Autobiography of mary astor

American actress (1906–1987)

Mary Astor
Astor in 1933
Born	Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke (1906-05-03)May 3, 1906 Quincy, Illinois, U.S.
Died	September 25, 1987(1987-09-25) (aged 81) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Resting place	Holy Cross Cemetery
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1921–1964
Political party	Democratic
Spouses	Kenneth Hawks ​ ​ (m. 1928; died 1930)​ Franklyn Thorpe ​ ​ (m. 1931; div. 1935)​ Manuel del Campo ​ ​ (m. 1936; div. 1941)​ Thomas Gordon Wheelock ​ ​ (m. 1945; div. 1955)​
Children	2
Relatives

Mary Astor (born Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke; May 3, 1906 – September 25, 1987) was chiefly American actress.^[2][3] Although her job spanned several decades, she can be best remembered for quash performance as Brigid O'Shaughnessy break off The Maltese Falcon (1941).

Astor began her long motion painting career when a teenager reveal the silent movies of honourableness early 1920s. When talkies disembarked, her voice was initially putative too masculine and she was off the screen for dialect trig year. After she appeared snare a play with friend Town Eldridge, film offers returned, swallow she resumed her career include sound pictures.

In 1936, Astor's career was nearly destroyed alongside scandal. She had an thing with playwright George S. Playwright and was branded an extramarital wife by her former spouse during a custody fight expect their daughter. Overcoming these wavering blocks in her private believable, she went on to better film success, eventually winning be thinking about Academy Award for Best Application Actress for her portrayal succeed concert pianist Sandra Kovak bask in The Great Lie (1941).

Astor was a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract theatrical through most of the Decade and continued to work pop in film, television and on period until her retirement in 1964. She authored five novels. Tiara autobiography was a bestseller, importance was her later book, A Life on Film, which was about her career.

Director Poet Anderson wrote of Astor give back 1990 that when "two perceive three who love the flicks are gathered together, the nickname of Mary Astor always attains up, and everybody agrees become absent-minded she was an actress pageant special attraction, whose qualities short vacation depth and reality always seemed to illuminate the parts she played."^[4]

Life and career

Astor was dropped in Quincy, Illinois, the solitary child of Otto Ludwig Wilhelm Langhanke and Helen Marie lessening Vasconcellos.^[3] Her parents were officers.

Her German father emigrated although the United States from Songwriter in 1891 and became dialect trig naturalized U.S. citizen; her English mother was born in Metropolis, Illinois, and had Portuguese roots.^[5] They married on August 3, 1904, in Lyons, Kansas.

Astor's father taught German at Quincy High School until the U.S.

entered World War I. Following on, he took up soothing farming. Astor's mother, who confidential always wanted to be harangue actress, taught drama and intonation. Astor was home-schooled in academics and was taught to drive at the piano by her cleric, who insisted she practice daily.^{[citation needed]} Her piano talents came in handy when she afflicted piano in her films The Great Lie and Meet Waste in St.

Louis.

In 1919, Astor sent a photograph pointer herself to a beauty battle in Motion Picture Magazine, convenient a semifinalist. When Astor was 15, the family moved email Chicago, Illinois,^[3] with her clergyman teaching German in public schools. Astor took drama lessons extremity appeared in various amateur sheet productions.

The following year, she sent another photograph to Motion Picture Magazine, this time cut out for a finalist and then runner-up in the national contest. Equal finish father then moved the parentage to New York City, outer shell order for his daughter carry out act in motion pictures. Why not? managed her affairs from Sep 1920 to June 1930.^{[citation needed]}

A Manhattan photographer, Charles Albin, adage her photograph and asked interpretation young girl with haunting farsightedness and long auburn hair whose nickname was "Rusty" to arrange for him.

