A Look Back at 2022

As we wind down 2022 and ring in 2023, I want to thank everyone for their continued support of Rob Hanes Adventures! This past year saw the release of issue #23, which featured international adventurer/Justice International investigator Rob Hanes involved in an adventure on the high seas, when a freighter he's been hired to protect is taken over by sea pirates.

I also did more promotion than I’ve done in many years! While my exhibition appearances traditionally have been limited to the San Diego Comic-Con, in 2022 I exhibited at the Comic Con Revolution Ontario, the Long Beach Comic Con in September, and of course the San Diego Comic-Con.

Also in July, I took part in one of my first comic book store signings in years and participated in a couple of online interviews, including an in-depth interview and career retrospective on the Blockhead: Cartoonists Talk Comics podcast hosted by cartoonist Geoff Grogan and as a guest at a meeting of the Comics Arts Workshop. In addition, I attended WonderCon in Anaheim in April and the Los Angeles Comic Con just this month. Whew! (I even found time to finally migrate the wcgcomics.com website to WordPress.)

I look forward to doing more in the coming year. In the meantime, I’m hard at work on the next issue, #24, where Rob “goes Hollywood” when he’s hired to investigate threats against a movie studio, in a story that takes Rob to Tinseltown, then to a film festival in Europe! More as we get closer to publication!

I should add that I have an exciting and fun tale planned for the landmark 25th issue, which will take Rob back to his adventure roots! Details to come!

As always, thanks to everyone for their support over the years. In the meantime, warmest wishes to all for a happy and prosperous 2023!

Entertainment Roundup for 2022

As I do every year, here is my entertainment roundup for 2022!

With COVID restrictions easing and life beginning to return to normal, over the past year, my wife and I attended quite a number of live performances and events, ranging from concerts (the Go-Gos), plays and musicals (Moulin Rouge and To Kill a Mockingbird), a comedy show (the Ralph Report), museums and exhibitions (the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, the Hollywood Museum and a pop-up Banksy exhibition), and other in-person events like the Renaissance Pleasure Faire and even a book signing!

And after seeing only four films in theaters in 2021, we saw 10 this year (for comparison, we saw none in a theater in 2020 and 22 in 2019!)

While the Fabelmans, Elvis, Top Gun: Maverick, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness were among my favorites in the theater, with so many films dropping so quickly on streaming, it seems a bit meaningless to consider them separately from other films. So along with those, I’d name the Swimmers, Enola Holmes 2, Rosaline, and West Side Story among my favorites.

And, of course, streaming (or rather binging) shows and series continued to be a top occupation: Among my favorites: Ghosts (both the British and American versions!), Wednesday, the Dropout, Sex Education season 3, the Gilded Age, the Dropout, Pamela and Tommy, Minx, Julia, the Kids in the Hall: Comedy Punks, SuperBro, and Re-Boot being among my favorites.

New this year was my significantly increased consumption of podcasts (Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast), and YouTube content, particularly from specific channels like Cartoonist Kayfabe, ComicTropes, Cultured Bubble and BeKindRewind.

I also always try to keep a book on the nightstand (or rather, on the Kindle app on my iPad). Among the books I read this year were The Plot Against America by Philip Roth, Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe by Robert Matzen; American Comics: A History by Jeremy Dauber; Beautiful: The Life of Hedy Lamarr by Stephen Michael Shearer, Kenneth Branagh: A Beginning (which I had read on its publication in 1989), and Fools Rush In: Steve Case, Jerry Levin and the Unmaking of AOL Time Warner by Nina Munk. I also read (and re-read/re-visited) a bunch of comics, my favorite among them being a recent World’s Finest series, King of Spies by Mark Millar and Matteo Scalera, and the Mighty Return of Ric Hochet books 3 and 4 by Zidrou and Van Liemt Simon.

Anyway, the complete full list can be viewed after the jump.

Recent Books Read in 2022

Holiday Treats

Tags: Alex Toth, Lucky Luke

Happy Holidays from WCG Comics

 Happy holidays from WCG Comics! Every year I do a personal family holiday greeting card and one for WCG Comics/Rob Hanes Adventures

Best wishes to all for a wonderful holiday season and prosperous, happy and safe 2023!

