Читать книгу Hedy Lamarr - Ruth Barton - Страница 9

HEDY LAMARR was born Hedwig Kiesler on 9 November 1914, in Vienna. Later, she added two middle names, Eva Maria, to her given name. Her father, Emil, from Lemberg (Lwów) in the West Ukraine, was manager of the Creditanstalt Bankverien.¹ Her mother was born Gertrude (Trude) Lichtwitz, to a sophisticated family in Budapest. Both her parents were Jewish and Hedy too was registered at birth as Jewish. The Kieslers lived on Osterleitengasse in Döbling in Vienna's fashionable 19th District. Later Hedy moved with her family to Peter-Jordan-StraBe, also in Döbling. There she lived on the top two floors of a house owned by a well-to-do tea merchant named Pekarek.

Döbling, at the end of World War I, was an overwhelmingly Jewish area, and by the outbreak of World War II, had a population of around four thousand Jewish inhabitants and its own synagogue. Bounded by the Wienerwald (Vienna Woods), the architecture reflected the tastes of its settled, middle-class citizenry. Ludwig van Beethoven composed part of the Eroica Symphony in Döbling, and in the 1890s it was the summer home to the Strauss family. The actress Paula Wessely also hailed from the area, as did the scriptwriter Walter Reisch, both of whom would later work with Hedy.

The Lichtwitz side of Hedy's family was well-connected and cultured; the Kieslers were less so, but Emil, who was sixteen years older than Trude, had brought to the marriage the benefits of a good job and solid prospects. Trude was just twenty when Hedy was born and elected to give up her ambitions to be a concert pianist when she had her first daughter and only child.

With Trude's family background and Emil's salary, the Kieslers fitted in comfortably in Döbling. On the one hand, there was little to distinguish them from other well-connected non-Jewish families; on the other, with their dominance of the arts in particular, but also of banking and commerce, these families often intermarried and many worked and socialized together. These were the families, who, in fin de siecle Vienna, filled the theaters and concert halls, patronized the leading writers, musicians, and painters of the day, and accumulated the important art collections. These activities guaranteed them an entree into political circles, where artistic expression was more highly valued than ideological debate. In Vienna in particular, as Michael Rogin has argued, “the Haps-burg monarchy sustained itself by show. In keeping with the theatrical quality of political life in the empire, the Viennese theatre was more important than the parliament.”² Thus, Jewish artistic success became a guarantee of influence that extended far beyond the upper circle.

Along with their cultural standing came a commitment to education and a sense of public duty to help those less privileged than themselves. Much of the Vienna so admired today was built with Jewish money; among those whose names were associated with its culture of design was Hedy's cousin Frederick Kiesler. Born in 1890 in Czernowitz, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Kiesler made his name as an avant-garde theater designer, later qualifying as an architect in America. Standing less than five feet tall, he was an inspired writer and often described as a visionary designer; while Hedy was a child, Frederick was making his name with his concept of the “Space Stage” (a form of theater design influenced by the layout of a circus ring). By curious coincidence, it was Kiesler who arranged for the world premiere of the surrealist film Ballet Mecanique, directed by Dudley Murphy and Fernand Leger, in Vienna in September 1924, when Hedy was just ten years old. The composer of the film's music was George Antheil, whose life was to become so intertwined with Hedy's in Hollywood. In 1926, Frederick Kiesler and his wife moved from Vienna to New York, where they spent the rest of their lives. One of his first jobs in New York was to design the Film Guild Cinema on 52 West 8th Street for the avant-garde programmer Symon Gould. The cinema's program was mostly drawn from Soviet and European art-house films and one might guess that his little cousin's scandalous Ecstasy was part of its 1930s repertoire.³ Later, Kiesler became best known for his Shrine of the Book, a wing of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the repository for the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Hedy was a child of the First World War, an event with sweeping repercussions for the Jews of Vienna. The collapse of the Hapsburg monarchy and the inauguration of the First Republic saw the Viennese Jews, along with the old aristocracy, stripped of their wealth and influence. After the war, fuel shortages and a drastic lowering of living standards left Vienna more susceptible to the city's omnipresent anti-Semitism, and from the 1920s, the Viennese Jews were gradually becoming aware of a new, hostile atmosphere that infiltrated all aspects of society. No doubt the Kieslers felt the shock too, yet life for the young Hedy (pronounced “Hady”) was still protected and very traditional.

