Hedy's Folly (Half a Review)

by Richard Rhodes

I didn't like this and here is why.

The full title of the book is Hedy's Folly - The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World.

Apparently, I was wrong to assume that the book was mainly to deal with the life and breakthrough inventions of Hedy Lamarr. Actually, at just over 200 pages I expected it to concentrate on the invention part, as there are other exhaustive biographies on her life out there.

What I did not bargain for, however, is the fact that half the book (up to the point I put it down, which was about halfway through) dealt with the less interesting (to me, anyway) life of struggling composer George Antheil. Now, I do realize that his involvement in the development of frequency hopping is essential and good for him but couldn't we have covered his background in a more structured and, well, shorter way. Say...one chapter?

So far I feel like I have learned much more about his decidedely mediocre carreer, his days in Paris among other artists, his living off of someone else's money, his letters of pompousness asking for even more money from his mentor and his courtship of his future wife than I have about Hedy Lamarr (you know, the one in the title?). What's more, everything we read about Mr. Antheil apparently has been lifted from his autobiography Bad Boy of Music. If I would have wanted to read about him, I might have tried to locate a copy of that. I didn't and I haven't and my guess is that it is out of print because nobody cares.

Frankly, I got bored. And let me point out again that this book has just over 200 pages which is ridiculously little to begin with.