Hedy Lamarr: The Most Beautiful Woman in Film

Exit: Loder

140 11 Exit: Loder In 1944, Hedy compensated for her missed opportunity to act in Casablanca . In January, she, Alan Ladd, and John Loder reprised the lead roles in the Lux Radio Theater adaptation of the film, produced by Cecil B. DeMille. Soon after, filming started on The Conspirators. Suddenly aware of the value of the small film they had virtually thrown away, Warner Bros. proceeded to capitalize on the need for wartime propaganda by reassembling much of the cast for what they advertised as a Casablanca reunion. Originally, Warner Bros. planned to feature Humphrey Bogart, Helmut Dantine, and Ann Sheridan in their adaptation of a recently published novel, The Conspirators. Frederic Prokosch, its author, was known as a brilliant writer and poet; his Austrian father was a respected academic who had suffered from anti-German prejudice in his early career; his mother, a well-known pianist. Prokosch held a doctorate from Yale and might have followed his father into academia had he not found early success with his poetry. A poorly timed trip to Europe as war loomed saw him flee from border to border, eventually settling in Estoril, a small town just outside Lisbon in Portugal, best known for its ritzy casino. Estoril is the setting for The Conspirators, and the novel and film adaptation draw closely from the rich cast of characters Prokosch observed around him: The Palacio was filled not only with the wealthy refugees but with certain more ambiguous and slippery personalities. There was the sinuous Mrs. Grigoresco from Bucharest with her pearls, and the swarthy Mrs. Suleiman from Ankara with her parasol. There was the one-eyed Signor Katz from Trieste with his Utrillos, and there was the tweedy Mr. Abercrombie from Edinburgh with his golf Exit: Loder 141 clubs. And who was that willowy Danish girl with the Pomeranian, and who was that rat-faced Fräulein Torok with the sunglasses?1 Prokosch’s environment was translated into a swiftly written antiNazi novel, peopled by Prussian officers with cruel scars, duplicitous foreigners, and secret documents relayed by shadowy couriers; the book was duly banned by a number of unsympathetic governments. Ripe material indeed for Hollywood, as Warner Bros. realized. When Hedy’s friend Ann Sheridan was ruled out for the female lead, Joan Fontaine was approached next. Eventually, Jack Warner settled for Hedy (swapping her for John Garfield, who had to make two pictures for her one), with Ida Lupino as a reserve if MGM were not amenable. Paul Henreid starred as Vincent Van Der Lyn, aka the Flying Dutchman, a Dutch schoolteacher on the run from the Nazis. Sydney Greenstreet played the head of the Portuguese Resistance, Ricardo Quintanilla. Peter Lorre was his simpering henchman Jan Bernazsky. Hedy took center stage as the mysterious Irene von Mohr, who is married to a double agent within German High Command. She, of course, falls for Van Der Lyn, and the film’s narrative struggles thereafter to integrate the spy story with the romance . If the casting was meant to invoke Casablanca, it also strongly echoed The Maltese Falcon (1941), boasting many of that film’s twists and turns, as well as its film noir look. With Hedy, Henreid, Lorre, and Berlin-born editor Rudi Fehr all involved, the set was also referred to as “Reunion in Vienna.” From the beginning of the project, the film was dogged by difficulty. According to director Jean Negulesco, Hal Wallis had been its initial producer . That year Wallis had collected Academy Awards for two earlier productions, Casablanca and Dark Victory, awards that his boss, Jack Warner , had himself anticipated he would receive. “During the festivities of Oscar night, the repeated calling of the name of Hal Wallis aroused long applause and laughter. This was regarded as a covert slap at Jack Warner. Warner was humiliated and Wallis was fired the next day.”2 In fact, Wallis ’s acrimonious departure from Warner Bros. played out more slowly than Negulesco remembers. The upshot for The Conpirators was the same, however. Jack Chertok was then appointed producer; any footage that had been shot under Wallis was discarded; and the pace of the story was changed: “My job as a young director became a nightmare. Secretly 142 Hedy Lamarr the film became known as The Constipators, with ‘Headache Lamarr’ and ‘Paul Haemorrhoid.’”3 The film was shot between March and June 1944, using stock footage in lieu of overseas locations...