Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I can't say enough about how disappointing I found this book. I recommended it for my book group and led the discussion. As I read, I wanted to hurl the book across the room many times. I knew that Hedy Lamarr was a beautiful, complicated and brilliant woman. That she had escaped from a war torn Europe and possessed a genius mind behind her stunning looks. The first four fifths of the book covered her abusive relationship with her first husband, an inaccurate relationship with her parents (yes, she was close to her father and her mother was cold, but they never went along with her decision to marry her munitions mogul suitor), descriptions of her costumes and jewels, the controversy over her nude scenes and simulated orgasm in her first movie, her escape to America and, finally, finally, her invention of broad spectrum technology for which she received no recognition during her lifetime. The book failed to mention that she tinkered with inventions all during her adult life, that the baby she "adopted" because he was an infant refugee from Europe was really her biological son, or that she died a meth addict because she, like many studio stars of that time, was fed uppers and downers so she could work slave hours for the film moguls. While it listed some of her most famous roles, it failed to even mention her most acclaimed and well-known movie, the one that won several oscars, "Samson and Delilah," which co-starred Victor Mature. In short, here was a woman who yearned to be taken seriously all her life and then was given short shrift by this poorly written novel. I kept going back to the professional critic's reviews and just can't understand why they are favorable. Lamarr's story is so compelling and captivating. What a great book it could have been.