A Visit to the WB Lot

In an earlier post from October, I spoke about my visit to the new offices of DC Comics (and other Warner Brothers departments) out in Burbank, CA. Last month, I visited WB’s adjacent movie lot.

Being a movie buff, I always enjoy visiting movie studios, so it was a treat to walk around the standing outdoor sets and through sound stages. I have to say, it’s amazing how relatively open the lot is once you have a pass/authorization to be on the premises—areas were only off limits if  filming was occurring. 

By coincidence, I also recently released a teaser that my next issue of Rob Hanes Adventures would involve Hollywood and the entertainment industry—though it was too late for my visit to serve as research per se, it was fun to soak in the atmosphere given that context. My only true film geek moment was when I walked into a garden area that I immediately recognized as the location of a couple scenes in the Coen Brothers film, “Hail, Caesar,” which I had coincidentally re-watched just a few months prior. (The scenes are those where Josh Brolin’s Hollywood fixer character, Eddie Mannix, keeps separately running into the feuding twin sister gossip columnists, Thora and Thessaly Thacker, both played by Tilda Swinton.)

A highlight was walking through the props department, where we saw sundry props and items, like paintings of various U.S. presidents and what appeared to be the leg lamp from in the film A Christmas Story. (I’m assuming it’s in the current sequel since we saw TWO such lamps in the warehouse in good condition, though I haven’t seen it yet.)

I didn’t realize that the lot actually also has a relatively active and busy studio tour, so we often saw trams running past us and making stops during our visit. In fact, I spotted a tour group walking through the prop warehouse I mention above. The tram tour ends at a WB museum of sorts (and gift shop), which we visited as well.

I should note that this friend actually hosted me for a visit to the lot back in the early ‘90s. I recall we walked through the empty and darkened sound stages for the West Wing and ER, and I saw outdoor sets (and a prop Batmobile) for a Batman film. (In fact, in the props department, I spotted a variety of lecterns with the presidential seal on it and wondered if one of those was the one I saw back on the West Wing set.)

Anyway, it was a fun day roaming through the lot! More below and in the photo gallery.

Capsule Reviews in the Time of Coronavirus (16)

In addition to watching the usual streaming channels like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, etc., I watch a wide variety of YouTube channels. This has led me to discovering several YouTube channels (and a podcast) that particularly produce some great content. Here are a few of my favorites:

Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast

When comedian Gilbert Gottfried passed away in April, I wrote an appreciation of his podcast on Facebook. Here’s a more “formal” review…

I discovered the terrific Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast in 2021, an interview show with co-host Frank Santopadre. Launched in 2014, they’ve hosted hundreds of guests from a wide range of fields, ranging from comics, comedy, animation, and films. Tying them all together is a deep love for classic pop culture and Old Hollywood. Both Gottfried and Santopadre are incredibly knowledgeable about the golden age of Hollywood, including classic films, television, as well as the dark and seamy side of the industry, both true and apocryphal (and the seamier the better lol).

To name just a few, guests have included Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss, Kevin Pollack, Dick Van Dyke, Paul Reiser, Alan and Adam Arkin, and literally hundreds more. As this suggests, many guests are the last connection to the golden age of Hollywood, with conversations running the gamut from admiration, to the profane and the hilarious. Being comedians, there’s plenty of needling, but to his credit, no one laughs the hardest than Gottfried when he is the butt of the joke. For anyone with an interest in classic Hollywood, it’s a wonderful way to hear first person reminiscences from the people who were there.

Even with Gottfried's passing, the site has remained active under Santopadre and shows remain available online.

Cartoonist Kayfabe

Hosted by “master comics makers” Ed Piskor and Jim Rugg, Cartoonist Kayfabe covers the comics field broadly, ranging from a look at specific comics, magazines and books, interviews, and appreciation of other cartoonists—essentially, just a couple of comics geeks shooting the breeze as fans and talking shop as pros.

What particularly impresses me about the two hosts is their deep knowledge and broad appreciation of all comics, past and present, and diverse genres from classic comic strips, comics from the golden age to the present, undergrounds, alternative and more. Given how broad and fragmented comics have become over the past several decades, it would be easy to suffer from tunnel vision, but Piskor and Rugg are knowledgeable and well informed, and even as successful pros, clearly retain a youthful and infectious appreciation of the form. They have great chemistry and an affable presence. Even when they discuss controversial issues, they generally always do so with humor, fairness and without negativity or disparagement. They both also have remained prolific as cartoonists and leveraged their popularity to promote their own work. They’re great inspirations as fans and cartoonists. After all, anybody who can wrangle an interview with Fantagraphics publisher Gary Groth has my respect!