The move to Peter-Jordan-StraBe brought the Kiesler family into the heart of Döbling's Cottage District. The term, borrowed from English, is misleading. These were substantial homes, designed and built in the period after 1872 when the architect Heinrich von Ferstel set up the Viennese Cottage Society. Their ambition was to create several streets of one- and two-family houses. No new houses would be built that deprived the existing cottage dwellers of a view, light, and the pleasure of fresh air. Each design could be different, but all had to conform to the overall ideal—solid, comfortable, airy houses built around enclosed family gardens. In time, the whole area became referred to as simply the Cottage. Leo Lania, the left-wing journalist and writer, described it as

the cradle of Austrian literature, the cradle of the Viennese operetta. In the salons of its little villas, through whose windows the eye could sweep unhindered across gentle hills and the wooded approaches of the Kahlenberg as far as the green ribbon of the Danube, began and ended all those “affairs” of Viennese society which furnished Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Hermann Bahr with their chief themes. This was the birthplace of the “sweet Viennese girl,” the “Merry Widow,” psychoanalysis, atonal music, and modern painting. From Sigmund Freud to Gustav Mahler, from Arnold Schoen-berg to Gustav Klimt—all the men who represented pre-war Viennese art, music, literature, intellectual life, and built its international fame, revolved around the Cottage, even if a few of them did not live there.⁴

The house at 12 Peter-Jordan-StraBe had high ceilings and an ornate wooden veranda that led onto a well-planted garden. Couches draped with rugs and casual tables filled the rooms; floral curtains hung from the windows, shielding the furniture from the bright sunlight of the Viennese summer. The walls were covered with family portraits, the striped wallpaper reflecting the overall tone of an English country house. One of the rooms was dominated by Trude Kiesler's grand piano and there Hedy too learned to play. The family dachshund was, as Hedy entered her teenage years, running to fat.

Even though Hedy never mentioned her Jewish origins in her autobiography or referred to them in interviews, she certainly moved within an artistic environment dominated by talented Jewish individuals. From Trude, Hedy inherited her taste for theater and the arts, and her cultural education came from her mother's side of the family. Her schooling, too, was enlightened; she attended the Döblinger Mädchenmittelschule, now the GRG XIX (a local girls' secondary school). The school, then housed in a private home in the Kriendlgasse, catered to the neighborhood's wealthy Jewish families. Two of its first pupils, in 1905, had been Sophie and Anna Freud, the daughters of Sigmund Freud. Later, Anna Freud taught there, only leaving in 1920.

In the summer there was swimming in the river and family outings to the lakes surrounding Vienna. In all seasons, they hiked in the mountains, and her father liked to row. Throughout her life, Hedy was to retain her love of water and of swimming; later in America, she dreamed of the fresh air of the Wienerwald and the freedom of the outdoors.

She later said that being an only child spurred her to become an actress. She used the space below her father's desk as her first stage, performing fairy tales for an invisible audience. As a small child, she liked to dress up in her mother's clothes and her father's suits and hats. When she came home from the cinema, she would act out all the parts she had just seen. “Grandfather was perhaps the only one who ever encouraged me,” she remembered with some acerbity. “He could play the piano and to his music I danced. It was awkward my dancing. But he said he thought it was beautiful. The rest of the family gave me little encouragement.”⁵

References to her parents as unloving abound in Hedy's interviews, yet at the same time, she always looked back on her early years in Döbling with intense nostalgia, as a time of security in what was to become a life ruled by uncertainty.

• • •

Gertrude Kiesler was a small, dark-haired woman whose personality may have run on the cold side. Hedy believed that her mother had really wanted a boy and this was why she would never tell her that she was attractive or let her look in a mirror. Frau Kiesler's version of this story tallies in detail but varies in motivation. She wanted, she said, to ensure that her daughter did not come to rely on her beauty but would instead develop other skills, and not be spoiled: “When she was dressed for a party, and looked very lovely, I would say ‘You look very well.’ When she did something clever I would tell her ‘You did all right.’ But I underemphasized praise and flattery, hoping in this way, to balance the scales for her.”⁶One shouldn't be too surprised by the comments of Hedy's mother; they reflect common theories of parenting in her day. Later, Hedy would respond to her own children's needs in a disconcertingly similar manner.

