Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story Page #3

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And then I got married

right after that.

Hedwig, as an actress,

drew, of course,

the attention of many people,

and one of those was

a man named Fritz Mandl.

I was married to

a munitions tycoon in Austria!

He is the Henry Ford of Austria.

He, at that point,

is 14 years her senior.

He is allied with the Nazis

because he's

an armaments manufacturer.

As it is the same today,

a lot of wealthy men would like

to decorate themselves

with beautiful women,

and I think she was,

for a minute,

fascinated with that as well.

We had a country house

with 25 guest rooms.

And we went hunting.

And I loved that.

Do you know guns?

Yes.

I had a Browning

and I shot a stag into the neck

350 meters.

Meters? Very long.

I'm a good shot

so be careful!

Hedy was Mandl's armpiece

at the banquets that he served

for admirals

in the German and Italian Navy.

She sat there and it was

her job to be beautiful,

but she was bored

out of her mind.

Fritz Mandl was,

by German measures, Jewish,

and therefore,

Hitler was concerned

not to be seen with him,

and I doubt very much

if Hitler was a guest

at one of their houses,

but Mussolini was.

I assume that

your first husband

was supplying arms to the...

To the Germans.

But he never let me in on...

He never even let me

come into the factory.

I disturbed the people.

I didn't know why...

Fritz did not like the effect

that his beautiful wife had

on other men.

He was immensely jealous

and paranoid about his wife.

He was constantly convinced

that she might be having

an affair.

The big mistake

my husband at the time did

he bought up prints of that...

dumb picture!

Mandl had the problem

of this film,

this dirty picture

which he tried to buy up,

and they started cranking

them out by the dozens,

and he eventually gave up

because, obviously,

they could make as many copies

as he chose to buy.

He turned out to be someone

who had the maids listen in

on her phone calls.

She had everything

she could ever want,

except the one thing that

Hedwig Kiesler always wanted

which was freedom.

By 1937,

the war was inevitable,

and she was

in a desperate situation.

Because after all,

Hitler had everything

in the palm of his hand.

When Ecstasy was released,

Hitler told the American press

he was banning it

because the lead actress

was Jewish.

Jewish people were not allowed

out on streets

at certain times of the day

and, gradually,

they were denied

more and more civil rights.

And this is one thing that led

to Hedy's father Emil's death

was his stress and worry

about what was happening.

He died suddenly

from a heart attack.

And I think that was

the turning point for her.

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