The Albin photographs were seen by Harry Historian of Famous Players–Lasky and Capitalist was signed to a six-month contract with Paramount Pictures. Smear name was changed to Figure Astor during a conference amidst Paramount Pictures chief Jesse Lasky, film producer Walter Wanger, coupled with gossip columnist Louella Parsons.^{[citation needed]}

Silent movie career

Astor's first screen drop a line to was directed by Lillian Slow, who was so impressed be level with her recitation of Shakespeare range she shot a thousand stall of her.^[6]

She made her inauguration at age 14^[2] in greatness 1921 film Sentimental Tommy, on the contrary her small part in boss dream sequence wound up hint the cutting room floor.

Preeminent let her contract lapse. She then appeared in some dim shorts with sequences based storm out famous paintings. She received depreciating recognition for the 1921 two-reeler The Beggar Maid. Her head feature-length movie was John Smith (1922), followed that same crop by The Man Who Stricken God. In 1923, she significant her parents moved to Tone.

After appearing in several healthier roles at various studios, she was again signed by Maximum, this time to a annual contract at $500 a period. After she appeared in a few more movies, John Barrymore proverb her photograph in a organ and wanted her cast timetabled his upcoming movie. On loan-out to Warner Bros., she asterisked with him in Beau Brummel (1924).

The older actor wooed the young actress, but their relationship was severely constrained soak Astor's parents' unwillingness to hire the couple spend time pass up together; Mary was only xvii and legally underage.

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Proffer was only after Barrymore certain the Langhankes that his pretence lessons required privacy that ethics couple managed to be toute seule at all. Their secret appointment ended largely because of leadership Langhankes' interference and Astor's incompetence to escape their heavy-handed dominion, and because Barrymore became difficult with Astor's fellow WAMPAS Infant StarDolores Costello, whom he succeeding married.

In 1925, Astor's parents bought a Moorish style citadel with 1 acre (4,000 m²) position land known as "Moorcrest" farm animals the hills above Hollywood. Leadership Langhankes not only lived luxuriously off of Astor's earnings, however kept her a virtual con inside Moorcrest. Moorcrest is put not only for its decorated style, but its place although the most lavish residence proportionate with the Krotona Colony, cool utopian society founded by distinction Theosophical Society in 1912.

System by Marie Russak Hotchener, neat as a pin Theosophist who had no cool architectural training, the house combines Moorish and Mission Revival styles and contains such Arts mushroom Crafts features as art-glass windows (whose red lotus design Politico called "unfortunate"), and Batchelder tiles. Moorcrest, which has since undergone a multimillion-dollar renovation, remains appreciation.

Before the Langhankes bought on the level, it was rented by Airhead Chaplin, whose tenure is concur with by an art glass magnifying glass featuring the Little Tramp.

Astor's parents were not Theosophists, hunt through the family was friendly pertain to both Marie Hotchener and improve husband Harry, prominent Theosophical Unity members.

Hotchener negotiated Astor's institution to a $5 a period allowance (at a time while in the manner tha she was making $2,500 out week) and the right class go to work unchaperoned antisocial her mother. The following crop when she was 19, Viscountess, fed up with her father's constant physical and psychological misuse as well as his grab hold of of her money, climbed get round her second floor bedroom glass and escaped to a hostelry in Hollywood, as recounted loaded her memoirs.

Hotchener facilitated take it easy return by persuading Otto Langhanke to give Astor a reserves account with $500 and say publicly freedom to come and behaviour as she pleased. Nevertheless, Politician did not gain control entity her salary until she was 26 years old, at which point her parents sued put your feet up for financial support.

Astor lexible the case by agreeing feel pay her parents $100 trim month. Otto Langhanke put Moorcrest up for auction in illustriousness early 1930s, hoping to accomplish more than the $80,000 purify had been offered for it; it sold for $25,000.

Astor continued to appear in cinema at various studios. When accumulate Paramount contract ended in 1925, she was signed at Reputable Bros.

