Mary Astor (Lucille Langhanke) (1906-87)

Mary Astor (Lucille Langhanke) (1906-87), b. Quincy, Illinois
Mary As tor's autobiography. My Story, published in 1951, is better written than most similar exercises and much more frank. Dotted through her morf than one hundred movies, there are many signs of an intelligent woman. That those views are too rare was only one of her problems: originally, an ambitious German father had thrust her into the movies; after her affair with John Barrymore, her first husband, Kenneth Hawks, was killed in an air crash; three more marriages ended in divorce, and the second saw the scurrilous publication, in 1936, of alleged and lurid extracts from her diary, including a graphic love affair with playwright George Kaufman. She never stayed a star for more than one year at a time, and she slipped from supporting parts into alcoholism and sessions with an analyst that eventually led to the autobiography. Despite her long career, she disliked Hollywood—though whether for itself or for the way it thwarted her is an open question. Fairly early, she won ii reputation for being independent, and later something stuck from the diary incident; as a result, she had her best chances playing polite bitches or demure snakes in the grass—above all Hammett's Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon (41, John Huston). That picture of chronic King did not hinder her genuine warmth as the mothers in Meet Me in St. iMtis (44, Vincente Minnelli) and Little Women (49, Mervyn Le Roy).
She made her debut in 1921 with Sentimental Tommy (John S. Robertson), and worked nomadically without ever being more than a promising newcomer: Bought and Paid For (22, William C. De Mille); Second Fiddle (22, Frank Tuttle); Puritan Passion (23, Tuttle); Success (23, Ralph Ince); Tlte Fighting Coward (24, James Cruze); Beau Brummel (24, Harry-Beaumont); Unguarded Woman (24, Alan Crosland); Inez from Hollywood (24, Alfred E. Green); Don Q, Son of Zorro (24, Donald Crisp); The Scarlet Saint (25, George Archain-baud); The Wise Guy (26, Frank Lloyd); and Don Juan (26, Crosland). That innovatory

sound Him (opposite a Barrymore who would have preferred^ Dolores Costello to his discarded mistress) boosted her, but she rarely got good parts: The Rough Riders (27, Victor Fleming); Two Arabian Knights (27, Lewis Milestone); No Place to Go (27, Le Roy); Dressed to Kill (28, Irving Cummings); and Dry Martini (28, Harry d'Arrast). Despite her subsequent prowess with good dialogue, she failed a test for talkies and was briefly put out of work before Ladies Love Brutes (30, Rowland V. Lee); The Runaway Bride (30, Crisp); Holiday (30. Edward H. Griffith); Other Men's Women (31, William Wellman); The Sin Ship (31, Louis Wolheim); The Royal Bed (31, Lowell Sherman); Smart Woman (31, Gregory La Cava); Red Dust (32, Fleming); The World Changes (33, Le Roy); The Kennel Murder Case (33, Michael Curtiz); Easy to Low (.34, William Kmghley); / Am a Thief (35, Robert Florey); and Page Miss Glory (35, Le Roy). Her career seems to have been enhanced by the diary scandal, for 1936-42 was the period of her best parts: Dodstoorth (36, William Wyler); never more beautiful than in The Prisoner of Zenda (37, John Cromwell); Hurricane (37, John Ford); Listen Darling (38, Edward L. Marin); There's Always a Woman (38. Alexander Hall); pregnant and hilarious during the making of Mia-night (39, Mitchell Leisen); Brigham young (40, Henry Hathaway); winning a best supporting actress Oscar opposite Bette Davis in The Great Lie (41, Edmund Goulding); looking too old in Across the Pacific (42, Huston); and Palm Beach Story (42. Preston Sturges), MGM put her under contract, but only for poor leads or good supporting parts: young Ideas (43, Jtiles Dassin); Thousands Cheer (43, George Sidney); Fiesta (47, Richard Thorpe); Desert Fury (48, Lewis Allen); fine as the hooker in Act of Violence (49, Fred Zin-nemann); and Any Number Can Play (49, Le Roy). Her crack-up meant that she played only small parts thereafter: So This Is Love (53, Gordon Douglas); A Kiss Before Dying (56, Gerd Oswald); The Devil's Hairpin (57, Cornel Wilde); This Hapjiy Feeling (58, Blake Edwards); A Stranger in My Arms (58, Helmut Kautner); Return to Peyton Place (61, Jos6 Ferrer); Youngblood Hawke (64, Delmer Daves); and Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte (64, Robert Aldrich), After her autobiography, she was encouraged to go on to novels.

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