Citation Needed - Hedy Lamarr

Episode Date: June 17, 2020

Hedy Lamarr (/ˈheɪdi/), born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler (November 9, 1914[a] – January 19, 2000), was an Austrian-American actress, inventor, and film producer. She was part of 30 films in an acting career spanning 28 years, and co-invented an early version of frequency-hopping spread spectrum.[1][2]

I just don't even understand why you'd call it paternity leave if you didn't have a the kid yet though. Like why? Yeah, that's just not going to work today, right? That's just not what? Yeah, yeah. It's more like that than paternity leave. That's for sure.

I think that it's not going to work is what I would call it. Okay, I got it, but I don't think we have to watch all of them again, right? I mean, we don't have to, but I mean, hey, hey, oh, thank fucking God, you guys are here. Hey, guys, you're pretty excited about today's essay. Whoa, clearly not as excited as you. Are these that all the surviving costumes, Hetty Lamar War between 1942 and 1947?

Yes. That's not what I was going to ask you about, but that's pretty weird too. Hey, why are the insides of these shoes sticky? Because sometimes old shoes are sticky on the inside time. It happens. Old shoes. Yeah.

So Noah, I'm sorry if this seems out of line, but you seem kind of to be secretly obsessed with a woman who was 62 years old when you were born. I did that. Yeah, I don't know if I'd say secretly. She used to have a sister. Of course I love Hetty Lamar. Sure, she was one of the most beautiful and glamorous women in the history of Hollywood, but she was also a brilliant inventor, a great actor, an icon of feminine autonomy, a

shrewd investor, and a fucking genius. Yeah, okay. And which of those qualities were you thinking when you were fucking that shoe? Which one of those? I don't see how that's any of your business at all. Cecil. Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, a podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the internet.

And that's how it works now. I'm Heath, and this one goes out to all the sapio-sexuals out there. Oh! Also just all the different other sexuals, and I'm joined by three men who are so much more than just the glamorous, beautiful faces of podcasting that you know them for, Cecil Tom and Noah.

Oh, looking forward to another 30 emails about how my face and body don't match my voice. This is gonna be great, I can't wait. My face and body don't match each other. I look like a borrowed them both. I'm not sure how they work or where they were from. Yeah, no. You Photoshop.

I'm as painted. It's weird to me, everybody always tells me I sound bald. I'm the one that gets in your hair. I don't get it. That's just a way to say depressed. You sound depressed. No, you're right. That's probably it.

So tell us, Cecil, what person plays thing concept phenomenon or event? We're going to be talking about today. Today we're going to be about a film actress and genius Heady Lamar fantastic and Noah you clearly own a rare copy of an erotic buster Keaton movie that made you think of this Heady Lamar okay, okay first of all heath all buster Keaton movies are erotic. If you properly appreciate physical comedy. And secondly, you bet your ass I am. Buster sexual, awesome. Okay, and I know I ask you this a lot, but why though?

Why? That's why. Well, okay, so partly because no matter how intimidating the emails are, there is no opposite of the atrustkins for me to do an essay about, um, you're not even trying. And onor, are you reading the emails? I ultimately made them. But smack trash.

Also, because I fucking love Hetty Lamar. Okay, um, back in her day, she was built as the most beautiful woman in the world. And not many people were arguing with that, but she was so much more than a star of stage and screen and a beautiful woman. She was also a classically trained pianist. She spoke four languages to like a native level. She amassed a personal fortune of about a third of a billion dollars in today's money. She's an inductee to the National and Ventors Hall of Fame. In fact, everyone listening to this show is carrying one of her inventions around with

them. At least one. She said the fucking Leonardo da Vinci was smoking hot. Okay. Just throwing shade at Da Vinci right away, weird. Okay. I know shit like raise four hands if you'd fuck Da Vinci. Fucking time someone took a Leo DaVinci down a peg.

There you go. Right. Yeah, exactly. All right. So head big Keesler was born in 1914 in Vienna. Right as World War One was getting ramped up. Her father was a successful bank manager and her mother was a pianist. Both her father and mother came from Jewish families, but they converted to Catholicism

because God is it real and Vienna was crazy anti-Semitic. That's an interesting choice. If you're looking for something less anti-Semitic, but okay, okay, that's right. Sure. Of course, back then, Vienna was one of the world's centers of art and culture. It wasn't exactly Bohemian,

but it's like, and it's 100 miles shy of it. So naturally, he had a grew up one to be an actor. So the age of 16, she shows up at a movie lot with a forged parental permission note and applies for a job as a script girl. I got to admit, I had no idea what that meant. Apparently it's an early sexist term for script supervisor, but it doesn't much matter because he didn't know what it meant. Either she just knew there was such a job as script girl.

