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Beautiful

By: Stephen Michael Shearer, Robert Osborne - foreword
Narrated by: Christa Lewis
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Publisher's summary

The surprising story of Hedy Lamarr, "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World"

Hedy Lamarr's exotic beauty was heralded across Europe in the early 1930s. Yet she became infamous for her nude scenes in the scandalous movie Ecstasy. Trapped in a marriage to one of Austria's munitions barons, a friend of Mussolini's who hid his Jewish heritage to become an "honorary Aryan" at the onset of World War II, Lamarr fled Europe for Hollywood, where she was transformed into one of film's most glamorous celebrities, appearing opposite such actors as Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, and James Stewart. As her career faded, she went from one husband to the next, her personal troubles and legal woes casting a shadow over her phenomenal intelligence and former image.

Stephen Michael Shearer's in-depth and meticulously researched biography, written with the cooperation of Hedy's children, intimate friends, and colleagues, separates the truths from the rumors, the facts from the fables, about Hedy Lamarr, to reveal the life and character of one of classic Hollywood's most beautiful and remarkable women.

©2010 Stephen Michael Shearer; foreword copyright 2010 by Robert Osborne (P)2020 Tantor
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What listeners say about Beautiful

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Exhaustive Biography of Hedy's Acting Career

Lots if details of Hedy's career from childhood yearnings to act to every movie and relationship throughout her storied career. However the coverage of her inventing hobby is less complete. Howard Hughes is barely mentioned and her aircraft insights are missed. Even her famous frequency hopping development is something of a sidebar. If you want to know about Hedy's Hollywood career and personal life, this is the book. "Hedy's Folly" or "Hedy Lamarr's Double Life" better cover her inventiveness.

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An engineer's hero

As an electronics engineer, Hedy Lamarr is one of my heros. She led a very interesting life but it was also quite sad. The book is well worth the listen.

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Such a Disappointing Book

The subject should have been interesting, instead it read like a synopsis of all her movies and their reviews. I finally gave up near the end...there was just nothing there.

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