Off-Center Views: 8/31/25

9/3/25

Algiers: Hedy Lamarr and Her First Hollywood Movie

Algiers (1938)

Directed by John Cromwell

United Artists, 99 minutes, not-rated.

★★★★

In the next few weeks I will be featuring films involving Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000) because I co-lead a women’s history group reading a biography of her. Lamarr was an inventor and one of the most intriguing starlets of the early days of sound movies. She was born in Austria as Hedwig Eva Marie Kiesler, won a beauty contest when was 12, and at 18, married Friedrich Mandel who was 33. She made five films in Europe, including Ekstase (Ecstasy) in 1933, which was notorious. The 18-year Hedwig Mandel briefly appeared fully nude and a scene of her in the throes of passion is believed to be the first film depiction of a female orgasm.

Her marriage to Mandel was the first of six (and six divorces). Friedrich made two big mistakes, he expected her to be a dutiful traditional wife and thought she was an airhead. As Mandel drifted into fascism, Hedwig listened to sensitive political conversations she took with her when she fled to London in 1937. (She was half Jewish.) Samuel Goldwyn of MGM took her to Hollywood, changed her name to Hedy Lamarr, and began the legend that she was the most beautiful woman in the world. She gets my vote, though Hedy once considered surgery to make her breasts larger.

Algiers was her first Hollywood film. It was directed by John Cromwell and written by John Howard Lawson, who later gained infamy as one of the 1947 Hollywood Ten indicted for Contempt of Congress for refusing to rat on anyone accused of communism during the second Red Scare. Algiers might remind you quite a bit of Casablanca, which took Hollywood by storm five years later. Ironically, the role of Ilsa was written with Lamarr in mind, but went to Ingrid Bergman because Lamarr was under contract to MGM, which refused to loan her to Warner Brothers. Casablanca, though, borrowed heavily from the script to Algiers. Ironically, the main villain/lover boy of Algiers, Pepé le Moko (Charles Boyer) was the model for the Warner Brothers cartoon skunk Pepé LePew. (How’s that for revenge!)

Le Moko is a French jewel thief hiding out in Algiers. France sends an inspector to find out why Algerian law enforcement hasn’t caught him. As detective/informer Slimane (Joseph Calleia) explains, everyone knows where Pepé is, but he cannot be captured as long as he’s living in the Casbah section of Algiers. The French send twelve men into the Casbah and find out what Slimane means. It is a warren of narrow streets, connecting rooms and rooftops, tunnels, and informants that’s similar to searching for a straight pieces in a giant hamster habitrail. Plus, Pepé is a popular man in the Casbah. He’s like an old-fashioned ward boss whose henchmen keep order. Pepé and his exotic-looking lover Ines (Sigrid Gurie) know everyone and they protect him, though he has rivals.

The Casbah, though, is confining; Pepé is only safe as long as he doesn’t leave it. Enter Gaby (Lamarr), who bedazzles Pepé with her beauty, memories of Paris, and glittering jewelry that his gang wonders why he hasn’t pilfered. Gaby is engaged to the obese Giraux (Robert Grieg), who is filthy rich. It’s never clear if Gaby is bait or if she is attracted to Pepé, but if Lamarr was faking it, she fooled me! He’s also depressed when outside-the-Casbah enemies lure his friend Pierrot (ex-Our Gang star John Morey Downs) into a trap.

Algiers is dated and both script and direction could be much tighter. Casablanca is a superior film and there’s a reason why its director Michael Curtiz is considered a legend and John Cromwell is largely forgotten. Still, it’s incredible to see how little Hedy Lamarr needed to do to fill screen eyes. By the way, no one in Algiers ever says, “Take me to the Casbah.” That was Pepé LePew!

Lamarr is a Hollywood legend who remains one of the most beautiful in movie history. She was also difficult; only one of her marriages lasted longer than four years. Yet, she was a genius inventor when off the set. The Navy never used the invention of a guided torpedo she and avantgarde composer George Antheil developed, but their spread spectrum theory made the following possible: Bluetooth, GPS, wireless communication, and Wi-fi. No wonder there’s a Lamarr-class starship in Star Trek.

Rob Weir

9/1/25

Berenice Abbott: Flaneur for Modernism?

Man Ray photo of Berenice Abbott 1925

Berenice Abbott’s Modern Lens

Clark Museum of Art

Through October 5, 2023

When you think of Depression Era photographers, the names that pop to mind include Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Margaret Bourke White, Russell Lee, Arthur Rothstein, and Imogene Cunningham. Berenice Abbott? Maybe not so much.

Abbott (1898-1991) doesn’t seem to fit in the same august company and that’s just as she wished it. She did secure a commission with the Federal Art Project in 1935, but she was much was much better known for her New York City shots, her fondness for architecture, moody compositions that border on surrealism, and portraits of offbeat personalities such as herself. She was a closeted lesbian, but rumors flew. Her work was also a bit too surrealist–she once worked as an assistant to Man Ray–and too far on the modernist scale to echo the 1930s documentary styles, though she always thought of herself as a documentarian. Above all, she didn’t like to manipulate photos for effect and took a scientific approach to her shots. In that vein, she did science shots for M.I. T. for a while. She also championed the work and was influenced by Eugéne Atget (1857-1927) whose empty Parisien streets were deliberately ambiguous and invited viewers to write their own narratives. Atget was also a flaneur, a street wanderer whose detached view of city life matched her own views.

The Clark Museum of Art in Williamstown, Massachusetts, has a selection of Abbott’s works in its Eugene V. Thaw Gallery for Works on Paper. It is well worth seeing, though I have a word of caution. Most of the shots on display are from the 1920s and early 1930s and are quite small. If you click on any of the images below you will get larger images, but the blown up images on the screen are much bigger than what’s hanging on the wall. I’m not certain why they have displayed them so small, as I have seen the same images elsewhere in 8 x 10 images that were reprinted around 1960. (Perhaps the Clark doesn’t hold the rights to do the same.) In many cases this is lamentable as she, as did Atget, liked to fill the frame. Still, her 1937 show “Changing New York” is sampled. It was Abbott’s first solo exhibition and it alone made her a flaneur for the modernist movement.