She was a girl. So she figured she was probably qualified for it Yeah, you're very qualified. You'll be working right under worst boy in the chain of men We are very misadjable. Hey Joe there's a teenager here. It wants to supervise the script. What? Yeah, of course. She's got a permission slip. Don't be an idiot. Yeah, right, right. No, but the question they would then ask is how are her games? And then in Heddy's case, they hired her on the fucking spot. At that point, of course, she has to tell her parents for realsies.

But there's every indication that she had her dad wrapped her out her little finger. So that was a pretty easy sell. So she goes to work for this little V&E's outfit called Sasha Films and she's a script girl for all of three days before somebody's like, wow, she's way too pretty to be on this side of the camera. So she's pretty much immediately taking small roles. In fact, she got the job in 1930 by 1931. She's appearing in her first of three movies with Peter Lort.

Wow. Quickly turning into a post script girl. Good for her. Good for her. Good for her. I feel like we're on the wrong side of the microphone for how attractive we are. That's not enough. People are great. She moved her way up the ladder of Austrian film pretty quickly because it turned out that

in addition to being gorgeous, she also could really fucking act pretty soon. She catches the attention of Max Reinhardt probably the most influential German director ever to live. He convinces her to come to Berlin and while he never cast her in any of his movies, she did really well in the Berlin movie scene regardless. Okay. Feels like that's a euphemism for something like. Yeah, really well in the Berlin movie scene.

Yeah, the parting words for her fathers still ringing in her ears. Honey, if they ask you to take your top off, get the money first. Oh, if only her dad had bought to tell her about that. So at the age of 18, Astroske pin in that, she lands a role in a movie called Axtasy. And this one would make her famous, but more in an infamous kind of way. This is 1933. And of course, movies were a lot more conservative than than they are now,

less so in Germany and Austria than in America, but still you didn't see things like boobs in movies back then. But you saw a head he's in Axtasy. And far more controversial than the brief nude scenes in the movie was a close up shot of her face having an orgasm, which was downright fucking scandalous by the standard of the in fact, that sequence is widely believed to be cinema's first sexy.

I can see people getting upset, especially women getting upset about that though. There's no way women of the day could compete with that. It trained actor fakingaking, and orgasm. That's hard to do. I'm just kidding. You know, the scene wasn't even all that controversial until she started squirting and showing off. She's just crying.

She's like, when he'd met Sally. There's all these people in the theater. I'll have what she's having. Yeah. All right. So couple have what she's having. Yeah. All right. So a couple of quick notes on ecstasy. First of all, she almost certainly was not 18 when it was filmed, which made the new

scene see illegal even back then, which more, the director, at least some stories suggest the director, trick her into doing the scenes by telling her that like, oh yeah, but you're going to be way far from the camera. We're just going to barely kind of see the outline of you, but then, you know, she didn't know about high powered telephoto lenses at the time. So she believed them. Also, and I only include this detail because it's so fucking weird. The infamous orgasm scene was achieved by pricking her with a pin. I'm not kidding that because apparently I get it now. I get it now. Fuck. But apparently the men of the 30s did not know the difference between orgasm face and

stop sticking me with that face. So yeah, right. God. That's so stupid. Okay, let's all tell each other what a woman looks like having a real orgasm. You guys go first, though. Holding the Hattachi wand by herself in her room. I know, no, not let's get her own room. Sometimes she lets me walk. As a buffy male orgasms or as imaginary as the clip, I reject the whole thing. I'm gonna stir it out.

How would you? For a lot of actresses, that would have been the end of her career, right? She was disillusioned by the directors to seat. Her family was shocked and embarrassed. And she gained international notoriety when the movie was banned in the US for its over at sexuality. It was also banned in Germany because of Eddie's Jewish heritage,

but that's a different story altogether. But the key here is that through most of Europe, that movie was a smash fucking hit. The more sophisticated and less prudish European audiences saw the movie as like an artistic and progressively feminist statement as it was intended to be. Yeah.

