Does Hedy Lamarr’s Ecstasy and Me: My Life as a Woman contain the oddest introduction and preface in the history of autobiography? Ostensibly penned by her physician (a move you’d expect from Elizabeth Taylor), the introduction reads more like the work of Dr. Spaceman from 30 Rock (a Dr. Spaceman, it should be noted, who is on his best behavior), leading one to wonder just what Lamarr was up to when she inked a deal with Bartholomew House Publishers for the 1966 book she later claimed was ghostwritten, not to mention “fictional, false, vulgar, scandalous, libelous and obscene.” Perhaps she was distracted while working on her night cheese?
Lamarr, an actress better known for her beauty than her craft, had a turbulent personal life and rocky Hollywood career. Today she is best remembered as the co-inventor of spread spectrum technology, an innovation that paved the way for cellphones and wi-fi, but for many years her biggest claim to fame was her erratic behavior: she married often, dabbled in shoplifting (for which she was busted twice, once in the ’60s and again in the ’90s) and was litigious to the nth degree. Nearly 50 years after its first printing, Ecstasy and Me remains a lurid curiosity among celebrity tell-alls for its focus on the more, uh, sensual side of Lamarr’s life (her “life as a woman,” you see), and the introduction is intended to supply the whole sordid affair a veneer of respectability. Let’s take a look at it, shall we?
INTRODUCTION
I have been a physician for many years, treating many Hollywood personalities including Hedy Lamarr. I have come to the conclusion that in most cases there are enough demands and pressures on stars to cause any and every kind of physical breakdown.
An actress such as Miss Lamarr, who spent some thirty years in the hub of motion picture production and raised three children as well, can be thankful she survived the rough and treacherous grind at all.
Pills and alcohol are of temporary help for some motion picture stars in the battle against pressures, but the antidote is often worse than the poison.
Consider a Marilyn Monroe or a Dorothy Dandridge who may take an overdose of pills, whether accidentally or not. Or a Judy Garland who attempts suicide. It could be that their momentary depressions would pass and they would be happy the next day.
It is ironic that the very sensitivity required for talent is the cause of breakdowns.
Is there a real antidote for the kind of ambition that creates unquenchable drives? Yes. Though it may sound trite, other interests far removed from motion pictures can relieve the never-ending pressure.
It would seem to me that in this enlightened era, studio production heads would protect their valuable stars by making the filming of pictures easier for them. It may call for less shooting hours per day—in England there is no overtime work—or better working conditions.
Stars have complained to me that much of their pressure, especially in television, builds up because scripts are usually being written and rewritten as they work. Certainly more expedient methods are possible without inhibiting the creative process.
From a medical point of view, I’d say that there are many important actresses—and they are the most talented, and therefore the most susceptible—who cannot, no matter how they are helped, withstand the nervous strain of picture making as it is done today. They should simply not be involved in it.
Now I’ve had my medical say. As for this book which I just finished reading, it is the most fascinating, revealing and honest life story I’ve ever read. It is a classic case of a talent who sacrificed the happiness of which she was capable, in exchange for fame and money. But then, who’s to say she was wrong?
j. lewis bruce, m.d.
“Who’s to say she was wrong?” indeed, Dr. Gossip (and no, Judy Garland wasn’t going to be happy the next day, not in a meaningful way, any more than Raymond Burr was going to be obese on a Thursday and slender by Friday). But wait, along comes the preface to make everything much weirder:
PREFACE
Whether in a passionate sexual encounter with a man who mistakes her for a prostitute, or in a cloak-and-dagger chase of high adventure, Hedy Lamarr’s responses as reported in ECSTASY AND ME appear to be blissfully unaffected by moral standards that our contemporary culture declares as acceptable.
She is an uninhibited spirit, unfettered by a code of conventional behavior, supremely conscious of the privilege and latitude the world bestows upon a superbly beautiful woman aware of her physical endowments.
ECSTASY AND ME is a story of the classic femme fatale for whom fame, fortune, and sexual excess are the inevitable fruits of great beauty on the make.
Miss Lamarr’s manifold sexual experiences, male and female, led her to the delightfully ingenuous self-prognosis that she is “oversexed.” Her admitted talent for quick and joyful orgasm indicates an uncomplicated natural sex response. Her curious search for new love-play settings and her candid delight in unexpected sexual episodes place her in a position of psychological unassailability. Not only does she possess a unique set of moral standards, but she expresses herself in a most intimate manner, in exquisite detail, and in the first person singular!
ECSTASY AND ME is an entrancing personal document as revealing as the contents of a girl’s locked diary. It is probably as good for Miss Lamarr’s psyche as it will be for many a guilt-ridden reader for whom this gutsy confessional may offer resultful therapy, if not instant emancipation.
philip lambert, psychologist
Dr. Philip Lambert, we’re told, was a Ph.D. who received his doctorate in Educational Psychology from the University of California (Berkeley) and was Chairman of the University of Wisconsin’s Instructional Laboratory and Director of its famed (according to Bartholomew Press) Synnoetics Center. That’s right, synnoetics. Google it and scratch your head.
In other words, he ejaculated mindless blather for a living and was trotted out like a William Castle gimmick to legitimize a salacious and most likely highly fictionalized account of a life that hardly needed any sensationalizing. And then, had he been a medical doctor, he might have made Hedy dance for happy shots or asked when medical science is going to find a cure for a woman’s mouth—and it would still be less embarrassing than having your professional reputation attached to that strange preface.
P.S. Sadly I cannot, in the first person singular, report having been visited by feelings of “instant emancipation” after reading Ecstasy and Me, but I do seem to recall a Hilary Mantel piece in the London Review of Books about the erotic awakening she experienced after reading Florence Henderson’s autobiography, so if that’s what you’re after you might consider looking there.
Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