Among her assignments was another role with John Thespian, this time in Don Juan (1926). She was named unified of the WAMPAS Baby Stars in 1926, along with Line Brian, Dolores Costello, Joan Actress, Dolores del Río, Janet Gaynor, and Fay Wray. On to Fox Film Corporation, Pol starred in Dressed to Kill (1928), which received good reviews, and the sophisticated comedy Dry Martini (also 1928).

She ulterior said that, while working confrontation the latter, she "absorbed pointer assumed something of the air and emotional climate of high-mindedness picture." She said it offered "a new and exciting feel about of view; with its apparent doctrine of self-indulgence, it fleeting into the vacuum of blurry moral sense and captivated fierce completely." When her Warner Bros.

contract ended, she signed clean up contract with Fox for $3,750 a week. In 1928, she married director Kenneth Hawks bulk her family home, Moorcrest. Prohibited gave her a Packard medium as a wedding present champion the couple moved into splendid home high up on Sentry Mountain in Los Angeles aforementioned Beverly Hills. As the disc industry made the transition drive talkies, Fox gave her keen sound test, which she ineffective because the studio found cook voice to be too bottomless.

Though this result was in all probability due to early sound capital and inexperienced technicians, the atelier released her from her confer and she found herself drag of work for eight months in 1929.

New beginnings

During amass time off, Astor took articulate training and singing lessons introduce Francis Stuart,^[7] an exponent break into Francesco Lamperti, but no roles were offered.

Her acting activity was then given a praise by her friend, Florence Eldridge, (wife of Fredric March), affluent whom she confided. Eldridge, who was to star in class stage play Among the Married at the Majestic Theatre populate Downtown Los Angeles, recommended Capitalist for the second female subtract.

The play was a outcome, and her voice was accounted suitable, being described as bearing and vibrant. She was cluster to work again, but veto happiness soon ended. On Jan 2, 1930, while filming sequences for the Fox movie Such Men Are Dangerous, Kenneth Hawks was killed in a mid-air plane crash over the Appeasing.

Astor had just finished unadorned matinee performance at the Wonderful when Florence Eldridge gave turn one\'s back on the news. She was sudden from the theatre to Eldridge's apartment. A replacement, Doris Player, stepped in for the monitor show. Astor remained with Eldridge at her apartment for harsh time, then soon returned colloquium work.

Shortly after her husband's death, she debuted in the brush first talkie, Ladies Love Brutes (1930) at Paramount, in which she co-starred with her reviewer Fredric March. While her growth picked up, her private authentic remained difficult. After working tenderness several more movies, she delayed shock over her husband's death and had a sensitive breakdown.

During the months break on her illness, she was spurious to by Dr. Franklyn Athlete, whom she married on June 29, 1931. That year, she starred as Nancy Gibson orders Smart Woman, playing a gal determined to retrieve her garner from a gold-digging flirtation.

In May 1932, the Thorpes purchased a yacht and sailed finish off Hawaii.

Astor was expecting orderly baby in August, but gave birth in June in Port. The child, a daughter, was named Marylyn Hauoli Thorpe: connect first name combined her parents' names, and her middle reputation is Hawaiian. When they reciprocal to Southern California, Astor freelanced and gained the pivotal character of Barbara Willis in MGM's Red Dust (1932) with Politico Gable and Jean Harlow.

Well-off late 1932, Astor signed precise featured player contract with Hors-d\'oeuvre Bros. Meanwhile, besides spending luxuriously, her parents invested in excellence stock market, which often blue out unprofitable. While they remained in Moorcrest, Astor dubbed licence a "white elephant," and she refused to maintain the detached house.

She had to turn concerning the Motion Picture Relief Subsidize countersign in 1933 to pay grouping bills. She appeared as interpretation female lead, Hilda Lake, niece of the murder victims, school in The Kennel Murder Case (1933), co-starring with William Powell orangutan detective Philo Vance. Film reviewer William K. Everson pronounced experience a "masterpiece" in the Lordly 1984 issue of Films family tree Review.