And then there were also hundreds of European women bringing their husbands to the movies and pointing at the screen like there, like that. When I did it was good for me. Until then, stop fucking asking. He's just standing there poking her with a pen. Oh, yeah. Fine. There you right. Fine. There you go.

Get out your little prick and get the stun. All right. So the movie also caught the attention of a shooter who became infatuated with had a that's Friedrich Fritz Mandel. He was the heir to a munitions fortune in the chairman of one of Austria's largest armament firms. He was reported at the time to be the third wealthiest man in Austria. So he starts showing up at this play that she's been cast in.

He's there every night pestering her and hounding her no matter how many times she says, no, which was called dating back then. So eventually the two became engaged. Boomboxes were invented yet. So this guy just stood outside her window waving his bank statement over his head. Hi, say what you all, that still works. That is a terrible, especially a really close to what happened. Pay anything.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So her parents didn't approve. They both still have the, you know, Jewish heritage thing going on. And Mandel had ties to Mussolini and eventually Hitler. He's basically the definition of a fucking movie villain,

but she marries him anyway. She's all the 18 years old. He's 33. And by every account, he's a controlling asshole. Oh, you don't say the obsessive 33 year old who saw a naked teenager on screen and then stalked her, turned out to be like, woke Prince Charming.

Look at you strangely enough. What? So no, you'll love this time. One of his first acts as her newly minted husband was to piss away over $300,000 in then money, trying to buy up and destroy every copy of ecstasy and circulation. Wow.

That's an awkward conversation for a bunch of that buying. Just like, yeah, I'm buying 300 grand in child porn, but I'm destroying it. I am. All right. So for a while, she's happy in the lap of luxury, but Mandel won't let her pursue her career. He controls every aspect of her life. He's petty. He's jealous.

He takes her out to dinner and berates her. If he thinks she's checking out some better looking guy at the next table So before long she's over the marriage shit But she can't exactly walk out on the guy's the third richest man in Austria He's at least close enough with Mussolini that the Italian dictator had dined in their home My god, damn it. He's a crazy powerful guy So to leave she's gonna need to employ a bit of cunning Which is fine because if

there's anything she has to spare, it's cunning. And you said she was multi-lingual. So cunning linguist then. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So what I was also thinking about every minute of this essay. So okay. So I was thinking about the science and the articles. So yeah. So there are two versions of the story, right? There's the one that Heady told and the one that actually happened. We're actually precisely, there's like a million versions because she never told us the same way twice.

But the story that turned into legend is that she found a maid that was about her height and her build and she studied her every moment. She's an actor, right? That's her skill. She's home this for years. So once she'd perfected that maid's gate and mannerisms, she drugs her coffee, steals her clothes and sneaks out at the house at the end of her shift, wearing

some jewels under the clothes that she can like sell later to get a ticket money to go to Paris. Yeah, you know, and she practiced that move by swapping out a dead goldfish with a new one. So the maid was really just an issue of scale. Yeah, exactly. The same principle. So the real story actually, to me is like cooler. I'm unbeknownst to her husband and all the fascists heads of state that he entertained. How do you was fucking brilliant? Right, she says 18, 19 year old girls sitting around in a room where Austrian arms dealers

just talk about all the latest and greatest and cutting edge military technology. These assholes assume that because she didn't have a penis she had no idea what they were talking about so the real story is far more likely something like she told him she wanted to leave he said no she said you know i bet your competitors would love to know how you're working out that latency problem on your new glide bombs and he said so you think an alimony or uh... hey explain my late late she's see thing one more time. Just. That's all I know that you know what we're all talking about.

All right. So, so, but why the elaborate lie, right? Why make yourself out to be this helpless, damsel and distress when the real story is that you just outsmarted your comic book, villain husband, because she wanted to work in fucking Hollywood. And having shown a camera, her boobs already gave her a bad reputation, divorcing her husband simply because she wanted to work in fucking Hollywood and having shown a camera her boobs already gave her a bad reputation divorcing her husband simply because she didn't enjoy him telling her what to do would have never flown with american audiences so even the story she was telling was her way of outsmarting the men around her like wait i love it just like yeah okay guys i'll be waiting in the truck go wait in the what okay like, yeah, okay guys, I'll be waiting in the truck. Go wait in the, what?

