Katana VentraIP

Mary Astor

Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke, better known professionally as Mary Astor (May 3, 1906 – September 25, 1987), was an American actress.[2][3] Although her career spanned several decades, she may be best remembered for her performance as Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon (1941).

Mary Astor

Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke

(1906-05-03)May 3, 1906

September 25, 1987(1987-09-25) (aged 81)

Actress

1921–1964

(m. 1928; died 1930)
Franklyn Thorpe
(m. 1931; div. 1935)
(m. 1936; div. 1941)
Thomas Gordon Wheelock
(m. 1945; div. 1955)

2

Astor began her long motion picture career when a teenager in the silent movies of the early 1920s. When talkies arrived, her voice was initially considered too masculine and she was off the screen for a year. After she appeared in a play with friend Florence Eldridge, film offers returned, and she resumed her career in sound pictures.


In 1936, Astor's career was nearly destroyed by scandal. She had an affair with playwright George S. Kaufman and was branded an adulterous wife by her former husband during a custody fight over their daughter. Overcoming these stumbling blocks in her private life, she went on to greater film success, eventually winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of concert pianist Sandra Kovak in The Great Lie (1941).


Astor was a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract player through most of the 1940s and continued to work in film, television and on stage until her retirement in 1964. She authored five novels. Her autobiography was a bestseller, as was her later book, A Life on Film, which was about her career.


Director Lindsay Anderson wrote of Astor in 1990 that when "two or three who love the cinema are gathered together, the name of Mary Astor always comes up, and everybody agrees that she was an actress of special attraction, whose qualities of depth and reality always seemed to illuminate the parts she played."[4]

List of actors with Academy Award nominations

(1959)

My Story: An Autobiography

The Incredible Charlie Carewe (1963)

The O'Conners (1964)

Goodbye Darling, Be Happy (1965)

The Image of Kate (1966)

(1967)

A Life on Film

A Place Called Saturday (1968)

(2016). Mary Astor's Purple Diary: The Great American Sex Scandal of 1936. Liveright Publishing. ISBN 978-1-63149-023-1.[25]

Sorel, Edward

Egan, Joseph (2016). . Diversion Publishing. ISBN 978-1-68230-299-6.

The Purple Diaries: Mary Astor and the Most Sensational Hollywood Scandal of the 1930s

(2021)

The Great Lie: The Creation of Mary Astor

TES staff (March 1922). . The Educational Screen. p. 152

"Film Catalogue: Literary and Historical"

Martin, Quinn (February 1923). . Theatre Magazine. p. 30

"Cinema: 'Success'"

LHJ staff; photographs, [sic] (September 1925). "Velours Is Best for Our First Fall Hat". The Ladies' Home Journal. p. 65

Nickolas Muray

(June 1927). "As Imagined by a Noted American Artist, Ralph Barton". Vanity Fair. p. 63

Barton, Ralph

Calkins, Selby (January 1939). . Flying Magazine. p. 22

"Cupid Gets Streamlined"

U.S. House of Representatives, Subcommittee of the Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities (August 27, 1940). . p. 1756

"Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States; Volume 4: Executive Hearings"

at IMDb

Mary Astor

at the Internet Broadway Database

Mary Astor

at the TCM Movie Database

Mary Astor

at AllMovie

Mary Astor

Mary Astor photo gallery

Photographs and literature

Wedding day photo of Mary Astor and Kenneth Hawks

by Imogene S. Smith

A Lady's a Lady: The Versatile Elegance of Mary Astor

by SelfStyledSiren (July 6, 2010)

"You Don't Wanna Know About How Frank She Was": A Conversation with Marylyn Roh, daughter of Mary Astor

Mary Astor scrapbook, Brigham Young University, Harold B. Lee Library, L. Tom Perry Special Collections

historical website dedicated to the study of Mary Astor's work as an actress and author

The Mary Astor Collection

kinotv