S E N S O RY ST I M U L AT I O N … F O R T H E E Y E S A N D E A R S
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ART&CULTURE
Beauty Icon Immigrant. Inventor. Icon. A look at the life of Hedy Lamarr, Hollywood’s reigning queen of film and fashion in the 1930s and 1940s. BY FRED W. WRIGHT JR.
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he was a Hollywood publicist’s dream client. She stepped off the train in Los Angeles already proclaimed “the most beautiful girl in the world.” In five days of railroad riding, Hedy Lamarr had transformed herself from “well-dressed Euro-chic” emigre from Austria to a contract actor for Louis B. Mayer. While turmoil was building in Europe, Lamarr took the U.S. by storm. It was 1933 and while her
command of English was still poor, her control of her looks and her ability to give photographers, fashion designers, and stage and film directors a look unrivaled were already in place. She arrived, ready, she thought, for a Hollywood career as a “smartly dressed, attractive young woman wearing a light-colored, conservative, threequarter-length skirt and matching jacket, bearing a small corsage of flowers. On her shoulder-length dark tresses, she wore a stylish, late-1930s beret.” So writes Stephen Michael Shearer, the author
FRED. W. WRIGHT JR. Is a full-time freelance writer based in Seminole, Fla. He writes on a wide range of subjects, from business to film, health to stress, history to senior citizens. His work has been published in numerous newspapers and magazines, including Tampa Bay Times, National Geographic Traveler, Variety, and Florida Trend, among others.
PHOTO FROM GLAMOUR AND STYLE
EMBRACE MAGAZINE
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