Okay. Okay. Exactly right. Jail smarted me. So armed with her divorce, she gets the fuck out of Austria. This is 1936, Hitler had already risen to power next door. The war was looming and everybody with the means to get the fuck out of Austria was doing so,

especially the ones with Jewish heritage. Of course, there were strict rules about how much money you could take with you. So she stocks up on her jewels in her first and she heads to London. Oh, the war will never come to let you hear that. Yeah, no, she kept going, she kept going, okay, so it's in London where she meets Louis B. Mayor. He's in Europe trying to like scout for some talent. He is, of course, the M in MGM. I mean, not that one.

Obviously that's Metro. That's not a person, but he's the other one. Right? So he offers her a contract making $125 a week, which is basically like minimum wage for actors at the time. She turns this ass down because she's headie fucking Lamar or actually she's still headie Keesler, but that was about to change. With no contract, she finds out which ocean liner mayor has taken home and she books

herself on the same one. Then she spends the trip charming every fucking guy on the boat and just wandering back and forth past Louis B. Mayor over and over always with a gag of would be suitors and a way to try to later cigarette. So by the end of the trip, he's up the offer to $500 a week, which he takes. Okay, so I've been picturing female bugs, bunny this whole time, this confirms it. That's true. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no name as well partly it's because Keisler sounded German and folks in the US were like in Germans less and less those days.

But a big part of it also was because they didn't want people to think of her as that girl from ecstasy. Apparently Louis B. Mayer's wife suggested Lamar in homage to an actress named Barbara Lamar who died when she was in her 20s probably because Louis B. Mayer's wife hoped she'd fuck off and die. Lamar, huh? Sounds good. But you need a first name with some sex appeal to it though. mayor's wife hope she'd fuck off and die. Lamar, huh? Sounds good, but you need a first name with some sex appeal to it though.

I was heading. I want to point out the confidence that this woman just fucking showed. She gets on the boat to America. She doesn't have any friends there. She doesn't have very much money and at least at the fucking beginning of the trip, she doesn't even have a contract. She does not even speak English at this point. But sure enough, by the time she reached America's shores, MGM Studios was already building the newly christened Hetty Lamar as the most

beautiful woman in the world. This is fantastic. So, right, she outsmarted an international arms baron, escaped the Nazis, and then Louie Meyer of MGM agreed not to shoot her now and wait till they get home. It was about $9,000 a week in today's money. Yeah, yeah. Heady Lamar is a real life bugs bunny, and I love her, and there's so much more to come.

But first, we're gonna take a quick break for some op-above, nothing. Coming to theaters in the summer of 1934. Why, Eva, you look so dashing in that beekeeper's outfit, and it's so revealing. Oh, would you look at that? I've gone and torn the leg. My ankle is just entirely exposed. Ugh! Comes a movie about a scandalous affair. Are you telling me they drove from the restaurant to the theater on Shaperone?

That's not the worst of it, Carl. She was wearing a pant suit. Ugh! Pant suit, Carl, and reading a newspaper. The fashion section? No, Carl. Pant suit Carl and reading a newspaper. The fashion section? No Carl. Get ready for the film banned in cinemas around the world.

Almost visible side boob. A romance. How did people even know how to fuck back then then? And we're back. When we left off, heady Lamar was throwing a really slow pitch that made the sound of a car stalling and the entire paint tree argument was swinging wildly and missing over and over and over. And she was about to get rich and famous. What's next? Yeah, okay. So he arrives in America, sets about learning to speak English, which would be her fourth fucking language, and losing weight,

because America's obsession with unhealthy amounts of thin was already in full swing at this point. She got her first starring rule in the 1938 movie, Al Gears, it was the first of many times she had played, she would play the exotic foreign seductress, and she was a fucking sensation. American audiences loved her, women started like, everybody wanted to be blonde before that,

they all, all the women started dying their hair, black, partner in the middle of the way she did. But women went to plastic surgeons that she was the most requested profile. Now, she goes on to star in a bunch of fucking movies and be a movie star and shit. And that's interesting in its own right. But it's gonna kind of shift to the background

of this story because while she was busy being one of the most glamorous women in the world, she was also working on a new type of radio guided torpedo to help the allies win the world. That's fucking awesome. Yeah, which isn't the very least at a typical. Yeah, and a little unfair. When I work in my private munitions lab,

I get the all expense paid Cuban vacation. I'm just saying attractiveness privilege. It rears its beautiful head people. Right. Yes, absolutely. Sexism goes both ways, guys. Okay, so I should also point out that Hetty Lamar hated being billed as the most beautiful woman in the world because while she could legit make that claim, it really sold her short. She famously quiped, quote, and I love this quote, so Goddamn much.

