Father Geek says good-bye to Tondelayo and HEDY LAMARR

Well Geeks, one of the last of the great classic 30’s and 40’s female leads has died. Father Geek first noticed the stunning exotic beauty HEDY LAMARR in the 1959 re-release of Paramount’s highly successful epic SAMSON AND DELILAH. Just 14 years old at the time I was unaware that I was watching a motion picture made when I was only three or four. The concept of re-issue films was not one I was all that familar with at the time. Hedy’s “Delilah” was the most earthy and sensual woman I had encountered in a movie theater at that age and I fell head over heals for her. She simply oozed glamor. A few weeks later I noticed that the Kelly Drive-In was showing THE FEMALE ANIMAL, starring Hedy Lamarr. So, that Saturday night I hopped on my trusty Cushman Eagle and took off to renew my latest screen love affair under the summer stars. Bummer, it wasn’t the same woman at all, she was so much older, harder, and the film was... well a sad waste of Hedy Lamarr. Her name slipped from my mind, until...

It was around 1962 and an older more aware Father Geek was bopping around West Houston street in downtown San Antonio. This was a area populated with bars, tatoo parlors, hock shops, sleazy magazine stands, and sleazier still little shotgun theaters. One of these, The Prince, had offered me and my gang our first glimpses of Russ Meyer films a few months before. This was still the era of extensive theater front promotional displays using many different size movie posters as well as 11x14 lobby cards and 8x10 stills. The Prince may have been low class, but they put up alot of paper about the flick inside. We knew this, so it was always on our list of places to go "window shopping". This day a banner above the entrance proclaimed, “THE MOST WHISPERED ABOUT PICTURE IN THE WORLD! BANNED FOR 25 YEARS! THE STARK NAKED TRUTH OF A WOMAN’S DESIRE FOR LOVE!”. The frames around the theater's outer lobby proved that the banner was no mere hype. They included shots of a beautiful young nude girl swimming on her back, and nude running thru the forest, and nude peering playfully around a tree, and these were TOTALLY NUDE shots, not just booby shots. Then I noticed the name on one of the 1-sheet posters... HEDY LAMARR... my god, here she was, at what must have been my age, a teenager. We immediately went around the corner to the alley exit to sneak in. (You had to be 21 to see movies at The Prince) My love for Hedy Lamarr had been reborn. This time it would not fade.

Later, in my college years in the mid to late 60's at The University of Texas I would become familiar with her work at MGM. I would view ALGIERS, BOOMTOWN, ZIEGFELD GIRL, HEAVENLY BODY, and DISHONORED LADY among others at the 5 different theaters on campus and Hedy Lamarr was right up there among my favorite femme fatales; Veronica Lake, Lana Turner, Susan Hayward, Jean Harlow, and Joan Crawford. In film school I learned more about this elegant and cool adventuress. I found out she was part of the same acting school/studio as Marlene Dietrich (another of Father Geek's crushes) in Germany, that her 1st film was done there in 1930, MONEY ON THE STREET. I found out she filmed ECSTASY at the age of 18, that its swimming scene was censored in Germany back in 32, That US Customs Officials seized the prints when it came to America in 1935 and burned them, that in 1936 to try and appease the Hayes Office the film inserted the German version of the bathing scene to no avail, that they then cut the shots of horses mating to no avail, that they then re-edited the film to give Hedy a divorce so she would not be having an adulterous affair to no avail, and that they tacked on shots of Lamarr with a baby (from another film) to imply a happy married life, but in the end there was no Production Code Office Seal of Approval for ECSTASY and no wide spread US release until the 1960’s.

But Hedy Lamarr was here to stay, churning out hit after hit for the biggest Hollywood studios. Father Geek will never forget her “Theodora” from COMRADE X, or her fasinating and exotic turn as “Sweets Ramirez” in TORTILLA FLAT and who could ever forget Hedy Lamarr after hearing her utter the sultry line, “I am... Tondelayo.” in the wonderful WHITE CARGO. You know, Ms. Lamarr would have been a true iconic superstar in everyones minds if not for the fact she heeded an agent's BAD advice. She was offered two roles before anybody else was which she turned down. They were the leads in GASLIGHT and CASABLANCA. Life can be very strange at times... even cruel.

Still years later when Father Geek ran a collectibles store called N. E. Mercantile Co. on Manor Rd. in East Austin he would score a huge load of vintage movie posters that had been stored at the old Longhorn Drive-in on the far northern most edge of town (Burnet Rd and 183). There would be many beautiful shots of HEDY LAMARR in the 7000 lobby cards included in the find, closeups from White Cargo, Dishonored Lady, Samson and Delilah among them. BUUUUUT, the ones... the pieces that thrilled Father Geek the most were the 5 sets of 11”X14” glossy photos from that 60’s re-issue of ECSTASY that I had snuck into back when I was 17 1/2. To add to the thrill of holding these images of 18 year old Hedy in my hands, one of the sets of B & W glossies had been painsakingly hand re-touched in beautiful color oils. Hedy’s Nazi munitions manufacturing German industrialist husband of the 30’s may have tried to buy up all the prints of Ecstasy in the late 30’s but thank god he failed. By the way I understand that those great tight close-ups of young Hedy in the throes of deep sexual passion were achieved by the Director poking her derriere several times with a sewing needle borrowed from the costume department.

So long HEDY, we love you and we’ll miss you greatly.