Hedy's Folly Read Free Page A

for herself … that she wanted no more stage.”
    Berlin was the center of filmmaking, and to Berlin she returned that August 1931, looking for work. She found it with the Russian émigré directorAlexis Granowsky, who cast her as the mayor’s daughter in a comedy, Die Koffer des Herrn O.F. ( The Trunks of Mr. O.F. ). The cast included her rising Austrian contemporary Peter Lorre in his fourth film role. When Trunks wrapped, in mid-October, Sascha-Film obligingly offered her the female lead in another comedy to be shot in Berlin, Man braucht kein Geld ( One Needs No Money ), opposite Heinz Rühmann, a German film star. Hedy turned seventeen midway through the November production. Die Koffer des Herrn O.F . premiered in Berlin on 2 December. Man braucht kein Geld followed in Vienna on 22 December. “Excellent work by a cast of familiar German actors,” the New York Times would praise Man braucht kein Geld on itsNew York opening the following fall, “reinforced by Hedy Kiesler, a charming Austrian girl.” It was her first American notice.
    Then a truly starring role came to hand. The Czech director Gustav Machatý found Hedy in Berlin and offered her the lead in a Czechoslovakian film, Ekstase ( Ecstasy ), a love story. She was thrilled. “When I had this opportunity to star in [the film],” she recalled, “it was the biggest opportunity I had had. I was mad for this chance, of course.” Shooting was scheduled for July 1932. To fill the intervening months, she replaced one of the four actors in Noël Coward’s comedy Private Lives at the Komödie Theatre.
    Whether or not Hedy’s parents read the script of Ekstase isn’t clear from the remaining record. Since she was still a minor, however, they did try to protect her:
I could not go, my father said, unless my mother went too. But I did not want my mother to go.… I was young enough to want to be on my own. What kind of a baby, what kind of an amateur would they think me, I said, if I had to have my mother along to take care of me! Besides, I felt embarrassed when my mother was in the studio, was on the sets watching me. I felt stiff and self-conscious then. I could not feel free and grownup like that. I finally prevailed upon my father to allow me to go with the members of the company. There could be no harm in this.
    Eventually, she revealed another reason she had insisted on traveling unaccompanied: “I went to Prague because I was in love with somebody.” She wanted no chaperoning mother to interfere.
    Hedy’s performance as Eva in Ekstase would both promote and plague her professional career. Although the film includes a brief nude scene, it’s guileless rather than salacious. A young wife, Eva, languishes in an unconsummated marriage to a fussy middle-aged man. Frustrated, she leaves him. Out riding one morning, enjoying her new freedom, she stops to swim in a woodland pond, parking her summer playsuit on the back of her unsaddled mare. While she’s swimming, her mare runs away, attracted to a stallion in the next pasture. Adam, a handsome engineer on a road construction crew, stripped to the waist and a-sweat, catches the runaway and goes looking for its rider. He finds Eva hiding behind a bush and tosses her playsuit to her. Dressed, disdainfully retrieving her horse, she trips and sprains her ankle. He splints it, necessarily handling her leg, and she slaps him for his familiarity. Back home, she realizes she’s drawn to him, struggles with her feelings, finally looks him up in his construction cabin and initiates a night of passion. Afterward the lovers happily plan another night together at a hotel.
    The next day they go into town separately to avoid scandal. Adam catches a ride unknowingly with Eva’s husband, Emile, who recognizes as his estranged wife’s a necklace Adam is fondling. Both men check into the same hotel. Theengineer hires musicians to serenade Eva as they drink champagne and dance on the hotel terrace. Emile in his room overhead