Comic Tropes
ComicTropes is somewhat similar to Cartoonist Kayfabe (though I believe came first), hosted and produced by comics fan and historian Chris Piers. As the show’s name suggests, it focuses on the tropes and the “recurring elements that creators or characters use” which provides “an excuse to drill down on various techniques and comic book history.” That said, this definition allows leeway for a wide range of topics. The show is primarily focused on comic books and comic book history—Piers is also affable and good humored, encouraging interaction with his viewers through small contests, funny little stunts and fan art. (One hilarious bit featured him taking swigs at offbeat sodas in between segments.)

BeKindRewind

BeKindRewind host Isabelle C. looks at Hollywood history primarily through a feminist and progressive lens, focusing particularly on actresses and issues related to diversity and representation. The show's angle makes the channel particularly fascinating and informative.

Though her work covers the broad history of the entertainment industry, she has a particular interest in classic Hollywood and actors from the ‘30s through the ‘70s, but also to the present day, having covered actresses like Bette Davis, Deborah Kerr, Jane Fonda, Myrna Loy and more. (A piece about Lee Grant’s history as a blacklisted actor even got a complimentary shout out from the actress herself!) She does a great job as well in recounting the behind the scenes stories and maneuverings behind Oscar races, performances and casting, often citing the sources of her research. Though never shy about expressing her opinion and views, she never comes across as unreasonable or inflexible. She's well informed and knowledgeable and offers a fresh perspective on Old Hollywood. 

Nerd of the Rings/The Broken Sword
Though there are, perhaps unsurprisingly, a plethora of YouTube channels devoted to the lore of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, I found the Nerd of the Rings and Broken Sword channels to be the most informative and entertaining. Though definitely for the serious fan, I have found them to be great companions to the books and films (including the recent first season of the Rings of Power), exploring the histories, characters and world of Middle Earth, both well known and obscure, for people like me who love the series but have perhaps found the original source material like the Silmarillion and the appendices of the Lord of the Rings too dense or inaccessible. I don't know if anyone beyond hardcore fans will appreciate the channels, but their success and the number of such panels suggest that there's a large, receptive audience.

Cultured Bubble

I’ve always been puzzled by the appeal of “reaction videos,” where you watch someone else watch a movie trailer or even full-length film, usually for the first time, while they provide commentary and real-time reactions.

That is until I came across the YouTube channel Cultured Bubble, hosted by “Tanya from Germany,” who says she is trying to break out of her culture bubble (and heal from C-PSTD). The first video of hers I came across was Jojo Rabbit—given her background as a German, I was curious about her reaction to the film. Other films she covered have included Monty Python and the Holy Grail and the Star Wars films, which amazingly she had never seen! I found Tanya’s videos because she is such a genuine and sweet presence—very open hearted, sensitive and receptive. (What made her videos on the Star Wars films particularly amusing and insightful was that she decided to watch them in the order they were intended, i.e., episodes I-III first, rather than when they were made chronologically—as a result, when she sees Darth Vader appear in Episode IV, she gets a bit upset because she was became so invested in having watched Anakin grow up as a child in the initial films lol.)

Tanya recently announced she was taking a break, feeling that the channel and watching the films was preventing her from attending to personal wellness issues (she occasionally has mentioned an abusive childhood). I hope she finds the peace she seeks, as she is seems a very sweet, perceptive and delightful individual.

Attending the L.A. Comic-Con

I’m finally getting around to posting photos from the L.A. Comic-Con from the beginning of the month. I attended the last day, opting to take the Metro into downtown L.A., only a 35 minute ride. The L.A. Convention Center is next door to the Crypto.com arena, home to the L.A. Lakers, Clippers and the L.A. Kings. (Crypto.com is also a concert arena—we saw the Go-Gos there in March.)

