Pretty Is As Pretty Does

“My face has been my misfortune.” 

— Hedy Lamarr, from her 1966 autobiography, Ecstasy and Me

Ebony hair. Alabaster skin. Vermillion lips. 
Born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler. Transformed into Hollywood screen goddess Hedy Lamarr. 
From the beginning, she was acknowledged for her beauty. Not so much for her acting. And finally, decades later, for her brains.
Her first foray into cinema was a 1933 Czech film, Ekstase (Ecstasy), in which she appeared nude and simulated fufillment of the movie’s title; other well-known roles include Algiers with Charles Boyer, 1938; White Cargo with Walter Pidgeon, 1942; and the technicolor Biblical potboiler, Samson and Delilah with Victor Mature, 1949.
In 1942, she and composer George Antheil shared a patent for inventing a technological system they called “frequency hopping”, an idea that she and the avant-garde American composer hatched at a dinner party. Their invention opened the doors to the spread-spectrum technology and cell phone usage. Talk about networking!
Unfortunately their idea languished until 1957, when it was adopted by engineers at Sylvania Electronis Systems. In 1962, it was installed in United States military ships, three years after the Lamarr-Antheil patent had expired. So Lamarr is credited with a portion of the credit but enjoyed none of the proceeds.  
In 1997, she and co-inventor Antheil won the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award. “It’s about time,” she reportedly said.
To learn more about Hedy Lamarr, tune into the Stuff You Missed in History Class podcast about the Hollywood starlet who invested cellular technology.