Susan Sarandon’s production company, Reframed Pictures, is set to produce a documentary, in partnership with PBS’s American Masters, on the screen siren Hedy Lamarr. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has given support directly to the film. Alexandra Dean will direct.

Hedy Lamarr was a Viennese Jewish actress who married a Nazi arms dealer. She then escaped (through a window) to the United States where she starred in a number of Hollywood films while simultaneously helping to invent a new technology called frequency hopping she thought could help the Allies win the war. Hedy Lamarr was among the first women to appear nude in a non-pornographic film—ECSTASY—shot in 1933. Today we use her pioneering technology in cell phones and GPS units.

Hedy Lamarr, while she is not always regarded as the most talented actress, was a brilliant and determined innovator who went without recognition until late in life for her important technological contribution.

Sloan is currently funding the development of the story into a feature film called HEDY’S FOLLY, based on the Sloan-supported Richard Rhodes book of the same name. Diane Kruger will play Hedy, and Rose Gaguzza is producing. The story of Hedy Lamarr is still little known. These films, at least one of which should come to screens in 2016, should change that.