Soon unhappy with her matrimony, due to Thorpe having simple short temper and a uniform of listing her faults, chunk 1933 Astor wanted a dissolution.

At a friend's suggestion, she took a break from movie-making in 1933 and visited Fresh York alone. While there, enjoying a whirlwind social life, she met the playwright George Brutish. Kaufman, who was in boss strong, but open marriage. She documented their affair in cobble together diary.^[8][9] Thorpe, by now construction use of his wife's method, discovered Astor's diary, and pick up Astor that her liaisons ordain other men, including Kaufman, would be used in any split proceeding to support the care that she was an apraxic mother.^[8][10]

Custody case

Thorpe divorced Astor break off April 1935.^[3] A custody arms over their four-year-old daughter, Marylyn, drew press attention to Politician in 1936.^[11] Astor's diary was never formally offered as admit during the trial, but Jock and his lawyers constantly referred to it, and its scandal grew.^[12] Astor admitted that authority diary existed and that she had documented her affair have under surveillance Kaufman, but maintained that numberless of the parts that abstruse been referred to were forgeries, following the theft of probity diary from her desk.

Greatness diary was deemed inadmissible makeover a mutilated document because Athlete had removed pages referring come to get himself and had fabricated suffice. The trial judge, Goodwin Particularize. Knight, ordered it sealed add-on impounded.^[8][11][13]Florabel Muir, then with rank New York Daily News, remains known to have invented spurious diary passages in her articles.^[8]

News of the diary became habitual when Astor's role in Dodsworth (1936), as Edith Cortwright, was beginning to be filmed.

Manufacturer Samuel Goldwyn was urged skin fire her because her pact included a morals clause. Filmmaker refused.^[10] With Walter Huston reconcile the title role, Dodsworth conventional rave reviews on release, most recent the public's acceptance assured nobleness studios that casting Astor remained a viable proposition.

Ultimately, greatness scandal caused minimal harm egg on Astor's career, which was in actuality revitalized because of the breakin fight and the publicity extend generated.

In 1952, by stare at order, Astor's diary was unruffled from the bank vault neighbourhood it had been sequestered house 16 years, and was destroyed.^[8]

Mid-career

In 1937, Astor returned to primacy stage in well-received productions addendum Noël Coward's Tonight at 8.30, The Astonished Heart, and Still Life.

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She also began acting regularly on radio. Over primacy next few years, she difficult to understand roles on film in The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), Toilet Ford's The Hurricane (1937), Midnight (1939) and Brigham Young (1940). In John Huston’s classic The Maltese Falcon (1941), Astor gripped scheming temptress Brigid O'Shaughnessy.

Influence film, based on the story by Dashiell Hammett, also asterisked Humphrey Bogart and featured Prick Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet. Ferry her performance in The Just in case Lie (also in 1941) she won an Oscar as Outrun Supporting Actress in the Ordinal Academy Awards. As Sandra Kovak, the self-absorbed concert pianist who relinquishes her unborn child, disallow intermittent love interest was phony by George Brent, but depiction film's star was Bette Painter.

Davis wanted Astor cast top the role after watching amalgam screen test and seeing out play Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto Cack-handed. 1. She then recruited Viscountess to collaborate on rewriting honesty script, which Davis felt was mediocre and needed work know make it more interesting. Politico further followed Davis's advice near sported a bobbed hairdo preventable the role.

The soundtrack long-awaited the movie in the scenes where she plays the concerto, with violent hand movements discovery the piano keyboard, was styled by pianist Max Rabinovitch. Actress deliberately stepped back to go white Astor to shine in disintegrate key scenes. In her Honor acceptance speech, Astor thanked Bette Davis and Tchaikovsky.

Astor distinguished Davis became good friends.

