“I feel a little reactionary,” deadpans Hedy Lamarr in Comrade X, 1940.

On their improbable wedding night, anti-Communist reporter—remember them?—Clark Gable gives Bolshevik Hedy Lamarr a luscious, Adrian designed silk nightgown. Unlike Travis Banton, Adrian was concerned with silhouette and in this exquisitely bias-cut negligee—Gable just happens to have it in his suitcase—Hedy Lamarr’s figure is highlighted to a spectacular effect.

Long live the products of decadent American capitalism.

Capitalist Clark Gable puts Communist Hedy Lamarr in touch with her feminine side in Comrade X, 1940.

Hedy, playing a variation of Greta Garbo’s Ninotchka, is a humorless Soviet scold more concerned with industrial production than with her own femininity, which translates into her humanity.

TCM’s Shadows of Russia series, organized and programmed by my favorite  film blogger Self-Styled Siren and The New York Posts’s fine film critic Lou Lumenick, kicks into a refreshing mode—after the shallow and dopey Reds—as we view the lighter side of the Russian revolution.

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When growing up in Los Angeles, a singular delight was getting the TV Guide in the Sunday paper and scouring it, pen in hand.  My movie search.  In the sixties, Los Angeles had the greatest number of TV channels in any city: 2-4-5-7-9-11-13.  In trips to San Diego, the Mid-West or anywhere else, you’d be lucky to get two, maybe three channels.  And not very good ones.

Some years ago, my daughter asked: “…so in the olden times, Dad, when did you see movies?” Hmmmm.  Olden times.  As if the wheel, the pen, writing, music, and entertainment were invented with her generation.  I explained that there were two places to see movies.  Theaters and Television.  That was it.  No DVD, VHS, iPod, or Hulu.com.  My TV Guide search was essential to find the right movies and straighten out my schedule for the week by circling and grading the films.  After all, if a movie came on at 11 p.m., you’d be up for two hours to “The End.”

But each week, when I got the TV Guide in my young hands, it was like opening a present.  Before the internet, I explained to my daughter, we had this ancient forum called a “library” where you could get books on movies and famous actors.

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Hedy Lamarr’s perfectly arched eyebrows emphasize her symmetrical features. Considered the most beautiful woman in Hollywood, Lamarr was also incredibly bright, co-inventing, in 1941, a “frequency-hopping device that now serves as the basis for modern spread-spectrum communication technology.” That quote is grabbed from Wikipedia. I have absolutely no idea what it means, but darn, I’m impressed. Anyhoo. Married six times, Lamarr gained and lost several fortunes. After her career was over she was arrested on shoplifting charges.

Screening movies from Hollywood’s Golden Age, I’ve noticed an interesting trend—in eyebrows.

During the early days of silent films, female stars appeared pretty normal. Which is to say, eyebrows were lightly plucked, but retained a recognizably human configuration. (more…)