarr is an inspiration to all people to follow your passions talents and interests even if the world can't see what you have to offer i painted a portrait of lamar because her story has always inspired me i also had the great pleasure of talking to hedy lamarr's daughter denise loader deluca denise an artist herself offers an intimate look into her relationship with her fascinating and talented mother i hope you enjoy our conversation as much as i enjoy having it what was it like growing up with hedy lamarr that's a big question it was fabulous and it was hard so i would say you know lots of highs and lots some lows too well before we go further did you see bombshell by any chance i did okay so you know that there's a lot there yes and that being said what would you say in your memory was the greatest high and what would you say is one of the greatest lows that you remember well the greatest high was that she was probably the most lovely human being on earth and having a mother you know like that sing you lullabies and kiss you and you know just be there was just like mesmerizing i maybe all children think that of their mothers but maybe it was you know even more i don't know it was just you know like heaven and then we were shipped off to boarding schools because she was working and then so we never could see her except visiting days or vacations so that was really hard you know at her most wonderful we were shipped off uh into boarding schools which coming from europe wasn't that unusual for people to do with their kids uh you know upper-class people in europe it was kind of standard so i'm sure she thought it was okay but we were pretty young and um really sad to be away from her so she was great and unfortunately well she worked she we were in boarding schools i think even from preschool age and all the way through graduating high school in boarding school oh no no then we were home as she got older she was not getting work and she would marry and we would move to acapulco and divorce him and then mary and we would move to houston texas and divorce him and we would always come back to beverly hills and to the beverly hills hotel that was like the only stable kind of like home which is fabulous but kind of sad when you think about it that was i mean that place seems like home to me i just did a really cool painting of it if you look down at the bottom of the page that says places i just love that place because it was kind of i knew it and it was like coming back home but so after you know once we were in regular school we were with her even though it was all over the place and then when we were in high school we were shipped off i shouldn't say shipped off we were lucky enough to go to a boarding school in massachusetts so we were there and she was in in l.a so but then it was kind of a relief to get away but it was always disruptive you know different schools different cities you know so sure the worst part i told you that the best part was she was the most charming lovely loving person creative i mean singing painting beautiful everything was just you know perfection to me and then when she went through her downfall because of addiction to drugs which the studio got her started on it was just really unstable so that was difficult so we were shipped up and we didn't like that but when we came home it was so unstable it was like almost is it respite more structured there and a little safer so that's when it was harder as we got older it just got harder i mean actually alex um dean did a great job of kind of portraying that pattern that you know that trip that she was following you know in her life she did a really good job it's funny i i was you know ashamed of all that trying to hide all that and she did such a wonderful job of explaining it you know it really helped me come to terms with it all yeah and have you know i always had empathy but still it was hard on a kid you know what do you think most defined your mother what trait most defined her in your mind to me or to the world to you i'd have to say beautiful and more inside than out because everything cultural everything in nature everything that was beautiful she opened my eyes to like ballet music painting nature so when i say beautiful i mean what was inside that's a trait and super creative and super ahead of her time and those are three great things yes lovely i mean my friends mothers had aprons on and were cooking for their husbands they didn't even work and my mother was telling guys what to do so it was really really ahead of her time i it embarrassed me then because you want to be like everybody else but we certainly weren't well when you were growing up did you hear many stories about your grandparents no well my granny was in la i think mom helped her come to la before the war in the beginning of world war ii so uh no we didn't hear stories the only story was how much she loved her dad and i heard that a lot and i you know no not many stories what about stories about austria she loved austria so much i can't even tell you she talked about austria all the time all the time she loved it she sang austrian songs she um everything about it i maybe i would thank a lot of people that leave their homelands but i don't maybe it's just because you know maybe everybody is that homesick for their homeland but she definitely was and yet she never moved back there probably didn't know anybody there after a while you know and then when her life became a little unstable it would have been too hard to relocate but she adored everything about it the music i mean if they had a concert on pbs from vienna she would call and go you know the vienna symphony is on or you know anything about it she loved it i have read and um watched about her jewish background and i've heard you speaking about how it was something that wasn't mentioned um really but once you did you ever talk to your mother about your jewish heritage and um yeah what it meant to her okay up until the very end because people started hearing about this invention the news started you know getting out there and professors would call me and mention it or send me an article on it or something and i would call her and say mom everybody says we were jewish were we jewish and she would say this is in the movie don't be ridiculous she'd say no she totally denied it and i thought well who are these people telling her what she is when she's telling me herself she wasn't and it never came up we went to church with our friends in texas because