Though I didn’t exhibit, I got a pro badge—however, in an amusing switch, my daughter was at a booth at the show! For the past two years or so, actually, she has regularly attended comics, anime and art shows in support of her college roommate and fellow art major, Aki Lin, who sells prints (they have known each other since high school!). He always does great business, and I’ve been encouraging my daughter to perhaps dip her toes into commissioned work as well. You can find Aki’s art on Instagram at handle @pyrofennec.

I was glad to see plenty of comics dealers at the show and there’s a vibrant Artist’s Alley, where I saw many comics pals (see photos). Perhaps I’ll give it a shot as an exhibitor next year—a few years back, I exhibited at WonderCon, when it was held at the same venue, so I have experience at the site.

A confession: I wanted to attend because Elijah Wood and Sean Aston were appearing on a panel presumably for the 20th anniversary of the Lord of the Rings films—but I somehow got the date wrong and missed it the day before. D’OH! Oh, well, I still had a great time at the show (and even got to provide lunch to my daughter and her roommate!).

Below are additional photos, or see the full gallery.

Lonnie Millsap

Comic Art Professional Society (CAPS) table.

Eddie DeAngelini

Give the Gift of Comics this Holiday Season!

Thanksgiving Memories

To Kill a Mockingbird

Earlier this week, we saw "To Kill a Mockingbird," a fresh stage adaptation of Lee Harper’s iconic novel by Aaron Sorkin that opened on Broadway in 2018 to strong reviews (and business), but closed at the start of this year due to COVID and other issues. The current touring production features Richard Thomas as Atticus Finch—it was a riveting show with themes, sadly, that remain fresh and relevant in today's climate. There’s nothing as electric as live theater when a show really works and this certainly ranked up there for me. Thomas and the entire cast were terrific. It had been awhile since we’d seen a straight stage drama, so it was a nice change of pace from the run of musicals we've seen (though there were many laughs that offset the drama).

We saw it at the historic Pantages in the heart of Hollywood. By coincidence, a few days before the show, I came across a photo on Instagram of the Pantages from 1953—the first year the Academy Awards was televised. (Last October, I posted seeing Moulin Rouge at the same theater.)

We also purposely planned dinner early enough to give us time to visit Amoeba Records catty corner from the theater. It’s an old school record store that includes vinyl, CDs, DVDs and books (including graphic novels) both new and used.

 

Capsule Reviews in the Time of Coronavirus (15)

Another review "dump”...

From Executive Suite, to Margin Call and the Big Short, I’ve always enjoyed boardroom and financial dramas and shenanigans, both fictional and real. There has been an abundance of such shows and series recently, some of which I review below…

Dropout (Hulu)
First up is the Dropout, which follows the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced former CEO of Theranos, who earlier this year was convicted of fraud.

While Holmes, of course, did not initially set out to deceive, her fatal flaw was placing her ambition to be a billionaire and disruptor—like her idols Steve Jobs and Bill Gates—above her ability to deliver an actual working product, which she claimed would be a game-changing medical screening device based on a single drop of blood that she had been advised early on could never work. Instead, enabled by the belief in her own press and an inner circle and board of directors and venture capitalists who were charmed by this (apparently) charismatic telegenic blond, her priority to maintain her superstar aura and keep the company solvent took precedence over the technology.

Over the course of the series, the audience receives a fascinating peek into the world of Silicon Valley startups as we watch her continue to dig herself deeper in a hole as she moves forward prematurely without a functional product, forcing her to engage in a deception regarding the claims of her product, turning the work environment at Theranos paranoid and toxic.

Though it’s likely she would eventually have been found out, her downfall is accelerated by low level young staff who become whistleblowers when they not only realize that the touted technology is not working but that standard rival medical equipment is being used to actually do the work. Complicating matters is that one of the whistle blowers was Tyler Schultz, the grandson of a member of Holmes’ board, former secretary of state George Schultz. Tyler’s claims caused a rift between family members and, if not for the tenaciousness of the whistle blowers and the financial ability of Tyler’s family to fend off the aggressive tactics of Holmes’ lawyers, none of this might have come to light until much later.

Holmes’ awkwardness and psychopathy are well portrayed by Amanda Seyfried, who leads a talented supporting cast including Naveen Andrews as her much older svengali and COO, with whom she secretly had an intimate relationship, as well as Alan Ruck (as the Walgreens executive who championed the company’s partnership with Theranos), Sam Waterston as George Schultz, Stephen Fry, Anne Archer, Laura Metcalf, William H. Macy, Bill Irwin, and others.

