actress
Hedy Lamarr was often called “the most beautiful woman in the world.” In September of 1940, she was a 26-yr-old actress was thriving in Hollywood, starring in such films as Tortilla Flat, Lady of the Tropics, Boom Town, and Samson and Delilah, with actors like Clark Gable and Spencer Tracey. Lamarr was a Jewish immigrant from Nazi-occupied Austria. She had been making America her home since 1938, and enjoying her new-found freedom and safety, when the world…or at least the Nazi part of the world came crashing down on her. Lamar was still living in safety, but she heard about an op in which Nazi U-boats hunted down and sank a cruise ship trying to evacuate 90 British schoolchildren to Canada. The sinking took the lives of 77 children who drowned in the bleak north Atlantic. Lamar was outraged and vowed to fight back.
Lamar was more than just a pretty face. She was a talented engineer and had the skills necessary to develop a sonar sub-locator which was used in the Atlantic for the benefit of the Allies. The principles of her work are now incorporated into modern Wi-Fi, CDMA, and Bluetooth technology, and this work led to her to be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014. Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in 1914 in Vienna, the only child of Gertrud “Trude” Kiesler née Lichtwitz and Emil Kiesler. As a child, Lamarr was interested in acting and was fascinated by theatre and film. She also won a beauty contest in Vienna, when she was 12. Her father wanted her dreams to come true, but he wisely wanted her to know more. They began to take long walks during which he would explain how technology worked.
On August 10, 1933, Lamarr married a rich admirer named Friedrich Mandl at the Karlskirche. She was 18 years old, and he was 33. As marriages go, this was her biggest mistake. Mandl was controlling and made her quit acting. He controlled her life is many other ways too, but while she felt like a virtual prisoner in their castle, he did take her on business trips where he conferred with scientists and other professionals involved in military technology. The meetings became her introduction to the field of applied science and nurtured her latent talent in science. Mandl had close social and business ties to the Italian government, selling munitions to the country, and although like Hedy, his own father was Jewish, had ties to the Nazi regime of Germany, as well. Lamarr was no longer able to tolerate her husband’s controlling ways and eventually made her escape from her unbearable marriage to Mandl. By 1938, she had made her way to the United States, and it was there that she was able to pursue both her acting career and what would become her contribution to the world…the sonar locater. Lamarr died Casselberry, Florida of heart disease on January 19, 2000, at the age of 85. Her son Anthony Loder spread her ashes in Austria’s Vienna Woods in accordance with her last wishes.
Many little girls dream of becoming a princess. They may not dream of it for long, before reality sets in, but at some point, most little girls want to be a princess, even if it is just Cinderella. For one actress, Grace Kelly, that dream came true on April 18, 1956, when she married Prince Rainier III of Monaco. The couple met the year before at the Cannes Film Festival, went on to have three children…Caroline, born January 23, 1957; Albert II, born March 14, 1958; and Stephanie, born February 1, 1965.
Grace Kelly, the daughter of a former model and a wealthy industrialist, was born on November 12, 1929, in Philadelphia. Her talent was obvious early on, and she began acting as a child. Then, after high school, she attended the American Academy for Dramatic Arts in New York. She had found her niche…or so she thought. After her schooling, she began to audition for Broadway plays. She was a classic blonde beauty, who supported herself by modeling and appearing in TV commercials, while awaiting her “big break.”
In 1949, Kelly debuted on Broadway in a play called “The Father” by August Strindberg. She was on her way. Then two years later, she landed her first Hollywood part. Granted, it was a bit part, in a movie called “Fourteen Hours,” but it was a part. Her big break came in 1952, when she starred as Gary Cooper’s wife in the Western “High Noon.” Her performance in 1954’s “The Country Girl,” as the wife of an alcoholic actor and singer played by Bing Crosby, won her a Best Actress Oscar (Kelly beat out Judy Garland in “A Star is Born”). Among Kelly’s other acting credits were three Alfred Hitchcock thrillers: “Dial M for Murder” (1954), with Ray Milland and Robert Cummings, Rear Window (1954), with James Stewart, and “To Catch a Thief,” with Cary Grant. Her last big-screen role was in 1956’s “High Society,” a musical adaptation of 1940’s The Philadelphia Story, co-starring Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. By this time, Grace Kelly was on her way to retirement from the movies, because she was about to become a “real-life” princess. That little girl dream was going to come true for her…and for a number of years, Grace Kelly lived that dream.
Then, on September 14, 1982, her dream came to an end. Princess Grace of Monaco…the American-born former film star Grace Kelly, whose movie credits include The Country Girl and Rear Window, and who was known as the darling of the United States, and the dream of many little girls, died at the age of 52 from injuries suffered after her car plunged off a mountain road near Monte Carlo. Princess Grace was driving with her youngest daughter, Stephanie, when she reportedly suffered a stroke and lost control of her car, which plunged down a mountainside. Seventeen-year-old Stephanie survived, but Princess Grace died the following day. Her death was mourned by millions of fans around the world.
It is no secret that dictators do as they please, and they don’t care what anyone around them thinks of what they do. That is why so many people try to escape the countries run by a dictator. The things they do are often violent and horrific, but sometimes they can be totally bizarre too. One of the strangest acts was performed not by Kim il-Sung, who was dictator in 1978, but rather by his son, Kim Jong-il, who assumed, and rightly so, that he could also do what he wanted to. Kim Jong-il was a film buff, as well as the future North Korean dictator. Kim Jong-il decided that he wanted to make a really good movie. As any director knows, in order to make a really good movie, one must have a really good actor. Kim Jong-il knew exactly who he wanted, but rather than be bothered by the process of hiring the best actor, he simply kidnapped the one he wanted…Choi Eun-hee, as well as her ex-husband, director Shin Sang-ok. Kim Jong-il kept the pair in North Korea for several years, forcing them to make movies, including his very own version of Godzilla, Pulgasari. They now had no choice but to comply with his wishes, or they would die.