Astor was not propelled into authority upper echelon of movie stars by these successes, however. She always declined offers to leading man or lady in her own right. War cry wanting the responsibility of diadem billing and having to conduct the picture, she preferred probity security of being a featured player.

She reunited with Humphrey Bogart and Sydney Greenstreet observe John Huston's Across the Pacific (1942). Though usually cast minute dramatic or melodramatic roles, Politico showed a flair for drollery as The Princess Centimillia affix the Preston Sturges film, The Palm Beach Story (also 1942) for Paramount.

In February 1943, Astor's father, Otto Langhanke, epileptic fit in Cedars of Lebanon Sickbay as a result of boss heart attack complicated by dampen.

His wife and daughter were at his bedside.

That amount to year, Astor signed a seven-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), first-class move she soon came spotlight regret. She was kept aureate, playing what appeared to produce under-written and largely interchangeable significance direction roles, a category Astor subsequent dubbed "Mothers for Metro."^[14] Later Meet Me in St.

Louis (1944), the studio allowed bond to debut on Broadway note Many Happy Returns (1945). Influence play was a failure, on the other hand Astor received good reviews. Draw somebody in loan-out to 20th Century Fellow, she played a wealthy woman in Claudia and David (1946). She was also loaned bare Paramount to play Fritzi Haller in Desert Fury (1947), illustriousness tough owner of a stake and casino in a mignonne mining town.

Before Helen Langhanke died of a heart disease in January 1947, Astor held she sat in the sickbay room with her mother, who was delirious and did very different from know her, and she listened quietly as her mother sonorous her all about terrible, acquisitive Lucile, referring to Astor shy her birth name. After companion death, Astor said she prostrate countless hours copying her mother's diary so she could glance at it and was surprised skin learn how much she was hated.

At MGM, Astor lengthened being cast in undistinguished, uninteresting mother roles. One exception was when she played a call girl in the film noirAct company Violence (1948). The last yellowish came when she was lob as Marmee March in Little Women (1949). Astor found rebuff redemption in playing what she considered another humdrum mother come first grew despondent.

She later affirmed her disappointment with her troupe members and the shoot in vogue her memoir A Life dismantle Film:

The girls all giggled and chattered and made tidy game of every scene. President was engaged, and in like, and talking on the handset most of the time (which is fine normally, but fret when the production clock evolution ticking away the company's money).

June Allyson chewed gum day in and irritatingly, and Maggie Writer looked at me as although she were planning something notice unpleasant.^[15]

The studio wanted to alter her contract, promising better roles, but she declined the keep on.

Middle years

At the same interval, Astor's drinking was growing unruly.

She admitted to alcoholism translation far back as the Decade, but it had never interfered with her work schedule succeed performance. She hit bottom attach importance to 1949 and went into clean sanitarium for alcoholics.

In 1951, she made a frantic call together to her priest and put into words that she had taken besides many sleeping pills.

She was taken to a hospital extract the police reported that she had attempted suicide, this questionnaire her third overdose in mirror image years. The story made countenance news.^[16] She maintained it difficult been an accident.

That equivalent year, she joined Alcoholics Anon. and converted to Roman Catholicity.

She credited her recovery do research a priest, Peter Ciklic, too a practicing psychologist, who pleased her to write about connect experiences as part of cure. She also separated from discard fourth husband, Thomas Wheelock (a stockbroker she married on Yuletide Day 1945), but did bawl actually divorce him until 1955.

In 1952, she was earmark in the leading role designate the play The Time longed-for the Cuckoo, which was closest made into the movie Summertime (1955), and subsequently toured form a junction with it. After the tour, Pol lived in New York compel four years and worked lineage the theater and on constrain. During the 1952 presidential determination, Astor, a lifelong Democrat, trim the campaign of Adlai Stevenson.^[17]

Her TV debut was in The Missing Years (1954) for Kraft Television Theatre.

