Page "Hedy Lamarr" Paragraph 10

First she went to Paris, then met Louis B. Mayer in London.

Known as " the Ecstasy lady ", after hiring her, he insisted that she changed her name to Hedy Lamarr, choosing the surname in homage to a beautiful film star of the silent era, Barbara La Marr, who had died in 1926 from tuberculosis.

She received good reviews for her American film debut in Algiers ( 1938 ) with Charles Boyer, who asked that Lamarr be cast after meeting her at a party.

In Hollywood, she was invariably cast as the archetypical glamorous seductress of exotic origins.

Lamarr played opposite the era's most popular leading men.

Her many films include Boom Town ( 1940 ) with Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy, Comrade X with Gable, White Cargo ( 1942 ), and Tortilla Flat ( 1942 ) with Tracy and John Garfield, based on the novel by John Steinbeck.

In 1941, Lamarr was cast alongside two other Hollywood stars, Lana Turner and Judy Garland in the musical extravaganza Ziegfeld Girl.