WeCrashed (AppleTV+)
This series covers the rise and fall of Adam and Rebekah Neumann and their WeWork startup that at one point was inexplicably valued at $47 billion. This is another story that I was familiar with through articles and documentaries. Starring Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway, it says a lot about the Neumanns that I found Leto way less annoying than the real-life Neumann.

Neumann is a driven entrepreneur in search of money and an idea. While his brainchild, WeWork, is essentially a communal co-work space rental company, Neumann, a showman with the ability to dazzle and create a cult of personality through new agey double-talk, he somehow convinced investors who should have known better that his rental company was actually a tech company with potential for unlimited growth. Before reality (and long-term leases) sets in—along with a crash in the commercial rental market—Neumann and Rebekah burn through money like crazy to support their lifestyle (private jet and homes) as well as fulfill their goal to “elevate the world’s consciousness” and keep the company growing to unrealistic heights and proportions.

While everything ultimately crashed around them—and we see the devastating impact of the young employees at the company who not only lost their jobs but a lot of money that they leveraged believing that the were going to become millionaires (or billionaires) when the company went public—the Neumann’s themselves of course frustratingly seem to still come out ahead financially with golden parachutes.

Minx (HBOMax)
Set in the early 1970s with the women’s lib movement and sexual revolution underway, Minx is an HBO dramedy series that follows the start up of a Playgirl-like magazine by a shrewd porn magazine publisher named Doug Renetti (Jake Johnson) and a serious-minded and an earnest but uptight feminist and aspiring magazine writer named Joyce Prigger (Ophelia Lovibond). The series is the flip side of Boogie Nights: whereas the movie followed a cast of misfits who find some semblance of family in the adult industry but ultimately find themselves (mostly) trapped in the lives they’ve made for themselves, in Minx the characters find the magazine and Joyce’s arrival an opportunity for self-discovery and empowerment. (The show is similarly set in the San Fernando Valley during the same era).

Like Boogie Nights, the series and its production design perfectly capture the era of the 1970s and the San Fernando Valley setting. It’s got a great ensemble cast, which includes the diverse quirky staff at the magazine operation and the canny addition of Joyce’s sister Shelly, who is a married suburban mom but way more grounded, open-minded and easy-going to the more open sexuality of the era than her over-achieving sister Joyce.

I also give credit to the show for putting its money where its mouth is by being an equal-opportunity exploiter lol. There has been way more male full-frontal penises on display on this show than female nudity. Like all good series, the show gets better, richer and broadens its scope each episode. As someone with some experience in publishing, I found the portrayal of the realities of big magazine publishing from the perspective of business, distribution and censorship (as well as the Mob connections to magazine distribution) fascinating.

Just don’t watch it with the kids around!

Succession (HBOMax)
Yes, I’m a late comer to this series, now in its third season. I tried it once a few years back and couldn’t quite get into it. But this time around I got more caught up in this Shakespearean-level family drama surrounding media giant Logan Roy (the bigger than life Brian Cox) and his children and senior level employees, who all try to position themselves and ingratiate themselves to the senior Roy as the successor to his company. Indeed, the black comedy is a very conscious riff on “King Lear” (as well as partly inspired by Rupert Murdock). I have to admit, however, that I can take the show only in small doses since the characters are pretty horrible people lol.

A Visit to WB's Second Century Building

Re-discovering Hedy Lamarr

I’ve been on a bit of a Hedy Lamarr kick recently. While Lamar (born Hedwig Kiesler) was still vaguely a part of the pop culture landscape when I was growing up, I don’t recall her films popping up much on television when I was a kid or the revival theater circuit when I was in college. As a result, this made her an abstract presence—a remote figure famous for being famous. So aside from her name, I was pretty oblivious to her work as an actress or personal biography. In fact, she probably was more familiar to me as the brand image of a computer program I used for many years called CorelDraw—her likeness was used on the application's package for many years. (A screen shot of the box cover is included in the images at the end of this post—in 1998, a few years before her passing in 2000, she settled a lawsuit with the company over this unlicensed use of her image.)