Choi was born in Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province, in 1926. Her first acting role was in the 1947 film “A New Oath.” She rose to fame the following year after starring in the 1948 film “The Sun of Night” and soon became known as one of the “troika” of Korean film, alongside actresses Kim Ji-mee and Um Aing-ran. She later married the director Shin Sang-ok in 1954, the two founded Shin Film. Her career flourished, and she went on to act in over 130 films. She was considered one of the biggest stars of South Korean film in the 1960s and 1970s. Due to her fame, she starred in many of Shin’s iconic films including 1958’s “A Flower in Hell” and 1961’s “The Houseguest and My Mother.” he one sadness in their lives was that she could not have children, so the couple adopted two children together, Jeong-kyun and Myung-kim. Choi divorced Shin after hearing that he had fathered two children with a young actress.
Choi’s career began to suffer after her divorce, and she traveled to Hong Kong in 1978 to meet with a person posing as a businessman who offered to set up a new film company with her. While she was in Hong Kong, Choi was abducted and taken to North Korea by the order of Kim Jong-il. Shin began a frantic search for Choi, but while searching for her, Shin was also abducted and taken to North Korea. So began years in captivity from which they finally escaped in 1986, during a press conference in Vienna!! They were in Vienna for a film festival. They fled to the US embassy and requested political asylum. Following their escape, they lived in Reston, Virginia, then Beverly Hills, California, before finally returning to South Korea in 1999. Choi died of kidney disease April 16, 2018. She was 91.
Every child who has been in school, has also been in a school play of one type or another. It is very common, especially in Kindergarten to have a class play. All the kids in the class are so excited as the practice session take place, and they can hardly sit still long enough to get through the necessary studies before it is time for play practice. It doesn’t really matter what part each child is to play…at least not in Kindergarten, because they are usually happy with any part. Often there is a line or two for the child to memorize, and when they say their line, they feel like it was a monumental accomplishment, and really, it was, because they have never done anything quite like that before.
I remember my Kindergarten play vividly…or should I say one part of it. I have no idea what the play was about, nor the part I played in it, but I vividly remember that when the teacher said it was time to line up for practice, I was running to be first in line. I made it too, several times, but it didn’t matter. The teacher always made me move back in the line to about the midway point. I never could figure that out. It seemed very unfair to me that even though I got there first, I was not allowed to keep my place in line. Thankfully the teacher was quite patient, because she had to tell me to move back to that same midway point every day. I suppose that if she had explained to me that there was a certain order that we had to line up in, I might have understood, but she never said that. She simply moved me back. The whole thing really wasn’t my fault either, because after all, when you lined up for anything else, it was first come first in line. So how was I supposed to know that this was different. All I knew was that I wanted to be first in line and the teacher wouldn’t let me. Thankfully, I just did as I was told, and didn’t cry. Now that would have been humiliating!! I don’t know if my teacher understood why she had to tell me over and over to move further back, or if she just thought I was a little ditsy, but she never got mad at me, and remained a favorite teacher throughout the years.
I never heard that my girls had such a problem with their pre-school and kindergarten plays, so maybe it was just me being a little ditsy, I don’t really know. What I do know is that I think I prefer being on the audience side of school plays far more than I did as an actress. I guess that means I’ll never be famous, or at least not a famous actress, but I can live with that. Through the years, I have enjoyed watching everything from plays to concerts at the schools…at least as long as they included my daughters or my grandchildren, that is.
For every grandparent, there is the first. The child that came along and changed everything. The child who changed them from parenthood to grandparenthood. For my parents, that child was my niece, Chantel. She was…shall we say, a shock to our systems…not just my parents, but to her aunts too. It was not about being, not ready for her to come, it was about the kind of girl she was. Chantel has a type of beauty queen style…or maybe it was actress style. No matter, we couldn’t help but be amused and surprised at the same time whenever she started posing.
It always amazed me that this little teeny girl could have so much style, when I at 15 years of age was still feeling quite awkward. But style was as much a part of who Chantel was as the hair on her head. And she was so quick. She never missed an opportunity to show her style. The camera came up, and Chantel immediately posed. And she was just a little girl, but she was just doing what came naturally to her.
As she grew up, she never lost that sense of style, although the posing did change some. She is so photogenic, and has a beautiful smile. And her sense of style doesn’t stop with photos. It has carried into her home, where she pours out her beautiful style. I think there must be an artist living inside the woman she has become, but that isn’t surprising really.
Yes, that first grandchild can be so surprising, because they are usually so different from your own children, and yet so like them…or at least the child your kids used to be. Chantel is much like her mother, my sister Cheryl. They both had the ability to take the most amazing pictures, and they both have the natural sense of style in decorating. I guess I have to wonder why Chantel seemed so different from the rest of us…at least to me, because she was maybe the kind of little girl like what I always wanted to be…like my sister, Cheryl. They both always had it all together, and I always wished I had been able to be like that.
Today that little girl…that first grandchild, is a wife and mother, and still a very beautiful person, inside and out. She will always hold a special place in our hearts and in our family. Happy birthday, Chantel!! We love you very much!!