Beautiful Invention

Hollywood beauty. Brilliant inventor. Ambitious young actress Hedwig Kiesler is tainted by her nudity in the art film Ecstasy, but hasty marriage to an Austrian munitions mogul is no refuge from scandal. Repelled by his possessiveness—and her discovery that he supplies weapons to Hitler—Hedy flees husband and homeland for Hollywood. Professional success as glamorous Hedy Lamarr clashes with her personal life when marriage and motherhood compete with demands of studio and stardom. In response to Nazi atrocities during World War II, Hedy secretly invents a new technology intended for her adopted country’s defense—and unexpectedly changes the world.

Book club questions for Beautiful Invention by Margaret Porter

Use these discussion questions to guide your next book club meeting.

Fact and fiction are closely woven together in historical novels, especially biographical ones such as Beautiful Invention: A Novel of Hedy Lamarr. To what extent did you sense that this is an accurate account of Hedy’s life and career? Where did you feel that liberties with the actual truth might have occurred?

Hedwig Kiesler was born into privilege and wealth in Vienna between two world wars. How did this make her unusual in Hollywood of the 1930s and 1940s? In what ways were her motivations and decisions affected by her background and upbringing?

After achieving fame, Hedy Lamarr regarded her extraordinary beauty as a curse, at worst, and at best, as a mixed blessing. In what ways did her greatest asset turn out to be her greatest liability, personally and professionally?

The National Inventors Council and the United States Navy used Hedy’s celebrity as a movie star to gain attention for their defense efforts. Was it fair to promote the existence of her invention to the public before making an attempt to develop it more fully?

Hedy Lamarr confronted the conflict between an actress’s need of visibility and publicity, and her desire to maintain privacy in her personal life and relationships. Do celebrities—past or present—have a right to privacy, or does the public nature of their profession require them to relinquish that right, partly or entirely? If she were alive today, what opinion might Hedy have about the omnipresent and often-intrusive technology and social media platforms that arose from her wartime invention?

The men in Hedy’s life—lovers and husbands and her co-inventor—were different in nationality, profession, and goals. Did you detect any similarities in the way they viewed Hedy and treated her? Which of them seemed to disappointed her the most? Do you agree with the way she resolved difficult relationships, especially her marriages?

L.B. Mayer repeatedly promised to foster Hedy’s Hollywood career and build her into a great star. Did he fulfill them or not? Should she have abandoned film work to focus on other inventions? Or her home life?

Hedy once declared, “I don’t regret anything. I learned a lot,” as a way of expressing how she benefited from her mistakes and her difficulties. What are some of the life lessons she has learned by the conclusion of the novel?

Beautiful Invention Book Club Questions PDF

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