Ruined building instead of museum

Hedy Lamarr’s daughter with a “broken heart”

Hedy Lamarr's daughter Denise Loder-DeLuca with her late brother in Vienna in 2003. A Lamarr Museum for Vienna was his lifelong dream.(Bild: Martin Jöchl)

Hedy Lamarr's children almost gave away the estate of the Hollywood legend from Vienna for a small museum in René Benko's Viennese department store. Now the irreplaceable mementos have become bankruptcy assets. Her daughter is devastated.

For Denise Loder-DeLuca, the weathering of the ruins of the department store on Mariahilfer Strasse is "a debacle" and "a huge disappointment". She is not alone in this. But she is alone in having lost irretrievable mementos of her mother, Hollywood legend Hedy Lamarr, as a result of the Signa bankruptcy.