The archetypal Hollywood beauty suggests the eyelid-fluttering but slightly dim type whose chief asset is their ability to entice men. That, however, is an unfortunate stereotype because there have been many Hollywood actresses that are both beautiful and highly intelligent.
Marilyn Monroe, for example, was a witty and perceptive person, painfully aware that she was trapped by her own image.
Another who broke the mould was Hedy Lamarr (Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler). The glamorous screen star was born in Vienna in 1914 and first gained attention by appearing in a 1933 film which was notorious for its extensive nude scenes and had to be severely cut before screening in America.
Her first marriage was to a shady weapons manufacturer named Fritz Mandl who sold shells, grenades and military aircraft to the likes of Hitler and Mussolini.
Mandl would invite the rich and powerful to his dinner parties where they would discuss matters such as weapons control systems.
He did not seem to appreciate that Hedy was quietly observing.
In 1937 she slipped away, disguised as a maid, and escaped to Hollywood where she was soon recruited by Louis Mayer of MGM studios.
In 1940 Lamarr met a Hollywood neighbour, George Antheil, who was a concert pianist and film composer.
They soon began talking about a radio device that could steer torpedoes while avoiding enemy attempts at jamming the signal.
Lamarr came up with a new approach that is still used today: "frequency hopping" radio that would jump frequencies at split-second intervals in an unpredictable way.
On June 10, 1941, they filed US Patent 2292387 that, in theory, would work.
Antheil's background as a musician influenced their design, which relied on a mechanism similar to a piano roll.
It synchronised changes between 88 frequencies - which happens to also be the standard number of keys on a piano.
A high-altitude observation plane was required to steer the torpedo from above.
While it was an inspired idea, it was too far ahead of the technology of the day.
The clockwork mechanism was too bulky and unreliable to use inside a torpedo.
It wasn't until 1957 that engineers were able to make it work using the newly invented transistors.
Lamarr and Antheil weren't actually the first people to consider the idea of frequency hopping, although nobody had thought of using it to steer torpedoes.
Marconi attempted to use it to minimise interference, and Nikola Tesla registered a US patent for his design.
The Germans used crude forms of frequency hopping during World War I to prevent eavesdropping.
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