When actress Hedy Lamarr made the 1933 Czech film “Ecstasy” and rocked the rest of the movie-going globe with her now famous nude shot, skinny dipping in a lake, the bodacious Austrian bit player, (no more than 19 at the time), was known as plain old Hedwig Kiesler.

Actually, the banker's daughter was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna, Austria. She was known for her exotic, dark-haired beauty, which was on display throughout her silver screen stardom. The nude scene in “Ecstasy” made her a sensation before her arrival in Hollywood.

In the film, the tale of a young woman’s ill-fated cuckolding of her elderly husband, a naked Lamarr swam and ran through the woods. The film also featured suggestive closeups of her face during lovemaking scenes -sensational and unheard of at the time.

Then married to Austrian munitions magnate Fritz Mandl, Lamarr was signed by MGM and brought to the United States in 1937. She adopted a screen name said to be an homage to the 1920s screen beauty
Barbara La Marr.

On-screen nudity was a universal “no-no” at the time. “Ectasy” was banned in Germany, denounced by the Pope, and eagerly screened by anyone who could get his hands on a print of the film.

Eventually, that turned out to be a whole lot of “anyones,” including Lamarr’s future MGM starmaker, Louis B. Mayer – despite the furious efforts of her husband to purchase all evidence of his wife’s sexy nude frolic.

Despite his efforts to seek out, buy up and destroy all prints of the controversial film, Lamarr’s husband failed to achieve control of his wife’s destiny. The Mandl marriage (number one in Lamarr’s series of six) failed to last. Fascist Fritz, a wealthy munitions magnate, may have been a control freak, but his wife made it clear she never did approve of his business associates – Mussolini and Hitler. Mussolini, she would later observe, struck her as “pompous,” while Hitler was always “posturing.”

The actress ended up in Hollywood (disguised as a servant to escape her spouse and all his scary Nazi cronies). Hollywood was more than willing to embrace her, particularly Louis B. Mayer, who described his new discovery as simply “the most beautiful creature on earth.”

It was Mayer who promptly changed her name from Hedwig to Hedy and provided her with numerous opportunities to exhibit her stunning good looks to more than appreciative American audiences.

Her fast rise made Hedy one of Hollywood’s shooting stars. Among Lamarr’s leading men were William Powell, Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and Ray Milland. Her biggest hit came in 1949 with what she’d called her favorite film, Cecil B. De Mille’s “Samson and Delilah.” As the Delilah to Victor Mature’s Samson, she exuded sexuality.

Although she was billed as “the world’s most beautiful woman,” she herself claimed to scorn her glamorous image. In a 1942 Associated Press interview, she showed a reporter her house, complete with hen house and homemade curtains, and asked, “Now you will not write I am a glamour girl?"

This eventually led to one of the most famous all-time Hollywood quotes: “Any girl can be glamorous,” she said. “All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.”

Though critics were divided as to whether her talent as an actress was squandered or nonexistent, Lamarr compared herself in acting ability to “a cross between Judy Garland and Greta Garbo.”

She once observed: “If you use your imagination, you can look at any actress and see her nude.” And then she hastily added: “I hope to make you use your imagination.”

“When she spoke, one did not listen,” observed George Sanders her co-star in “Sampson and Delilah.” The actor said one just watched her mouth moving and marveled at the exquisite shapes made by her lips. (As it turned out, Hedy’s acting abilities weren’t as exquisite as the motions of her mouth).

Hedy’s career faded in the mid-1950s, when she appeared in some Italian productions. She said she stopped getting high-profile jobs because she wouldn’t sleep with a film executive to get ahead. “My problem is, I’m a hell of a nice dame,” she said in a 1970 interview. “The most horrible whores are famous. I did what I did for love. The others did it for money.”

Far from the airhead she feared that she’d be pigeonholed as, Lamarr was also an inventor. While married to Mandl, she developed an idea for a radio signaling device that would reduce the danger of detection or jamming. She and a friend, composer George Antheil, developed the idea further and received a patent in 1942.

The method was not used in World War II, but since the 1980s, high-tech versions of the concept, called “spread spectrum,” have been used in some cordless phones, military radios and wireless computer links. Her spread spectrum patent also earned her a spot in the 1992 book “Feminine Ingenuity.” (In 1997, the once notorious nudist finally received a lifetime achievement award – from the Electronic Frontier Foundation).

Stepping back from the limelight after her acting career faded, the legend of her name kept Lamarr a consistent draw in the media, for better or worse. She sued her ghostwriter over a lurid 1966 autobiography, “Ecstasy and Me,” which she said was full of distortions and outright errors. The book was a best seller.

And a pair of shoplifting arrests - neither of which resulted in convictions - caused headlines in later years. She was acquitted by a jury in Los Angeles on charges of stealing $86 worth of merchandise from a department store in 1966. Then, in 1991, she was arrested and accused of stealing $21.48 of merchandise from a Florida drugstore. Hedy said she and a companion forgot to put the items in their shopping cart. Lamarr was never formally charged.

Hedy’s daughter, (Denise Loder Deluca), said her mother was deluged by sympathetic calls after the Florida arrest. In June, 1999, Lamarr sued a California winery she said was trying to capitalize on her famous face. She sought to stop the E&J Gallo winery from using her likeness in a television commercial. The suit was still in litigation at the time of her death. Lamarr appeared to have died in her sleep, according to law enforcement officials in Los Angeles.