Heather Massie stars as Hedy Lamarr.  Director & Artistic Consultation – Blake Walton, Artistic Consultation – Leslie Kincaid Burby, Projections – Jim Marlowe & Charles Marlowe, Sound Design – Jacob Subotnick & Andy Evan Cohen, Dialects – Page Clements, Technical Director – Dan Leary, Photography – Al Foote III, Charles Marlowe, Monica Callan, & Inspirefest. This video is an abbreviated version of the full-length show featuring excerpts from the full performance.

HEDY! The Life & Inventions of Hedy Lamarr is the 17x Award-Winning, Internationally Acclaimed play Written & Performed by Fulbright Specialist Heather Massie. It celebrates the life, inventions and person of Hedy Lamarr, Viennese-born Hollywood film star of the 1930s-1950s. Known as ‘The Most Beautiful Woman in the World’, Hedy Lamarr stored away knowledge of munitions while married to Austrian arms dealer, Fritz Mandl. She employed this knowledge to support the US Navy’s war effort during WWII by inventing The Secret Communication System with composer George Antheil, to make torpedoes more accurate. Also referred to as Frequency-Hopping Spread Spectrum Technology, her invention is used today in cell phones, WiFi, CDMA, GPS, Bluetooth and myriad other wireless systems.

HEDY! The Life and Inventions of Hedy Lamarr was written in the 2016 Grange Hall Cultural Center Artist in Residence Program and has been performed to high acclaim around the world.

Having studied Astrophysics with dreams of becoming an astronaut, Heather Massie marries her loves of art and science in the person of Hedy Lamarr. She brings Hedy to life while interacting with the audience and playing the 35 other characters in Hedy’s life including Jimmy Stewart, George Sanders, Bette Davis and Louis B. Mayer. The audience summons Hedy to unearth the truth behind how a glamorous actress could create an invention which is invaluable today. Massie’s mission is to use the unexpected genius of Hedy Lamarr to inspire audiences to pursue their pasisons, to encourage young women in endeavors of science and technology, and to establish Hedy Lamarr as a role model for intelligence, ingenuity & invention.

After performing extensively in NYC and throughout the US, she determined to marry her loves of art and science by creating and performing her 17x Award-Winning, Internationally Acclaimed solo show HEDY! The Life & Inventions of Hedy Lamarr about Hollywood film star, and inventor, Hedy Lamarr. She has toured the work through the US, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Sweden, Italy, Ukraine, Zimbabwe, and South Africa to theatres, arts festivals, science festivals, universities, schools, museums, science centers, Jewish organizations, and technology conferences. In 2019 she served as a Fulbright Specialist taking the show to South Africa through the US State Department, World Learning, and the US Embassy South Africa. This is the first in her trilogy of solo shows celebrating women in science. The next will be Flying with Sally Ride: America’s First Woman in Space.

Thanks for joining us today!

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