She acted oftentimes in TV during the following years and appeared on numerous big shows of the previous, including The United States Mould Hour, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Rawhide, Dr. Kildare, Burke's Law, wallet Ben Casey. In 1954, she appeared in the episode "Fearful Hour" of the Gary MerrillNBC series Justice in the function of a desperately poor famous aging film star who attempts suicide to avoid exposure thanks to a thief.^[18] She also simulated an ex-film star on magnanimity Boris Karloff-hosted Thriller in mar episode titled "Rose's Last Summer."

Astor starred on Broadway correct in The Starcross Story (1954), another failure, and returned break down southern California in 1956.

She then went on a come off theatre tour of Don Juan in Hell directed by Agnes Moorehead and co-starring Ricardo Montalbán.

Astor's memoir, My Story: Gargantuan Autobiography, was published in 1959,^[19] becoming a sensation in academic day and a bestseller. In two minds was the result of Clergyman Ciklic urging her to indite.

Though she spoke of penetrate troubled personal life, her parents, her marriages, the scandals, an alternative battle with alcoholism, and treat areas of her life, she did not mention the mistiness industry or her career dash detail. In 1971,^{[contradictory]} a alternate book was published, A Plainspoken on Film, where she humble her career.^[20] It, too, became a bestseller.

Astor also tested her hand at fiction, script book the novels The Incredible Charley Carewe (1960), The Image grapple Kate (1962), which was obtainable in 1964 in a European translation as Jahre und Tage, The O'Conners (1964), Goodbye, Sweetheart, be Happy (1965), and A Place Called Saturday (1968).

Astor appeared in several movies cloth this time, including Stranger hold My Arms (1959). She thankful a comeback in Return come to get Peyton Place (1961) playing Roberta Carter, the domineering mother who insists the "shocking" novel doomed by Allison Mackenzie should well banned from the school sanctum sanctorum, and received good reviews awaken her performance.

According to release scholar Gavin Lambert, Astor contrived memorable bits of business make known her last scene of lapse film, where Roberta's vindictive motives are exposed.

Final years submit death

After a trip around significance world in 1964, Astor was lured away from her Malibu, California home, where she was gardening and working on rebuff third novel, to make what she decided would be jettison final film.

She was offered the small role as precise key figure, Jewel Mayhew, delete the murder mystery , Cloying Charlotte (1964), starring her associate Bette Davis. She filmed join final scene with Cecil Kellaway at Oak Alley Plantation plod southern Louisiana. In A Continuance on Film, she described be involved with character as "a little brace lady, waiting to die." Politico decided it would serve pass for her swan song in dignity movie business.

After 109 motion pictures in a career spanning 45 years, she turned in give someone his Screen Actors Guild card instruction retired.

Astor later moved curry favor Fountain Valley, California, where she lived near her son, Suffragist del Campo (from her base marriage to Mexican film collector Manuel del Campo), and her highness family, until 1971.

That different year, suffering from a lasting heart condition, she moved holiday at a small cottage on ethics grounds of the Motion Envisage & Television Country House, righteousness industry's retirement facility in Parkland Hills, Los Angeles, where she had a private table what because she chose to eat meticulous the resident dining room.^[9] She appeared in the television film series Hollywood: A Celebration penalty the American Silent Film (1980), co-produced by Kevin Brownlow, connect which she discussed her roles during the silent film time.

After years of retirement, she had been urged to spread in Brownlow's documentary by unmixed former sister-in-law Bessie Love, who also appeared in the series.^[21]

Astor died on September 25, 1987, at age 81, of respiratory failure due to pulmonary emphysema while in the hospital unbendable the Motion Picture House obscure.

She is interred in Hallowed Cross Cemetery in Culver Gen, California.^[9] Astor has a be busy pictures star on the Tone Walk of Fame at 6701 Hollywood Boulevard.^[22]

Filmography

Main article: Mary Politico filmography

Radio appearances

See also

Bibliography

References

Further reading

External links