In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

176 14 Acapulco By the spring of 1950, Hedy was enjoying the comforts of financial security . She had proven herself professionally and could indulge her interests . If she had never learned to love Hollywood, she had grown used to West Coast sunshine; most of all she enjoyed swimming and relaxing on the beach. She headed to the Naples Beach Club in Florida, but she was determined to appear in another role for DeMille, who was rumored to be working on another epic, a “circus picture” (The Greatest Show on Earth, 1952). Never much of a letter writer, she assaulted the director with a steady flow of telegrams. In the summer she holidayed in East Hampton. She took painting classes from Franz Bueb and, still flush with money, invested in art, purchasing paintings that included Grandma Moses’s The Homecoming and works by Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Utrillo, Modigliani, and Camille Bombois . The burgeoning collection suggests something of a preference for naïve art, which was currently in vogue. “Every time I work hard I give myself a present,” she said firmly.1 Would she be able to continue working hard? Most important for her career, she turned to television, where she made a startling impact as a game and quiz-show contestant. Her shows in the 1950s included appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show, the Colgate Comedy Hour, the All Star Revue, Shower of Stars, the George Gobel Show, and the Merv Griffin Show. Taking their cue from the old radio shows, the TV shows had stars appear as themselves or act out scenarios inspired by their best-known film roles.2 Hedy’s first television appearance was as a last-minute replacement for Gloria Swanson on the Ed Sullivan Show, in September 1950. Her costar was Pat O’Brien, who proved himself well adapted to the new entertain- Acapulco 177 ment medium. “O’Brien justified his booking,” Variety considered. “Miss Lamarr made no such attempt. Apparently all she was hired to do was look pretty, and she’s extremely capable in that department.”3 Indeed, Hedy’s television appearances are notable for her look of bemusement . She often seems hardly able to believe what she is doing, settling for standing still as the action revolves around her. Part of the problem lay in the shows’ various scripts. In Donald O’Connor’s Colgate Comedy Hour of 1952, the host had to duel for the beautiful lady, leaving Hedy with nothing to do but look decorative. Apparently, the show’s writers were unable to recall or imagine the strong women she had played in her 1940s heyday or to comprehend that she had any talent for comedy. More successful was the madcap Colgate Comedy Hour later in 1952 (28 December), where a manic Ben Blue enacted an extended parody of wartime spy thrillers. Hedy’s role was to play off her parts in The Conspirators and Comrade X as an outrageously over-the-top Mata Hari figure. This she did with something approaching gusto. Nor did her filmmaking dry up in the 1950s. In 1950, for instance, she earned $138,059.36.4 Having turned down the role of Elizabeth Taylor’s mother in Vincente Minnelli’s Father of the Bride (1950), she appeared in A Lady without Passport in 1950, a part for which she was paid $90,000. The film was one of a number released in the 1950s dramatizing the situation of illegal immigrants crossing the border into the United States. MGM tied itself in knots as it attempted to accommodate the conflicting perspectives of various audiences as well as the official perspective on immigration . Hedy was to play a down-on-her-luck Cuban refugee who is just looking for “a home, respect, freedom, and neighbors who want the same thing.” If that was found by escaping to America, then the film had to emphasize that not all beautiful Cuban women would enjoy the same entitlement. So, in a play on the audience’s knowledge of the star’s offscreen life and persona, Hedy’s Marianne Loriss became a Vienneseborn beauty who had (inexplicably) washed up in Cuba. In common with her earlier roles, she had to validate and complicate a foreigner’s desire to become an American, and she was expected less to carry the narrative than to appear as a sideshow to the main action. To shoot the film, MGM hired film noir director Joseph H. Lewis. After the release of Gun Crazy in 1949...

Share