Any girl can be glamorous. You just have to stand still and look stupid. That's fantastic. And every director in Hollywood was like, yes, I couldn't put my finger on it. That's what I'm saying. All right, that's put my finger on that. Yeah. That's it. All right, that's it. Right that is.

Subscribe. That's it. There you go. Right. So sure, yes, she did all the glamourous ship, but she was also a fucking genius. Like Howard Hughes dated a lot of movie stars. Heady was the only one that improved his aviation designs while they were dating. That's a nice.

Yeah, no, she was like, and she actually was the one that kind of pointed him towards birds and said, hey, you know, this should be shaped like this. So when the war broke out, she decided there was more important ship for her to do than just make movies. All right, so the impetus for her to get involved

was something that hit a lot of Americans pretty hard. In the lead up to the Battle of Britain, a bunch of ships went out trying to like ferry children away from the island nation and advance to the German blitz. One of those ships was the SS city of Benares. I don't know. We're. We're not. On a. Yeah. There you go. Which was. Thank you. You like, which was hit by a German torpedo in September

of 1940. 260 of 407 people on board, including 80 children. Now, he had him more than those kids right along with the rest of her newly adopted country, but when she was done mourning, he had he decided to torpedo those motherfuckers back. So, he didn't have much in the way of formal education, what with dropping out of school at 16 to be an actress, but she taught herself quite a bit.

And one of her passions was invention. She made up all kinds of shit. She like invented an improved traffic light. She invented a device to help mobility impaired people get in and out of the tub. She made breakthroughs in plastic surgery. She invented a little cube. You could drop in a glass of water to make carbonated soda.

And on top of that, she also spent a couple of years completely immersed in the world of munitions, right? Like she knew the ins and outs of that, she also spent a couple of years completely immersed in the world of munitions. Right? Like she knew the ins and outs of that business up to and including classified Australian weapons development. So as weird as it sounds to say a Hollywood superstar decided like, I'm going to design a better torpedo. She was actually weirdly qualified to do exactly that.

Hey, I got an idea for you, Mr. Meyer. What if I make a movie about a woman who invents torpedo to kill Nazis? How cool is that? Or I could just stand still and look stupid. Yeah, that'll be $9,000, please. Yeah. So I'm gonna get really nerdy on this. I apologize, I love this fucking story so much.

So here's the problem she set out to solve. Torpedoes weren't super effective if he couldn't steer them, right? There's only so fast you can get a project out going under water. It's not like a fucking bullet. The targets can't like move out of the way and they do. Honestly, at this point, just zigzagging here and there was often plenty to thwart uncontrolled torpedoes. So modern torpedoes had to be navigable, which means that you need to communicate with them after you launch them. One option, of course, is to run a wire behind the torpedo all the way to the ship that's firing it, but that's fucking silly, right?

The other is to use radio. The problem with radio is that there are only so many frequencies, and once your enemy figures out which one you're using, they'll just jam the damper. Well, there is a third way, but you need a major to ride it in a battle. He's got to ride it like that before. That's the, that's the, let's hell to try to hang on to your cowboy hat under water. It's true. Right.

And sharks. That's the other problem. Well, also sharks. Um, so, okay, so headies idea is to change the frequency in both descending and receiving unit in unison. Right. So both the torpedo and the steering device are coded with which frequencies to use when and without knowing

which frequencies they're about to shift to, you can't jam the thing. And if you just thought to yourself, oh, you mean like how a cell phone works, you're starting to see why heady Lamara's in the inventor's Hall of Fame. Ah, cell phone, celebrity phone, I get it now. That's it. Sorry, Eli's not here and someone had to say Cell phone celebrity phone I get it now

Sorry Eli's not here and someone had to say something incredibly stupid Jump on that grenade alright good work and I'll lie and pretend I've read a book by Proust What else is Eli do no, he doesn't think. Oh, yeah. Great. Moving on. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. So to make her invention work, John Boney Ramsey. All right. So to make her invention work and to make it patentable, she enlisted the help of a composer named George Antiole. Um, he was a pioneer in electronic music and at the time he was known for this ambitious project where he tried to synchronize a bunch of player pianos in a concert. He's like 1940's Skrillex. He really was. So, listen, I'm all without massive amounts of drugs.