In any case, Frau Kiesler did not always manage to control her unruly daughter, even less so how other people reacted to her. A besotted schoolteacher, when told to allow her no special favors, replied that, “When she walks towards me, and looks at me, I can do nothing.”⁷

When she was twelve, Hedy's grandmother, Rosa Lichtwitz, died. Taking advantage of her mother's temporary distraction, she entered a beauty contest. With the winnings, she bought her first fur coat. We may imagine what Trude Kiesler's response to this frivolity was.

Still it was Frau Kiesler who was responsible for introducing Hedy to the wonders of the stage. “One day,” Hedy remembered, “mother promised me a nice present if I were good. The present was a visit, my first, to the theatre. I saw a stage play for the first time. I was thrilled and speechless. I don't remember the play, its title or anything about it. But I never forgot the general impression. School held but one interest from then on. I took part in school plays and festivals. My first big part came in Hansel and Gretel.” The first film she saw that had the same effect on her was Fritz Lang's Metropolis, released when she was thirteen.⁸

Along with theater, Hedy developed an early interest in young men, one too that was to accompany her throughout life. Her first true love was a boy who has survived in the telling only as Hans. When she was not quite sixteen, he gave her her first kiss in the Vienna Woods; he was, she remembered, the director of a chain of shoe factories.⁹ In another interview, many years later, she said he was twenty-five years old and already seeing a girlfriend of hers. One day, when she was supposed to be at a piano lesson, she ran off to the cemetery to try to resolve her loyalties to her friend or to Hans. When she returned home, she found that everyone had become hysterical looking for her. Eventually, she and her girlfriend sat down and said, “This can't go on”; they instructed Hans to choose between them. He chose Hedy: “I was in heaven. We had secret meetings, it was all so exciting and romantic. Once, though, my father caught me coming home late—it must have been nine-thirty. He scared me and then I think he hit me, in my face.”¹⁰

Another friend of Hedy's from her Döbling days was Franz Antel, later to become a film director. All the young men in the area fell in love with Hedy, he remembered, but she only had eyes for the rising Austrian actor, Wolf Albach-Retty (later to become the father of Romy Schneider), who was eight years her senior and kept her for himself. He was a good-looking young man and liked to flirt with the other teenagers. Hedy too was beautiful, with a strong personality, and they made a striking young couple.¹¹

Hedy's early childhood may have been protected but it was not without adventure and trauma—according to Ecstasy and Me, her early experiences included attracting the attention of a flasher, being raped, and becoming the focus of attention of, first, a lesbian cook and then a lesbian family friend. She herself had a teenage lesbian experience while at finishing school in Switzerland.¹²

Perhaps more reliably, her mother recalled later that

steadfast as she is within, she is also a chameleon. She changes with the people she is with. Superficially, she changes, and for the time. As when she had her first beau, at home in Vienna. She must then have been twelve. This was a very learned boy, an intellectual. Suddenly Hedy was the best in the school! She was not a bad pupil, our Hedl, but she was not the best. All at once, she was the best! All at once, her nose was all the time in a book, a big heavy book! I only wish it could have lasted longer, that one!¹³

A later beau was a very intense Russian boy, filled with the new idealism of his native land. When Hedy was told to apologize to her father for a misdemeanor, she announced that, “I will say the words, but—[my] thoughts are free.” Frau Kiesler blamed the Russian.¹⁴

Despite the temporary influence of the intellectual boyfriend, Hedy was easily distracted from her studies. When she was in Switzerland, she realized that she was in danger of missing a beauty contest in Vienna. She persuaded a friend to cable the school in her parents’ names and request that she be allowed to return home.

She said later that although she had always wanted to be an actress, she took up designing and went to design classes to occupy the “waiting time” before acting.¹⁵ Ironically, designing and inventing would eventually become as much a part of her legacy as acting. That, however, was far in the future. For the time being, she learned her European languages, how to cook and sew, and with her neighbor's child, Hancy Weiler, dreamed of fame on the stage.

According to Christopher Young's account of her life, around this time Hedy met Franz von Hochstetten on an Alpine hiking trip and they became engaged.¹⁶ Becoming engaged seems to have been a particularly delightful pleasure for the young Hedy, and one probably doesn't need to linger too long on the unfortunate von Hochstetten, for whom a worse fate was in store.