everybody went to church there and um no even in beverly hills when everybody was jewish it she i don't know if she was raised not jewish or if she's just in just was denying it because of the war i have no idea but i never believed it until alex dean showed me papers of like my her father's death certificate and it said whatever the word is jewish on the bottom the first time i ever saw proof and i have no idea why mom said we weren't let's see i probably was in my let me think when she died well you know my late 50s before i found out no actually i didn't find out until i was in my 70s okay well let me ask you one more question about your grandfather um howdy's father do you was it true or did you ever talk to her about the fact that from an early age he had recognized and encouraged her interest in how things work and in science and math and um those types of things did you ever have conversation about that no none no no apparently my brother did because he talks about it in the movie in the documentary what you and your mother never yeah no i think we talked about art and ballet and movies and you know outfits and yeah boyfriends painting a lot when your mom talked to you about painting um what were what were some of the things that she revealed to you what were some of the things that she loved about art or artist or painting herself what what did you find out oh i think she just encouraged everything i did even my little paintings from as early as ninth grade she would frame everything i'd bring home from art class and uh she just was like it's a shame she never saw my paintings i didn't start painting until after she died because i retired and was able to paint again but she never saw any of my real work just my you know when i was really young but she just was just loved it she was just so free and her paintings are pretty abstract and mine are really realistic so i know she just was just loved all the art and to me like living with mom instead of being a hollywood party it would be the creative people in the industry standing around the piano in our living room with somebody playing and singing songs that everybody knew and singing along so it was always creative always creative so it just flowed from me and then when she painted oh god she would like paint on a cat on a beautiful couch and not even something it was pretty wild she would you know she didn't have like an easel or anything she would just paint wherever that's funny what about the effect of her that um was such a fighter and a trailblazer that you know we've come to find out about her today do you think that was just her natural personality or do you think because she had been through so many trials and tribulations in life that she became a strong purse was it something she was born with or what do you think uh probably a little of both i think being in the position in the industry pushed her into being having to be stronger just to survive as a as a young woman in hollywood she probably just she wouldn't put up with it and i don't think she wanted to be pushed that hard but you know i think her core was strong i mean she definitely had an opinion she was she there's no way she could have been a little subservient housewife and i think that's part of the problem with the marriages because that's what you were supposed to be back then and um i i think she was probably born with a good constitution but i think i think she was probably you know a good stable sturdy strong-minded young woman and then as things started crumbling and lawsuits and everything she was you know pushed into way more than she wanted right right you know and then also with her invention and not being acknowledged just being told to you know just stay in your place and sell war bombs i don't know it just seems like she along with many women in that era were knocked down quite a bit did she talk about the inventions not being acknowledged throughout her life did she carry a lot of angst about that no i barely even knew that it existed she had mentioned to me like she invented some anti-rocket missile device and i was like oh right mom like what you know i mean i didn't even know what she was talking about so we literally didn't even talk about it and it's not that if she didn't want to talk about it just you know in your day-to-day life it was like you know how are you getting home from you know this or you know pack your bags for that it was just day-to-day things i think i left younger than my brother because things were so unstable i married young well we were in boarding school and then i married then college and then marriage so i wasn't around a lot more than my brother so he i think had more conversations that came up more in later years when i was already married and had my own kid and i was married to a baseball player so we were never we were traveling all the time so it wasn't until people started sending me information about it and like i said movie um i said mom you really did invent this and she goes i told you i did and i just was like oh my god it's real and it's big it would surprise me but she wasn't technical she was um she would think of concepts you know ideas not not how it worked but she would have the idea in her mind and then somebody like george antion would figure out how to implement it into actual workings yeah which i thought was fascinating yeah a musician and an actress come up with something like that right such a story it is it's almost like a hollywood story itself so it's hard to believe it was real but it was hard for me to believe and like i just didn't even take it seriously until like i said when i was older and people like um these scientists were contacting me and starting to you know like send me an article what is that inventor's magazine or something things like that but most of it actually came out after she after she died so it's just crazy that young people now know who she is and for not because of the movies it's just such a different scenario than when she was alive right it's like a whole second person you know she's really not known for the movies anymore she's known for technology and when the internet came about it bugged her so bad she she's like oh what is all that billy bob dot you know she just it she had no patience for technology when all then everything started coming out on the internet that's so funny little did she know she had you know something to do with it yeah wow well as she grew older in your conversations about hollywood if you had