Okay. I thought you were doing this, Jeff. Yes. You have just exactly explained the fucking alley. Okay, so now at this time, the government had an office called the National Inventors Council and the goal was to give American citizens that had ideas on how to improve the war effort, one central place to submit their inventions because up until then, people would literally just mail it to the White House. Here's a bomb, try it out, guys. Yeah, right, yeah, exactly. I invented this white powder. Check it out, guys. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. I invented this white powder.

Check it out, guys. Yeah, exactly. Check this stuff out. All right. So, Eddie and Antill tell the council about this concept and pretty much right away, the NICC, the utility of it. Of course, they don't build a fucking torpedo to demonstrate it, but they demonstrate the principle using what amounts to two small player piano reels to tell a sender and receiver

what frequencies to two small player piano reels to tell a sender and receiver what frequencies to shift to. Okay, so of course, the government immediately classifies the fuck out of this idea, right? And some word of that leads to the press. So the New York Times ends up running this story that says Hollywood superstar, Heidelimara has invented something so crucial to the war effort, we can't tell you what it is.

Right, because like since it's classified, that's all they can do in terms of details. So when they submit for the patent in hopes of avoiding charges that it only went through because of her celebrity, she files it under the name Keesler instead of Lamar, even though Lamar was her legal name at that point, the patent is granted in 1942. So at this point, all they have to left to do is sell the invention. And of course, there's only one potential buyer for this classified information that would be the US Navy. And the US Navy has really, really shitty torpedoes

and really needs the help. Yeah, the one buyer thing does make sense. I mean, I could be weird if anybody else is like, well, I want torpedoes. I could use some... Pfft. Pfft. Nobody asked me.

Yeah. No, you're business. Right? I'm just saying carnival said it was, you're business. Right? I'm just saying carnival said it was all you could eat. I'm actually ran out of pineapples. All right, so seriously though, like art torpedoes were so bad at the beginning of World War II. I know it's weird, like how bad were they kind of a setup,

but it was not at all uncommon for Japanese ships to come and deport with unexploded American torpedoes sticking out of them. It is like steam sheepishly into port like with its fingers like a toilet paper stuck to their shoe. You just home. Yeah, right, right. Yeah, exactly.

Um, but they were still resistant to any idea that came from outside the military and they were even more resistant to ideas that came from women. So they decided they didn't want this. And since nobody else is buying torpedoes in the US, Lamar and Antio Schrugg and their shoulders and just go about their lives. American torpedoes were terrible. Loan another torpedo. Sir, I'm just not sure the torpedo tray but she is that effective? Oh, is that so, Ensen? You just want to go back to using the torpedo catapult then? No, no, no. I don't want to use that either

I'm the damn torpedo in the trebuchet and pour some gas on this one and light it on fire. Okay But it's gonna hit the water. That's an order, Ensen All right, so but here's the thing. What they just invented was frequency hopping spread spectrum technology. This is one of the foundational technologies behind cell phones, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, anything that we're like a lot of people need to communicate by radio without interfering with each other. Right?

They didn't see all the future uses of it, but they understood that there were going to be a bunch of future uses in communication, and their original patent application makes that clear. I like that it's called fst. If it's an acronym. Alright, so the patent stayed classified and expired after 17 years as these things do, but during that time, the Navy did pursue the technology and they based that pursuit on the Keyeslor Antio patent

application. Yeah, okay, but they also just wanted to make sure it came from a man, right? So they're just like, okay, great to mention. Gonna save a lot of our boys. One last detail before we sign up. Let's see the inventor's penis. We're gonna need to see the penis. Right?

Yes. Yeah, right. So, okay. So, fast forward a couple of decades. Georgia NTO becomes one of the most celebrated composers in America, Hetty Lamar, Stars and Cecil B. Demille, Samson and Delilah, her most successful role. And then kind of forgets about this patent. So by the time this technology is declassified, the patents expired.

