Hedy Lamarr, often called “the most beautiful woman in the world,” was a thriving 26-year-old in Hollywood when, in September 1940, Nazi U-boats hunted down and sank a cruise ship evacuating 90 British schoolchildren to Canada. Seventy-seven drowned in the cold North Atlantic. Lamarr, a Jewish immigrant from Nazi-occupied Austria who had been making America […]

The plans were already in motion—the date, the venue, the invitations. When the doctors told us to move up the wedding, afraid of what might happen, we refused. We wanted it exactly as we dreamed. Three weeks before the big day, her hair fell out again. I reminded her, “I loved you bald the first […]

I had never seen her up close before. Just a fleeting shadow slipping through the neighborhood, always watchful, always on guard. She carried a wild beauty with her—slender and graceful—her golden fur patterned with spots like she belonged in some distant rainforest. She never approached, only watched from a distance. Then one morning, while taking […]