In 2017, however, she popped onto my radar—and everyone else’s—due to a documentary produced by Susan Sarandon about the actress called Bombshell: Hedy Lamarr (eventually featured in an episode of the PBS series, American Masters). The film covers her fascinating life: born to a well-to-do Viennese Jewish family (the father was from Ukraine) that had converted to Catholicism, she appeared nude as a teen actress in a groundbreaking Czech film called Ecstacy where she also was featured in a scene what is considered the first portrayal on screen of an orgasm (which primarily consisted of close ups of her face in the throes of passion); she then married a Jewish munitions manufacturer, one of the richest men in Austria, who counted Nazi Germany and fascist Italy as clients; then left her husband and an unhappy marriage to flee Europe and eventually booked passage to the U.S. where she was signed on route by Louis B. Mayer at MGM before even landing ashore.

More notably, as was more publicly known only late in her life, Lamarr was also a gifted intellect and inventor who, with music film composer George Antheil, patented the technology that in later years served as the foundation for modern day wifi and GPS. Though this technology was not used until well after the patent had formally expired, before she passed, Lamarr was officially recognized and honored for her groundbreaking scientific work and, after her death, posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

As her personal life reveals, she was a woman who followed her own path, passions and impulses, yet tragically felt trapped (and cursed) by her beauty. For these reasons, despite her brilliant intellect, having been defined and admired her entire life because of her looks, she sadly spent her final years in seclusion, unable to age gracefully in the public eye.

More recently, after enjoying the coffee table book, Glamour and Style: The Beauty of Hedy Lamarr, by Stephen Michael Shearer, about the actress’s life and career (the writer also earlier wrote a full-length biography), I decided to track down and watch whatever of her films I could find. These included: Algiers (1938) with Charles Boyer; Comrade X with Clark Gable (1940); Come Live with Me (1941) with Jimmy Stewart; Tortilla Flat (1942) with John Garfield and Spencer Tracy; H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941) with Robert Young; The Strange Woman (1946) with George Sanders; and Dishonored Lady (1947).

While I can’t quite say that Lamarr’s dazzling looks successfully made up for any acting deficiencies, she nevertheless possessed a glowing screen presence when it was allowed to shine through—in the films I watched, I found her more delightful in lighter fare when she got to be more playful, vulnerable and human—such as Comrade X, Come Live With Me, H.M. Pulham, Esq. and Dishonored Lady. On the whole, however, the studios didn’t seem to know what to do with her and the quality of her films reflect that. Her European allure (and accent) limited her to “exotic” roles, such as a Portuguese immigrant in Tortilla Flat and native girls in White Cargo and Lady of the Tropics, where she sometimes sported dark skin coloring while speaking with her native light Austrian accent. She also had the misfortune to be an also-ran among the European actresses in Hollywood: Comrade X was a knockoff meant to capitalize on Greta Garbo’s Ninotchka, while Algiers was a precursor to Casablanca (in fact, the filmmakers reportedly initially wanted Lamarr for the role that Ingrid Bergman ultimately filled).

As a result, most of Lamarr’s films consist of B-movie and kitschy melodramas that haven’t aged well (this includes the film she produced as a star vehicle for herself, the Strange Woman, considered one of her best performances). And with apologies to actors like Charles Boyer, George Sanders, Spencer Tracy and Dennis O’Keefe (anyone?), it didn’t help that (in my view at least) she wasn’t paired with leading men with the same level of sizzle or provided much onscreen chemistry. Of the films I saw, my favorites were Comrade X with Gable, a conscious knock off of Ninotchka as I mentioned above; Come Live With Me, a somewhat caustic romantic comedy with Jimmy Stewart; and Dishonorable Woman, another melodrama that’s a mashup between a psychological drama (or, more accurately, psychological babble) and a wrongly-accused-of-murder thriller. That all said, I do hope to catch more of her films, particularly Samson and Delilah, her biggest hit, though her career declined after that temporary peak.

Anyway, given the forgettable and outdated nature of her films and roles, I can understand to some degree why Lamarr is not as well remembered as many of her Hollywood contemporaries. Nevertheless, given that she was for a time considered “the most beautiful woman in the world”—an image no doubt ultimately impossible to live up to—and the fact that she also turned out to have an incredibly brilliant mind, I’m glad that the life and legacy of Lamarr has been rediscovered and remembered.