ScrumptiousStilettos

THE GLAMOUR GEEK

I call these my Glamour Geeks because they remind me of that fabulous 30’s & 40’s film start Hedy Lamarr. Not only was she the most glamorous woman of her time she was also a mathematic genius or geek if you will. She was the first film star of her time to have done a full body nude scene early on and still have a substantial acting career in Hollywood.

‘You've Got A Date With Danger, A Rendezvous With Romance In The Glamorous, Mysterious Algiers’; that was the tagline of the 1938 movie Algiers, starring Hedy Lamarr and Charles Boyer (Grrrrrrrr). Hedy plays the beautiful and wealthy Parisian; Gaby who's visiting the mysterious Casbah in Algeria. I imagine Gaby wearing these stilettos with her black dress, white jacket and magnificent jewelry, wandering through the mazelike Casbah where she becomes entangled with Pepe Le Moko. Pepe is an international jewel thief who is hiding out with a fortune of stolen jewels, when he meets and falls for the stunning Gaby. I love the scene where you see him gaze upon each piece of her jewelry, lastly looking intently over her face; you can tell he’s intrigued, you just don’t know which he wants to steal more; her jewels or her heart. There is an extreme close up of her mouth as she smiles at him while he's admiring her and although the movie is in black and white you just know her lips are a vivid rich red.

I also love the art of the innuendo of the old movies:
Pepe le Moko: What did you do before?
Gaby: Before what?
Pepe le Moko: Before... the jewels.
Gaby: I wanted them.

Hedy’s real life had a lot of intrigue of its own; her first husband was a Viennese munitions dealer who consorted with the Nazi industrialists. At his parties in the mid through late 1930’s you could have had a martini and chatted with Hitler or Mussolini. It was during one of these parties Hedy wore all her expensive jewelry and afterwards with the help of her maid they drugged her husband and she made her escape out of the country with the jewelry, fleeing to Paris, where she obtained a divorce. She then moved to London and of course on to Hollywood to become the screen siren of the 30’s and 40’s.

I do believe she preferred her ‘geek’ side because she is quoted as saying: "Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid." I wonder what more she could have done had she pursued the intellectual part of her life instead of the acting side.

As for the geek side; she was co-inventor of the earliest form of the telecommunications method known as "frequency hopping", which used a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies and made radio-guided torpedoes harder for enemies to detect or jam. The method received a U.S. patent in 1942, under the name "Secret Communications System". I can see her in the stilettos and a sleek suit, jacket off, silk shirt underneath unbuttoned just to there…. In an office with her co-inventor, sitting on the desk leg dangling, cigarette between her red nails, chalk boards filled with code we don’t understand (the perfect Glamour Geek). Now if you think since their invention was used during WWII it is outdated well…. frequency hopping is now widely used in cell phones and other modern technology. However neither she nor her co-inventor profited from it, because their patents were allowed to expire decades before the modern wireless boom. In 1997 she received an award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation for her pioneering work in spread-spectrum technology.

For me Hedy Lamarr with her jet black hair, pale alabaster skin, dark red lips and sultry on-screen demeanor in conjunction with the intellect she exuded will forever be the epitome of GLAMOUR!

So today when I went to our corporate office for a test, I decided I had to wear my Glamour Geeks. Although the test was nothing mathematically challenging, it was only on our new sales techniques. I not only felt stylish in my charcoal grey pants, white silk shirt (unbuttoned just to there…), vivid red lipstick and pearls; I also felt more intelligent. It must have worked because I passed with flying colors and looked chic doing it!