any did she talk about how roles for women were evolving or how the industry had evolved from when she was in it or or any of that did you have conversation we didn't have conversations about anything but our lives you know like how my daughter and you know did you get everything unpacked or whatever just day-to-day life mother-daughter stuff sure did she ever talk to you about what her favorite movie was either that she was in or that she saw did was that ever something that she talked about i believe and i i hate for you to write this because i might be wrong but i think it's experiment perilous because it was a it was not just a pretty wait not experiment paralysis sorry not that one um oh god it's one where she played an older woman so she wasn't like this she aged in it so it was more of good acting rather than hollywood mine and there's a cute story that the first one we ever saw we were children and we were like why are people bugging us on the street all the time why are people running after you and calling your name and we didn't get it you know she was in movies and people said nuts for that so she decided well she has to take us to a movie so we'll understand what she does so she took us to the studio and showed a movie called princess and the bell boy it's like a fairy tale she's a princess and i don't know probably falls in love with the bell boy or whatever she pretends like she's not a princess and then there's a raid and they get all busted and they she ends up in jail because they don't know she's a princess and we went hysterical crying because we thought our mommy was in jail so she had to take me out on the steps and take us out of the little movie theater at the studio and tell us it's all fake the bars were fake they weren't real so it was a cute little thing she's trying to find a movie that's appropriate for her children and we got all upset because so that that's a great story the first thing i saw which is that was the most innocent one of all i was wondering if you have any of the pieces of art that your mom created during her lifetime any of her paintings i do have some wow there i have some paintings that are totally abstract totally abstract and then i have some sketches that i have up a couple of little sketches that are you know almost maybe that's why i like yours but reminds me of the sketches i have up of hers well thank you that must be such a treasure to you to have those um this is a great segue into some of your artwork and i want to know what um some of the inspiration is behind your own painting well i just like to look at things that are beautiful and things you know people are like you should paint this person you should say paint that person i'm like well i have to like them you know they have to resonate with me i can't just paint what okay like for instance i just painted ludwig von beethoven and it's under rock stars it says lbb the original star and i believe the connection for me all first of all he looks like a rock star with his long hair and everything and back then they were the rock stars but i believe well he was born in germany but he lived in in austria and i think he's his grave is in this beautiful cemetery that's in front of carls kersha in vienna where mom was had her huge wedding i love color that's for sure love color um and i love to look at things that look pretty to me i just like you know it's not very original but that's what i like i love music rock music i played the guitar for a while so i think the era i grew up in the 50s 60s 70s you know a lot of great music was happening i'm a beatles fanatic and you know you can look at my rockstars page and see who i like can you tell me your website address it's denise loader deluca wait www.deniseloaderdluca.com right sorry yeah it's just my name just your name and um and you can look at all of your artwork there yeah and and then what if um people want to find out more information about hedy would you say that the bombshell movie is the best place to find out more info about her or is there another place that you think is a really good resource well i i think that the movie is excellent and that's what um during national history month i had a lot of young women young girls students writing reports on mom which was wonderful and i told them all to watch it because it's you know in two hours you get the whole story richard rhodes wrote a really good book on her and he's a pulitzer prize winner so that's a good source oh great okay i'll have to check that out i know i know that um i heard about your mother when i was growing up from my mother and then watching the documentary about your mother bombshell i felt so inspired she really is she was a trailblazer and she is a huge inspiration for for any person let alone just any woman but any person can really be inspired by your mom so um well you know hearing that and feeling that it just breaks my heart because she didn't really i wish she would have been able to see that she was appreciated because it just you know barely scratched before she died you know so it's wonderful and it's inspirational but it's really heartbreaking it's a sad story at the end of that movie it was hard for me not to cry every time and then i had to go up and do q and a's at the film festival that was kind of hard and you know and it's funny every time i watched it i who you would think knows everything learn new stuff each time so she is an incredible did incredible research on it or um with the vienna symphony playing and then they go into outer space and then they say she never made a penny and it would be worth so many millions and billions today and it's like oh my god you know it's pretty dramatic very very but i will say for watching it and and the sad feeling i felt the prevailing feeling you know was just an outsider was really inspiration because what you know what a woman she was what a person she was so yeah it's hard it's hard to be real objective because you know we live such a difficult life my brother and i are growing up that way but being objective i agree it's just amazing amazing woman yes yes and um so i thank you for your time and you really gave me some fabulous information and um it was wonderful speaking with you okay thanks a lot julia you

Channel: Juliet Gilden

Views: 120,325

Keywords: hollywood, golden age of Hollywood, actress, inventor, siren, glamour, hedylamarr, hedybeauty

Id: 7KU6kAOEAbo

Length: 28min 5sec (1685 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 04 2021