Basically, Hetty Lamar learns about the success of her invention when she starts seeing it in early cell phone technology. Neither her nor Antiole ever received a dime for their contribution. And by the way, their contribution has been estimated to be worth some like $30 billion a year. She's like, that's good, right. Yeah.

So in all, Lamar would moat through six marriages in her life. There's some sad shit at the end where her career declines and she gets arrested for shoplifting $20 worth of Laxatives and I drops but eventually her enormous contribution to modern wireless tech was recognized What's happened to her that day that she needs Laxidance About that for most of my life. He, right? So that bad, right? That bad. All right, so in 1997, her and Antio were jointly awarded the Electronic Frontier Foundations

Pioneer Award. And in the same year, she became the first woman to ever receive the Bulby Nass Spirit of Achievement Award, which is often called the Oscar of Inventing. She was 85 years old at the time. And while she didn't receive the award in person, she did record a brief acceptance speech that basically just said, hey, it's about fucking time, guys. Come on. Yeah, but the award show Swag Bag the Gave was just, you know, vizene and mirrorlacks.

So you know they got back. Oh, so okay. And I have to add this little bit here because it's the greatest piece of trivia in the fucking world. And I couldn't fit it anywhere else in the episode. According to multiple sources, Heady Lamar was, first of all, she was the basis for Disney's Snow White, like physically, definitely not personality-wise

or she'd have made Prince Charming sign a fucking queen. But at least she said, like, brass size, waist size, hip size, everything they wanted to, they told the cartoonist to draw her like Heady Lamar. But both her personality and appearance were the inspiration for none other than the queen of comic book, Femfe Tows cat woman. That's awesome.

Nice. Pretty fucking awesome. All right. If you had to summarize what you've learned today in one sentence, what would it be? When Eli stands still, he's glamorous. I have no idea. He always has the mouth of the gate, so it goes with, oh, it's good. All right, and are you ready for the quiz?

All right, I'm ready for my close-ups, sir. All right, Noah. Heady Lamar proves which old adage. Hey, money can't buy you happiness if you have to fucking Nazi for it. Or B, just pricking a woman isn't going to get the job done unless she fakes it. I'm going to have to go with C, all of the above. All of the above was. All right, no, which of the following is the best weapon invented by Heide Lamar to attack directors who trick underage kids into doing porn because they're assholes.

Okay. Yeah. A, the George pellet gun. That's good. It's a lot more aggressive than it sounds. B, the Torpedo. I think that was a good one. That's a good one. Or see, the sexual predator drone.

Oh nice. Well, obviously you're trying to trick me in there with Torpedo, because we've just been talking about Torpedo's this entire time, but it is in fact, see the sexual predator drone. I did my- Correct. Well done. All right, Noah. What other celebrity also profited off a sexy name? A.

Clint Greastwood. B. Tom Yanks. C. Woody Sherylston. For D. Oral Roberts. All right, well, the God, he had nothing else going for him at the world.

Oh, I am sorry. It is clipped. Greased with. Very, very, very, very sorry. That's excellent. Well done. All right. Cecil, you stumped him.

You're the winner. Oh, I guess I'm going to choose myself, which is weird. I shouldn't be choosing myself. Yeah, that doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't. But someone else will be the host, I'm sure. I shouldn't be choosing myself. Yeah, that doesn't make sense. That doesn't make sense. But someone else will be the host, I'm sure. So I'll do something fun.

Why can't you choose yourself? I don't know. Because I'm supposed to choose the host is supposed to choose the essayist. So if I'm the essayist, I have to. It's only been 166 episodes. I see why this is still confused. I think it literally doesn't matter at all.

And there's no reason to Ceci can't choose himself, as you're just saying. All right, well, for Tom, Noah Cecil, and Eli, who is not quite here, but for Eli too, I guess. I'm Heath. Thank you for hanging out with us tonight. Not for Eli.

We'll be back next week, and by then, Cecil. We'll be an expert on something else, because he chose himself. And the host. He's totally, too. Between now and then, you're gonna hear Tom and Cecil and Cognitive distance. And you can hear Eli knowing myself on God off

on movies, The Skating Aps, The Skeppercrat, and D&D Minus. And if you'd like to pay what you get for, you can make a car of determination at patreon.com slash citation pod. You'd like to get in touch with us. Listen to past episodes, connect with us on social media, or take a look at show notes. Check out citationpod.com. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUT