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Mary Astor (May 3, 1906 – September 25,
1987) was an United States|American actor|actress.


She was born Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke in
Quincy, Illinois|Quincy, Illinois, the only child
of Otto Ludwig Langhanke (October 2, 1871-February
3, 1943) and Helen Marie Vasconcellos (April 19,
1881-January 18, 1947).

Her father, who was born in Berlin, immigrated to
the United States from Germany in 1891 and became
a Naturalization|naturalized Citizenship|citizen;
her mother was born in Jacksonville, Illinois, of
Portugal|Portuguese and Ireland|Irish extraction.
They married August 3, 1904 in Lyons, Kansas. Otto
was a teacher of German language|German at Quincy
High School until the U.S. entered World War I. He
then began doing light farming. Helen, who had
always wanted to be an actress, began teaching
drama and elocution.

Lucile was homeschooled in academics and taught to
play the piano by her father, who insisted she
practice daily. In 1919, she sent a photograph of
herself to a beauty contest in Motion Picture
Magazine and became a finalist. Her father then
moved the family to Chicago, Illinois|Chicago,
where he took a position teaching German in public
schools there. Lucile took drama lessons and
appeared in various amateur Theatre|stage Stage
play|plays.

The following year, she sent another photograph to
the magazine and again became a finalist, this
time being named runner-up in the national
contest. Her father then moved the family to New
York City|New York, in order for his pretty
daughter to become an actress in film|motion
pictures. He managed all her affairs from
September 1920 to June 1930.

A Manhattan photographer, Charles Albin, saw a
photograph and asked the young girl with haunting
eyes and long auburn hair, whose nickname was
"Rusty," to pose for him. The Albin photographs
were seen by Harry Durant of Famous Players-Lasky
and Lucile was signed to a six-month contract with
Paramount Studios|Paramount. Her name was changed
to Mary Astor during a conference between Movie
studio|studio chief Jesse Lasky, gossip columnist
Louella Parsons, and Film producer|producer Walter
Wanger.

==Silent movie career==
At age fourteen, she debuted with her new stage
name in the silent film|silent movie Sentimental
Tommy (1921 in film|1921), but her small part in a
dream sequence wound up on the cutting room floor.
Paramount let her contract lapse. She then
appeared in some movie shorts with sequences based
on famous paintings. She received critical
recognition for the two-reeler The Beggar Maid
(1921 in film|1921).

Her first feature-length movie was John Smith
(1922 in film|1922), which was followed that same
year by The Man Who Played God starring George
Arliss for United Artists. In 1923, she and her
parents moved to Hollywood, California|Hollywood.

After appearing in several larger roles at various
studios, she was signed by Paramount again, this
time to a one-year contract at $500 a week. She
appeared in several more movies, then John
Barrymore saw a photograph of her in a magazine
and wanted her cast in his upcoming movie. On
loan-out to Warner Bros., she starred opposite the
"The Great Profile" in Beau Brummel (1924 in
film|1924). The older actor wooed the young
actress, but their engagement ended when he became
involved with Dolores Costello.

In 1925, Astor's parents bought a Moorish style
mansion with one acre of land known as "Moorcroft"
in the hills above Hollywood,
California|Hollywood. They lived lavishly on her
earnings, had servants, a grand piano, a luxury
car and a chauffeur. Moorcroft, which still stands
at 6147 Temple Hill Drive north of Franklin Avenue
and just west of Beachwood Drive, was,
incidentally, rented by Charlie Chaplin before the
Langhankes bought the place. It was from this
garish looking mansion that Astor, fed up with her
father's constant badgering to practice the piano,
climbed from her second floor bedroom window and
walked down to Hollywood Boulevard, as recounted
in her memoirs.

Astor went on appearing in one movie after another
at various studios. When her Paramount contract
ended in 1925, she was signed at Warner Bros.
Among her assignments was another role with John
Barrymore, this time in Don Juan (1926 in
film|1926).

She was named one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars in
1926, along with Mary Brian, Dolores Costello,
Joan Crawford, Dolores Del Rio, Janet Gaynor, and
Fay Wray.

On loan-out to 20th Century Fox|Fox, Astor starred
in the role as Jeanne in Dressed To Kill (1928 in
film|1928), which received good reviews. That same
year, she starred as Elizabeth Quimby in the
sophisticated comedy Dry Martini at Fox. She later
said that, while working on the latter, she
"absorbed and assumed something of the atmosphere
and emotional climate of the picture." She said it
offered "a new and exciting point of view; with
its specious doctrine of self-indulgence, it
rushed into the vacuum of my moral sense and
captivated me completely." When her Warner Bros.
contract ended, she was signed at Fox for $3,750 a
week.

In 1928, she and film director|director Kenneth
Hawks were married at her family home, Moorcroft.
He gave her a Packard automobile for a wedding
gift and they moved into a home high up on Lookout
Mountain in Los Angeles, California|Los Angeles
above Beverly Hills, California|Beverly Hills.

As the movie industry made the transition to Sound
film|talkies, Fox gave her a sound test, which she
failed because the studio found her voice to be
too deep. Though this was probably due to early
sound equipment and the inexperience of
technicians, the studio released her from her
contract and she found herself out of work for
eight months in 1929.

==New beginnings==
Astor took voice training and singing lessons
during her time off, but no roles were offered.
Her acting career was then given a boost by her
friend, Florence Eldridge (wife of Fredric March),
whom she confided in about her woes. Eldridge, who
was to star in the stage play Among the Married at
the Majestic Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles,
recommended Astor for the second female lead. The
play was a success and her voice was deemed
suitable, being described as low and vibrant.

She was happy to be back at work, but her
happiness abruptly came to an end. On January 3,
1930, while filming sequences for the Fox movie
Such Men Are Dangerous, Kenneth Hawks was killed
in a mid-air plane crash over the Pacific
Ocean|Pacific off San Pedro, California|San Pedro.
Astor had just finished a matinee performance at
the Majestic and was lying down on a couch that
was part of the set of the play when Florence
Eldridge came to her on stage with the news. She
was then rushed from the theatre and taken to
Eldridge's apartment; a replacement, Doris Lloyd,
stepped in for the next show.

Astor remained with her friend, Eldridge, at her
apartment for some time. Seeming to be "bearing up
well," she soon went back to work under the burden
of her grief. Shortly after the death of her
husband, she debuted in her first talkie, Ladies
Love Brutes (1930 in film|1930) at Paramount,
which co-starred friend Fredric March.

While her career picked up, her private life
remained rocky. After working on several more
movies, she suffered delayed shock over the death
of Hawks and had a nervous breakdown. During the
months of her illness, she was attended by Dr.
Franklyn Thorpe, whom she later married.

Astor had four husbands, film director|director
Kenneth Hawks (married February 26, 1928-his death
1930); physician and surgeon Franklyn Thorpe
(married June 29, 1931-divorced 1936); insurance
salesman Manuel del Campo (married February
1936-divorced 1941); and stockbroker Thomas
Wheelock (married December 25, 1945-divorced
1955).

She and Thorpe had one daughter, Marylyn Hauoli
Thorpe (born June 16, 1932), who was married in
1950 to Frank Roh, Jr.; she and del Campo had one
son, Anthony Paul "Tono" del Campo (born June
1939), who was married in 1960 to Patricia Ellen
Leuty.

In May 1932, the Thorpes purchased a yacht and
sailed to Hawaii. Astor was pregnant, but the
birth was scheduled for August. Her daughter was
born in June in Honolulu, her name being a
combination of the names of her parents. Her
middle name, Hauoli, means "To sing with joy."

When they returned to Southern California, Astor
began freelancing and accepted the pivotal role of
Barbara Willis in Red Dust (1932 in film|1932) at
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer|MGM with Clark Gable and Jean
Harlow.

In late 1932, Astor signed a featured player
contract with Warner Bros. Besides spending
lavishly, her parents invested in the stock
market, which turned out in many instances to be
unprofitable. They still lived in Moorcroft, which
Astor dubbed a "white elephant" and refused to
maintain. She had to turn to the Motion Picture &
Television Fund|Motion Picture Relief Fund in 1933
to pay her bills. 

Unhappy in her marriage, she took a well deserved
break from movie making in 1933 and went to New
York by herself. While there, enjoying a whirlwind
social life, she met the playwright George Kaufman
and had an affair, which she documented in her
diary.

==Scandals==
In March 1934, Astor was sued by her parents, Otto
and Helen Langhanke, for support and a public
family feud burst out violently as they all went
threshing into court hurling charges.

The Langhankes said they did not even have enough
money for the necessities of life; the only money
they had received from their daughter in the last
six months was $60 in grocery coupons, and they
had to sell some of their furniture to survive.
They also cited a foreclosure notice on their
home, saying their daughter would not help them
pay the mortgage. 

Despite the Great depression|Depression, Otto had
continued to improve their estate. He then took
out an $18,000 loan and had a swimming pool
installed, which Astor said neither of them ever
used and was a waste of money, and he could not
afford to pay on the remaining $15,000
incumbrance.

Astor said all her earnings went to her parents
until 1930, being deposited by the studio directly
into their bank account, and she received a small
allowance. She then decided it was necessary for
her to look out for her own future and wiped the
slate clean. She gave them the house in June of
that year, free and clear of all incumbrance, and
for a year thereafter gave them $1000 a month. In
addition, in March 1931, she loaned them
$2,515.19, which they did not repay and she never
asked for. She said that she told them in March
1933 she could not afford to support them in their
expensive home, which cost more than the one she
and her husband and daughter were living in. She
offered them an allowance of $100 a month if they
move from the mansion; she also offered to set
them up in a suitable house in San Mateo County,
California|San Mateo County, together with food
and utilities, but they did not accept either
offer. Their lawyer responded that a daughter
could not dictate to her parents where they could
or could not live as if they were "Peter the
hermit." 

The judge ruled that she should give her parents
$100 a month. Moorcroft, now valued at $200,000,
went on the auction block and sold for only
$21,500. Otto was outraged and did not want to
accept the bid, but the auctioneer said they had a
signed contract, the buyer had deposited the
proper deposit, and the sale was final. The
Langhankes then moved to San Fernando,
California|San Fernando.

In the meantime, Astor's marriage to Franklyn
Thorpe continued to deteriorate. She learned from
Kaufman that Thorpe had talked to him about their
affair. When the inevitable confrontation came,
Thorpe told her he would name Kaufman in a divorce
suit. He said that if she would let him take their
daughter, Marylyn, she could have her back after
six months to keep for six months. She believed
that later on she could get custody of Marylyn and
avoid bad publicity.

In April 1935, Thorpe divorced her in an
uncontested suit and gained sole custody of their
daughter. While working on Dodsworth (1936 in
film|1936) starring Walter Huston and Ruth
Chatterton, Astor sued to gain sole custody in
July 1936, after having Marylyn living with her
for six months, as well as for the recovery of
stocks and property paid for by her movie
earnings, or the value, and a vicious battle broke
out that was also well documented by the press.

Thorpe cited her adultery with Kaufman and
introduced excerpts of her diary as evidence of
the affair. Astor said he had stolen her diary and
that most of the passages submitted were
forgeries. She said she was intimidated into not
contesting custody when he threatened to ruin her
career. She said he assertedly threatened to
deprive her of her daughter's companionship unless
she transferred the securities to him, which she
did shortly before the divorce. She further
asserted that he was busy with his practice and
unable to properly rear the child.

Excerpts of what she wrote about her marriage and
affair with Kaufman were then released by Thorpe's
lawyers to the press, who dubbed it the "purple
diary," although it was actually penned in Aztec
brown ink and not purple, and it became headline
news. Although the excerpts in the papers were
fairly harmless, with romantic and sentimental
chatter and no intimate details, lurid tales of
sexually explicit contents began to circulate. No
one ever actually read the authentic diary,
however, and such reports of its contents were
purely speculative.

When Thorpe surrendered the diary to the court it
was impounded and the full contents never
revealed. The judge was only concerned with the
welfare of the child. Astor wanted her diary back,
while Thorpe asserted it should be returned to
him. The judge then ordered that it be stored in a
safe deposit box at Security-First National Bank
at Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue in
Hollywood, sealed against prying eyes. In April
1952, with no objection from Astor or Thorpe, the
diary was destroyed, unread, by order of the
court.

Astor received joint custody of her daughter.
Marylyn lived with her mother during the long
school months and with her father during summer
vacation. She shared Christmas with both parents.

==Career continues==
Fortunately, the scandal caused no harm to Astor's
career, which was actually renewed because of the
custody fight and the huge level of publicity
generated; Dodsworth was released to rave revues,
and the public's acceptance assured the studios
that she was still a viable commercial property. 

In 1937, she returned to the stage in well
received productions of Noel Coward's Tonight at
8:30, The Astonished Heart, and Still Life, at the
Biltmore Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles. She also
began doing regular performances on Radio
programming|radio. And some of her best movies
were still to come, including The Prisoner of
Zenda (1937 in film|1937) starring Ronald Colman
and Madeleine Carroll; John Ford's The Hurricane
(1937 movie)|The Hurricane (1937 in film|1937)
starring Dorothy Lamour and Jon Hall; and Brigham
Young - Frontiersman (1940 in film|1940) starring
Tyrone Power and Linda Darnell.


Astor is probably most-famous for her role as
Brigid O'Shaunessy, the scheming temptress who
murders Sam Spade's partner, in John Huston's The
Maltese Falcon (1941 in film|1941) opposite
Humphrey Bogart, with Peter Lorre and Sydney
Greenstreet.

Another noteworthy performance was her role as
Sandra Kovack, the selfish, self-centered, concert
pianist, who willingly gives up her child, in The
Great Lie (1941 in film|1941) starring Bette Davis
and George Brent.

Davis wanted Astor cast in the role after watching
her screen test and seeing her play Pyotr Ilyich
Tchaikovsky|Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1
(Tchaikovsky)|Piano Concerto No. 1. She then
recruited Astor to collaborate with her on
rewriting the script, which Davis felt was
mediocre crap and needed work to make it more
interesting. Astor further followed Davis's advise
and sported a brazen bobbed hairdo for the role.
The soundtrack of the movie during the scenes
where she plays the concerto, with violent hand
movements on the piano keys, was actually recorded
with Max Rabinovitch playing.

She let Davis be boss and run the show, with no
objection, and they became good friends. Davis
deliberately stepped back to allow Astor to shine
in her key scenes. As a result of her performance,
Astor won the Academy Award for Academy Award for
Best Supporting Actress|Best Supporting Actress
for The Great Lie.

Astor was not propelled into the upper echelon of
movie stars by these successes. She always
declined offers of starring in her own right. Not
wanting the responsibility of top billing and
having to "carry the picture," she preferred the
security of being a featured player. 

She was reunited with Bogie and Sydney Greenstreet
in John Huston's Across the Pacific (1942 in
film|1942), and she also played the Princess
Centimillia in The Palm Beach Story (1942 in
film|1942), starring Claudette Colbert, Joel
McCrea, and Rudy Vallee.

In February 1943, Otto Langhanke died in Cedars of
Lebanon Hospital as a result of a heart attack
complicated by influenza. His wife and daughter
were both at his bedside.

That same year, Astor signed a seven-year contract
with MGM, which turned out to be a regrettable
mistake. She was kept busy playing what she
considered mediocre mother roles. After Meet Me In
St. Louis (1944 in film|1944), starring Judy
Garland and Margaret O'Brien, the studio allowed
her to make her Broadway theatre|Broadway debut in
Many Happy Returns (1945). The play was a
miserable failure, but Astor received good
reviews.

On loan to 20th Century Fox, she played a wealthy
widow in Claudia and David (1946 in film|1946)
starring Dorothy McGuire and Robert Young. She
also was loaned to Paramount to play Fritzi Haller
in Desert Fury (1947 in film|1947) starring John
Hodiak, Lizabeth Scott, Burt Lancaster, and
Wendell Corey. It was another mother role, but she
played the tough owner of a saloon and casino in a
small mining town.

Before Helen Langhanke died of a heart ailment in
January 1947, Astor said she sat in the hospital
room with her mother, who was delirious and did
not know her, and listened quietly as Helen told
her all about terrible, selfish Lucile. After her
death, Astor said she spent countless hours
copying her mother's diary so she could read it
and was surprised to learn how much she was hated.


Back at MGM, Astor went on being cast in
undistinguished, colorless mother roles. One
exception was Astor playing a prostitue in the
film noir Act of Violence in 1948.  The last straw
was her role as Marmee March in Little Women (1949
in film|1949), starring June Allyson, Peter
Lawford, Margaret O'Brien, Elizabeth Taylor, and
Janet Leigh. Astor found no redemption in playing
what she considered another humdrum mother and
became despondent. The studio wanted to renew her
contract, promising to give her better roles, but
she declined the offer.

==Middle years==
At the same time, Astor's drinking was getting
much worse. She admitted to having a problem with
Alcoholic beverage|alcohol as far back as the
1930s, but it had never interfered with her work
schedule or performance. She hit bottom in 1949
and went into a sanitarium for alcoholics. 

In 1951, she made a frantic call to her doctor and
told him she had taken too many sleeping pills.
She was taken to a hospital and the police
reported that she had attempted suicide, this
being her third overdose in two years, and the
story made headline news. She maintained it had
been an accident.

That same year, she joined Alcoholics Anonymous
and converted to Roman Catholicism. She credited
her recovery to a priest, Peter Ciklic, also a
practicing psychologist, who encouraged her to
write about her experiences as part of therapy.
She also separated from her husband, Thomas
Wheelock, but did not actually divorce him until
1955.

In 1952, she was cast in the leading role of the
stage play Time of the Cuckoo, which was made into
the movie Summertime (1955 in film|1955) starring
Katharine Hepburn, and toured with the company.
After the tour, Astor lived in New York for four
years and worked in the theatre and on television.

Her TV debut was in The Missing Years (1954 in
television|1954) for Kraft Television Theatre. She
acted frequently in TV during the ensuing years
and appeared on most of the big shows, including
The United States Steel Hour, Alfred Hitchcock
Presents, Rawhide, Dr. Kildare, Burke's Law, and
Ben Casey. She also starred on Broadway in The
Starcross Story (1954), which was another failure.

She returned to Southern California in 1956. She
then went on a successful theatre tour of Don Juan
in Hell directed by Agnes Moorehead and
co-starring Ricardo Montalban.

Astor's memoir, My Story: An Autobiography, was
published in 1959 in literature|1959, becoming a
sensation for its day and a bestseller. It was the
result of Father Ciklic urging her to write.
Though she spoke of her troubled personal life,
her parents, her marriages, the scandals, her
battle with alcoholism, and other things about her
life, she did not mention the movie industry or
her career in any detail. In 1971 in
literature|1971, another book was published, A
Life on Film, where she righted the wrong of her
earlier omission and discussed her career. It too
became a bestseller. Astor also tried her hand at
fiction, writing the novels The Incredible Charley
Carewe (1960 in literature|1960); The Image of
Kate (1962 in literature|1962); The O'Conners
(1964 in literature|1964); Jahre und Tage (1964 in
literature|1964) (a German language|German
translation of The Image of Kate); Goodbye,
Darling, be Happy (1965 in literature|1965); and A
Place Called Saturday (1968 in literature|1968).

She appeared in several movies during this time,
including A Stranger in My Arms (1959 in
film|1959). She made a comeback in Return to
Peyton Place (1961 in film|1961) playing Roberta
Carter, the domineering mother who insists the
"shocking" novel written by Allison Mackenzie
should be banned from the school library, and
received good reviews for her performance.

==Later life==
After taking a trip around the world in 1964 in
film|1964, Astor was lured away from her Malibu,
California|Malibu home, where she was spending
time gardening and working on her third novel, to
make what she decided would be her final movie
appearance.

When she was offered the small role as a key
figure in the murder mystery Hush... Hush, Sweet
Charlotte, starring Bette Davis and Olivia de
Havilland, with Agnes Moorehead in a supporting
role, Astor decided it would serve as her swan
song in the movie business. After more than 100
movies during a career spanning 44 years, she
turned in her Screen Actors Guild|SAG card and
retired.

She later moved to Fountain Valley, California,
where she lived near her son, Tono del Campo, and
his family until 1976. Suffering from a chronic
heart condition, she then moved to a small cottage
on the grounds of the Motion Picture & Television
Country House and Hospital|Motion Picture &
Television Country House, the industry's
retirement facility in Woodland Hills,
California|Woodland Hills, where she had her own
private table when she chose to eat in the
resident dining room.

While living there, Astor had a heart attack, two
strokes and developed emphysema. She died at age
eighty-one of respiratory failure due to pulmonary
emphysema while a patient in the hospital that is
part of the Motion Picture House complex. She is
interred in Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City,
California|Culver City.

Mary Astor has a star on the Hollywood Walk of
Fame at 6701 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood,
California|Hollywood.

==External links==
*imdb name|id=0000802|name=Mary Astor
*http://www.afi.com/members/catalog/SearchResult.a
spx?s=1&Type=PN&Tbl=&CatID=DATABIN_CAST&ID=108371&
searchedFor=Mary_Astor_&SortType=ASC&SortCol=RELEA
SE_YEAR AFI Catalog Silent Films entry for Mary
Astor
*http://silent-movies.org/Ladies/PAstor.html Mary
Astor Photo Gallery
*ibdb name|id=30290|name=Mary Astor