In this historical novel set in the 1930s and 40s by Marie
Benedict, Hedy was (often) the only woman.
She was an only child of Jewish parents living in Austria, the young wife
of an abusive husband, a lone woman at dinner parties where men plotted war, an
advocate for her acting career, and the sole inventor of technology that (could
have) helped the Allies during WWII. Benedict
did a masterful job of providing details about these solo roles and setting Hedy’s
life within the larger political atmosphere of Austria before and after the
start of WWII. Though Benedict discussed
Hedy’s acting life in Austria and the US, the bulk of this novel focused on
Hedy’s life as a young wife, survivor, and inventor.
Benedict hinted at the importance of Hedy’s beauty by including a
picture of her on the inside front and back cover of the book. Hedy is stunning and also attracted men with
her flawless figure. As narrator, Hedy
admitted using her beauty as a tool to exert power over men in her private life
and theatrical audiences in her professional life.
Hedy felt attracted to her future husband, Fritz Mandl, because he
seemed interested in her opinions, did not appear intimidated by her beauty,
and was publicly recognized as a powerful man.
With Fritz as the owner of a weapons business and as a close associate
of several powerful Austrian politicians, Hedy and her parents hoped Fritz
would protect them from growing anti-Semitism and the threat of war with Hitler.
Unfortunately, Fritz fooled them and only revealed the full extent of his physical and verbal abuses after their marriage. Over time, Fritz reduced Hedy to a beautiful
object and an example of his wealth and power.
At dinner parties hosted by her husband, Hedy learned that he sold weapons
to Hitler and of Hitler’s plans to completely remove Jews from Austria and
Germany. However, she did not reveal
this knowledge to anyone in Austria before she left because she feared peoples’
opinions of her.
One major section of the book ended abruptly. In August 1937, Hedy made a second attempt to
escape from her husband. Benedict
provided such a rich and suspenseful description of Hedy’s escape that it read
like a movie script, complete with a cast of characters, costumes, and an
escape car. However, her escape tale lost
momentum when Benedict simply revealed that Hedy made it out of Austria to
Paris then London. How? Then, the next chapter simply began with her
standing on an ocean liner bound for London and being introduced to the film
studio head Louis B. Mayer. Again,
how?
After she arrived in the US and the Nazis torpedoed a ship full of
children, Hedy became involved in the war effort by raising money. She also attempted to have a larger impact on
the war by using her knowledge of science and German military plans. Hedy recalled hearing about a weapons problem
of the German military at the dinner parties hosted by her husband when she still
lived in Austria. The Germans had developed
a remote-control system to transmit information between the ships, planes, and
torpedoes but this system used radio signals which could be jammed by the
enemy. Hedy understood the nature of this
problem because her father had discussed science, along with other academic
subjects, with her when she was a child.
In September 1940, Hedy met the composer George Antheil at a party
and they entertained themselves by playing the piano, each alternating after
the other. Subsequently, she had an
idea: radio signals could also alternate
by skipping frequency to frequency as they were sent to torpedoes so that the
enemy could not find and then jam them.
Hedy, with George’s knowledge of pianos and composing, built a machine
to enable this skipping. They submitted the
invention to the National Inventors Council which in turn a sent letter to the US
Navy (with a copy to Hedy and George) that the Navy should consider their
invention for military use. In an April
1942 meeting, the Navy informed Hedy and George that they rejected Hedy’s idea because
they did not want to tell their troops a woman had invented it. On this note, the book ends.
For me, some descriptions of Hedy’s personal and professional life
experiences in this book could serve as the basis for a movie because Benedict wrote
with such visually appealing details. With Hedy narrating this book, however, the reader also learns about her thoughts and emotional growth, which are more difficult to convey in a movie. Before reading this book,
I knew that Hedy had become a successful American actress during and after WWII
and therefore had survived it. However, the book was so well written that my knowledge of her later success was
suspended until the end of the book.
Benedict made the convincing point that Hedy’s world refused to
see past her beautiful face and slim figure and therefore could not consider
that her invention might have helped the war effort. This book presented one woman’s experience of
WWII and showed, in the end, that she survived, on her own.
