Diane Kruger to Broadcast Hedy Lamarr's Hidden WWII History as Producer, Star of Miniseries
Wednesday, September 20, 2017 at 8:22AM by Daniel Crooke
Fresh off her Best Actress victory at this year's Cannes Film Festival for Fatih Akin's In the Fade (as well as Germany's official decision to submit the film as their Foreign Language Oscars play) Diane Kruger is out for revenge once more - this time, to rewrite the half-finished story of Classical Hollywood Cinema icon Hedy Lamarr for a new miniseries in which she plans to produce and star. Long defined by her immaculate beauty in films such as Samson and Delilah and Algiers, Lamarr's brains have shone a longer, even more luminous legacy on the modern world thanks to her penchant for invention. While ignored at the time, her work laid the bedrock for much of modern communication - including WiFi and Bluetooth...
Fans of Karina Longworth's addicting podcast of Hollywood mythmaking, You Must Remember This, or the new documentary Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story are already familiar with the tale of Lamarr's WWII-era patent on frequency-hopping radio signal - filed while under contract to MGM as a regular presence on the silver screen. Kruger's in-development miniseries stands to reach an even larger audience and revive Lamarr's onscreen legacy too.
While Kruger did shrewdly portray a glamorous actress moonlighting as a special agent working to take down the Nazis in Inglourious Basterds - my personal favorite performance in that film - the affinity between actresses goes deeper than these double lives, each going up against an industry that has shoehorned them based on their looks. It's exciting to know that while Kruger continues to upend shallow expectations through her brilliantly dimensioned performanes, she's working to lift up another actress who shattered the male gaze through her own genius.
Reader Comments (16)
That should be interesting, Hedy's is a fascinating story. The only real drawback is that Diane Kruger while a lovely woman looks nothing like Hedy Lamarr. I'm sure some makeup magic will be performed to work that out.
Love that this is happening. Good for her. Of course this will be on TV because audiences wouldn't actually pay to see this but at least it's happening at all.
Kruger is a very strong actress. One of the most underrated imo. Hopefully that changes after this year!
joel6 -- its true she looks nothing like her but where else are you going to find a glamorous actress now who speaks all the same languages as Hedy & Diane :)
She totally wrong for Lamarr. She's way too angularly Teutonic - she could make a fine Dietrich - to convey Lamarr's lush physical presence. Someone like Monica Bellucci comes to mind.
Isabelle Adjani, Claudia Cardinale, Ava Gardner, Hedy Lamarr, Elizabeth Taylor, Gene Tierney, Natalie Wood - the most beautiful actresses of all time.
Can you tell I have a thing for brunettes?
Interesting. I remember hearing that she had ideas about doing a Marlene Dietrich mini-series also. I wonder if she would still do that?
I know this sounds ridiculous to say, but Diane Kruger is just not beautiful enough to play Hedy Lamarr. Crazy, no? I'm not sure who could convey that level of beauty. I would have accepted Catherine Zeta-Jones in her heyday. Hmm...
Tyler, your list is great - I love brunettes too - but, a brunettes beauty list of all times without Vivien Leigh??????
5 Hedy Lamarr worth watching films (outside Algiers, Ziegfeld Girl and Samson and Delilah):
1. Boom Town. 1940. Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy only have eyes for Claudette Colbert.
2. Come Live With Me. 1941. Rom com where James Stewart is cute like never in a story about arranged marriage.
3. Tortilla Flat. 1942. My favorite. Adapted from a John Steinbeck book and directed by the same guy that directed ...Gone With The Wind. Unlike the book, here there's a happy ending.
4. White Cargo. 1942. Unbelievable b story with a capital A MGM production. She plays the infamous Tondelayo, a native girl from Congo with painted skin in a Jennifer Jones' Duel In The Sun style. Need to see to believe.
5. Her Highness And The Bellboy. 1945. Other favorite of these five. With another cute actor, Robert Walker, a comedic fairy tale with Once upon a time and And they lived happily ever after. About a princess in disguise. With incredible clothes and jewels she is luminous like Garbo in Ninotchka. Because she was pregnant at the time, they had to make a lot of close ups. Nobody can get tired of this woman's face!
@Giovanni: Vivien Leigh was indeed incredibly beautiful, and would have made a wonderful addition to my list. :)
The more I get to know her, the more I love and admire this woman.
Those of us who were avid followers of the killed-too-soon Agent Carter series know that second-season villain Whitney Frost, a glamorous Hollywood star who was secretly a brilliant scientist, was a shoutout to Hedy Lamarr!
And Gwen: I agree that White Cargo really MUST be seen to be believed! Ranks right up there with The Shanghai Gesture in terms of bizarro casting and now-repellent ethnic stereotypes.
Gwen love your suggestions especially Come Live with Me which is an underseen charmer. Jimmy Stewart & Hedy make an unexpectedly compatible pair considering his aw shucks Americanism and her continental air.
A few of her films that you didn't mention that are worth the time:
The Conspirators with Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre.
The Strange Woman with George Sanders and directed by Edgar Ulmer contains one of her best performances if you can get past the fact that she is supposed to be a lifelong resident of Bangor, Maine and speaks with a Viennese accent.
Then there's her last film The Female Animal where she plays an aging star with Jane Powell as her daughter. It's no great shakes but you get a definite Crawford vibe from the whole thing which makes it fun.
All those Hedy recommendation and no one mentioned the five films I think capture her mystique best: the poetic Czech film "Ecstasy", her American debut, "Algiers" (Charles Boyer gives up all to follow her), her first two MGM films "Lady of the Tropics" and "I Take This Woman" and an under-rated late 40's noir romance "Dishonored Lady". She's stunning in all of them - and not just looks-wise (though that's a given).
Diane Kruger's undoubtedly good-looking. But she and/or her people keep over-estimating the level of her loveliness. She played Helen of Troy (when a born to do it Aishwarya Rai was around) and now Hedy Lamarr? Though, in all honesty, is there anyone around now to approximate Lamarr's once in a century combination of features? She was the Halley's Comet of beauty.
Doctor Strange,
Also sad for the end of Agent Carter. They gave up too soon on that wonderful show.
joel6
In her short career Hedy made good to great movies that were box office hits and are most of them now unknown. Everybody has the opportunity to discover.
Ken,
She was really one in a million, like Marilyn, Audrey, Ava... Directors/producers know it and don't even try hard in casting.