Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story review – startling life of the film star/inventor

This excellent documentary celebrates the glamorous Hollywood icon and brilliant engineer whose groundbreaking work led to Bluetooth and wifi

There can hardly be any more extraordinary story from the Hollywood golden age than that of Hedy Lamarr; a very beautiful star with a moderate acting talent but an untutored brilliance in science and engineering that should by now be getting her compared to Nikola Tesla, or maybe even a neglected female scientist like Rosalind Franklin. Her tragedy was that she was in the wrong business, precisely that business that promotes beauty over brains - the movie business.

Alexandra Dean's excellent and important documentary about her is very instructive - a parable of modern sexual politics and assumptions about science. Even now, many can't believe in their hearts that movie star Hedy Lamarr really was a scientist, or scientist manqui(C). The accomplishment simply doesn't square with the accepted female star biography narrative into which Lamarr otherwise fits: movies, husbands, poignant reclusive decline etc. Many film encyclopedias and reference books simply omit what was important about Hedy Lamarr.